Greg Bear - Forge of God



















Greg Bear - Forge of God















Greg Bear - Forge of God


v1.0 28-Jan-02???? Original in RTF, no version information included.

v1.1 22-feb-02 4i Publications. Added italics (indicated by _ in original), full

proof, 10 OCR errors corrected, some layout changes, added

linefeeds to indicate some scene changes, conversion to HTML. IMHO, FoG is

overrated at Amazon, definitely not in the top 10 of Greg Bear novels.


v1.2 1-Jul-02 MikeLJon. Corrected typos, spacing, etc. A great

"page-turner".  New interest

because Warner contracted big screen versions of ‘Forge of God’

& it’s sequel (Anvil of Stars - 1993).


 


 


_INTROIT: KYRIE ELEISON


June

 26, 1996


Arthur Gordon stood in the darkness by the bank of the Rogue River, having walked a dozen yards away from his house

and family and guests, momentarily weary of company. He stood six feet two

inches in height, losing no more than an inch to a slight stoop. His hair was a

dusty brown color, his eyebrows a lighter shade of the same. He had a

well-proportioned frame and a sufficient amount of muscle, but he lacked any

trace of fat; his muscles showed clearly beneath the skin, giving him an

appearance of thinness.


The same leanness added intensity and,

falsely, a hint of villainy to his face. When he smiled, it seemed he might be

thinking something unpleasant or planning mischief. But when he spoke or

laughed, that impression was quickly dispelled. His voice was rich and even and

calm. He was and always had been-even in his year and a half in Washington,

D.C.-the gentlest of men.


The clothes Arthur Gordon owned tended to

the professorial. His favorite outfit was an old brown pair of corduroy

pants-he wore them now-a matching jacket, and a blue checked long-sleeved

shirt. His shoes were few and sturdy, running shoes for wear around the house,

and for work solid brown or black leather wing tips.


His only ostentation was a wide rectangular

belt buckle showing a turquoise Saturn and silver stars set in rosewood above

brass and maple mountains. He had done little actual astronomy for five years,

but he kept that job description close to his heart and quick to his lips,

still thinking it the noblest of professions.


Kneeling in the starshadow of ash and

maple, he dug his fingers into the rich, black leaf-crusted cake of humus.

Closing his eyes, he sniffed the water and the tealike tang of rotting leaves

and the clean soapy scent of moist dirt. To be alone was to reappraise. To be

alone and know that he could go back, could return at any moment to Francine

and their son, Marty, was an ecstasy he could hardly encompass.


The wind hissed through the branches

overhead. Looking up, peering between the black silhouettes of maple leaves,

Arthur saw a thick spill of stars. He knew every constellation, knew how the

stars were born (as much as anyone did) and how they grew old and how a few

died. Still, the stars were seldom more than lights on deep blue velvet. Only

once in a great while could he make them fill out and see them for what they

were, far participants in an intricate play.


Voices carried over the woods. On the broad

single-story cabin's porch, vaulting on sturdy concrete pillars above the fern-

and tree-covered bluff, Francine talked about fishing with her sister Danielle

and brother-in-law, Grant.


"Men love hobbies full of guts and

grease," Danielle said, her voice high and sweet, with a touch of North

Carolina that Francine had mostly abandoned.


"Nonsense," Grant countered

cordially, pure Iowa. "The thrill lies in killing God's innocent

creatures."


Below Arthur, the river flowed with a

whispering rumble. Still squatting, he slid down the bank on the heels of his

thoroughly muddy running shoes and dipped his long-fingered hands into the cold

water.


_All things are connected to a contented

man. He looked up again at the sky.

"God damn," he said in awe, his eyes moistening. "I love it

all."


Something padded close to him in the dark,

snuffling. Arthur tensed, then recognized the eager whine. Marty's

three-month-old chocolate Labrador, Gauge, had followed him down to the river.

Arthur felt the pup's cold nose against his outstretched palm and rumpled the

dog's head and ears between his hands. "Why'd you come all the way down

here? Young master fickle? Not paying attention?"


Gauge sat in the dirt, rump wriggling, tail

swishing through the damp leaves. The pup's moist brown marble eyes reflected

twin star-glints. "Call of the wild," Arthur said on the pup's

behalf. "Out here in the savage wilderness." Gauge leaped away and

pounced his forepaws into the water.


Arthur had owned three dogs in his life. He

had inherited the first, a ragged old collie bitch, when he had been Marty's

age, on the death of his father. The collie had been his father's dog heart and

soul, and that relationship had passed on to him before he could fully

appreciate the privilege. After a time, Arthur had wondered if somehow his

father hadn't put a part of himself into the old animal, she had seemed so canny

and protective. He hoped Marty would find that kind of closeness with Gauge.


Dogs could mellow a wild boy, or open up a

shy one. Arthur had mellowed. Marty-a bright, quiet boy of eight, spectrally

thin-was already opening up.


He played with his cousin on the sward

below and east of the patio. Becky, a pretty hellion with more apparent energy

than sense-excusable for her age-had brought along a monkey hand puppet. To

give it voice she made high-pitched chattering noises, more birdlike than

monkeylike.


Marty's giggle, excited and girlish, flew

out through the tops of the trees. He had a hopeless crush on Becky. Here, in

isolation-with nobody else to distract her-she did not spurn him, but she often

chided him, in a voice full of dignity, for his "boogy" ways. "Boogy"

meant any number of things, none of them good. Marty accepted these comments in

blinking silence, too young to understand how deeply they hurt him.


The Gordon’s had lived in

the cabin for six months, since the end of Arthur's stint as science advisor to the President of the United States. He had used that time to catch up on his reading,

consuming a whole month's worth of astronomical and scientific journals in a

day, consulting on aerospace projects one or two days a week, flying north to

Seattle or south to Sunnyvale or El Segundo once a month.


Francine had gladly returned from the

capital social hurricane to her studies of ancient nomadic Steppes peoples,

whom she knew and understood far more than he understood the stars. She had

worked on this project since her days at Smith, slowly, steadily accumulating

her evidence, pointing toward the (he thought, rather obvious) conclusion that

the great ecological factory of the steppes of central Asia had spun forth or

stimulated virtually every great movement in history. Eventually she would turn

it all into a book; indeed, she already had well over two thousand pages of

text on disk. In Arthur's eyes, part of his wife's charm was this dichotomy:

resourceful mother without, bulldog scholar within.


The phone rang three times before Francine

could travel from the patio to answer it. Her voice came through the open

bedroom window facing the river. "I'll find him," she told the

caller.


He sighed and stood, pushing on the

corduroy covering his bony knees.


"Arthur!"


"Yeah?"


"Chris Riley from Cal Tech. Are you

available?"


"Sure," he said, less

reluctantly. Riley was not a close friend, merely an acquaintance, but over the

years they had established a pact, that each would inform the other of

interesting developments before most of the scientific community or the general

media had heard of them. Arthur climbed the path up the bank in the dark,

knowing each root and slippery patch of mud and leaves, whistling softly. Gauge

bounded through the ferns.


Marty watched him owlishly from the edge of

the lawn, under the wild plum tree, the monkey puppet hanging loose and

grotesque on his hand. "Is Gauge with you?"


The dog followed, ears and eyes locked on

the monkey, which he wanted passionately.


Becky lay on her back in the middle of the

yard, luminous blond hair fanned over the grass, gazing solemnly at the sky.

"When can we get the telescope out, Dad?" Marty asked. He grabbed

Gauge's collar and bent down to hug him fiercely. The dog yelped and craned his

neck to nip air as the monkey's plastic face poked him in the withers.

"Becky wants to see."


"A little later. Tell Mom."


"She'll get it?" Marty was

passing through a stage of doubting his mother's technical skills. This

irritated Arthur.


"She's used it more than I have,

buddy."


"All _right! " Marty

enthused, releasing the dog, dropping the puppet and running for the steps

ahead of Arthur. Gauge immediately grabbed the monkey by the throat and shook

it, growling. Arthur followed his son, turned left in the hallway past the

freezer chest, and picked up his office extension.


"Christopher, what a surprise,"

he said affably.


"Art, I hope I'm the first.

"Riley's voice was a higher tenor than usual.


"Try me."


"Have you heard about Europa?"


"Europe?"


"Europa. Jupiter's sixth moon."


"What about it?"


"It's gone."


"I beg your pardon?"


"There's been a search on at Mount

Wilson and Mauna Kea. The _Galileo's still going strong out there, but it

hasn't been aimed at Europa for weeks. JPL turned the cameras to where Europa

should be, but there's nothing big enough to photograph. If it were there, it

would come out of occultation again in about ten minutes. But nobody expects to

see it. Calls from amateurs have been flooding JPL and Mount Palomar for

sixteen hours."


Arthur couldn't shift gears fast enough to

think how to react. "I'm sorry…?"


"It's not painted black, it's not

hiding, it's just _gone. Nobody saw it go, either."


Riley was a rotund, crew-cut, plaid

sports-coated kind of scientist, shy in person but not on the phone, deeply conservative.

He had always been critically deficient in the humor department. He had never

pulled Arthur's leg on anything.


"What do they think happened?"


"Nobody knows," Riley said.

"Nobody's even venturing a guess. There's going to be a press conference here

in Pasadena tomorrow."


Arthur pinched his cheek speculatively.

"Did it explode? Something hit it?"


"Can't say, can we?" He could

almost hear Chris's smile in his voice. Riley did not smile unless he was faced

with a truly bizarre problem. "No data. I've got about seventy other

people to call now. Keep in touch, Arthur."


"Thanks, Chris." He hung up,

still pinching his cheek. The smoothness of the moment by the river had passed.

He stood by the phone for a moment, frowning, then walked into the master bedroom.


Francine reached high to rummage through

the top shelf of the bedroom closet, Marty and Becky at her heels.


In their seventeen years together, his wife

had moved over the line from voluptuous to _zoftig to plump. The physical

contrast between Arthur and Francine, all curves and fulfilling grace, was

obvious; equally obvious was the fact that what others saw in them, they did

not see in each other. She tended to wear folk art print dresses, and much of

her wardrobe was a stylish acquiescence to matronliness.


Yet in his thoughts, she was eternally as

he had first seen her, walking up sunny white-sanded Newport Beach in southern

California, wearing a brief one-piece black swimsuit, her long black hair loose

in the breeze. She had been the sexiest woman he had ever known, and she still

was.


She pulled down the bulbous canvas

Astroscan bag. Bending over, she rummaged for the box of eyepieces under a pile

of shoes. "What did Chris want?" she asked.


"Europa's disappeared," Arthur

said.


"Europe?" Francine smiled over

her shoulder and straightened, passing the bag to him.


"Europa. Sixth moon of Jupiter."


"Oh. How?"


Arthur made a face and shrugged. He took

the telescope and its painted gray metal base and carried them outside, Gauge

snorting at his heels.


"Uh-oh, kids. Dad's in robot

mode," Francine called from the bedroom. "What did Chris really

say?" She followed him down the stairs and onto the lawn, where he pressed

the telescope base into the soft grass and soil.


"That's what he really said,"

Arthur replied, dropping the big red ball of the reflector gently into the

three hollowed branches of the base.


Gray, dignified Grant and lithe blond

Danielle stood by the railing on the east side of the rear deck, overlooking

the yard and the plum tree. "It's a lovely night," Danielle said,

holding Grant's arm. Arthur thought they most resembled models in upscale real

estate ads. Still, they were good people. "Stargazing?"


"It's not secret or anything, is

it?" Francine asked.


"I truly doubt such a thing can be

kept secret," Arthur replied, peering into the eyepiece.


"One of Jupiter's moons has

disappeared," Francine called up to them.


"Oh," her sister said. "Is

that possible?"


"We have a friend. An acquaintance,

really. He and Arthur keep each other up-to-date on certain things."


"So he's looking for it now?" her

sister asked.


"Can you see Jupiter from here? I

mean, tonight?" Grant asked.


"I think so," Francine replied.

"Europa is one of the Galilean moons. One of the four Galileo saw. The

kids were going to…"


Arthur had Jupiter in view, a bright spot

in the middle of the blue-gray field. Stars formed a resolving fog in the

background. Two pointlike moons, one bright and one quite dim, were clearly

visible on one side of the brighter planet. The dim one was either Io or

Callisto, the bright probably Ganymede. The third was either in transit across

the planet or in Jupiter's cone of shadow, eclipsed -or behind the planet,

occulted. He tried to remember Laplace's law regarding the first three Galilean

moons: _The longitude of the first satellite, minus three times that of the

second, plus twice that of the third, is always equal to half of the

circumference…He had memorized that in high school, but it did him a fat

lot of good now. He murmured the consequences of the law to himself: "The

first three Galileans-that includes Europa-can never be all eclipsed at once,

nor can they all be in front of the disk at once. If Io and Europa are eclipsed

or occulted simultaneously, or in transit simultaneously…Ah, hell." He

couldn't remember the details. He would just have to sit and wait for the four

to be visible all at once, or for only three to make an appearance.


"Can we see?" Marty asked.


"Sure. I'm going to be out here all

night, probably," Arthur said.


"Not Becky," Danielle said.


"Oh, Mooommm! Can't I see?"


"Go ahead," Arthur encouraged,

leaning back. Marty squatted next to the telescope and showed his cousin how to

look into the eyepiece. "Don't knock it," Arthur warned.

"Francine, can you get me the field glasses?"


"Where are they?"


"In the hall cupboard, above the

camping gear, in a black leather case."


"What would cause a moon to disappear?

How big a moon is it?" Grant asked.


"It's quite large as moons go,"

Arthur said. "Rock and ice, probably with a liquid water layer under an

ice shell."


"That's not like our moon, is

it?" Danielle asked.


"Very different," Arthur said.

Francine handed him the glasses and he trained them on the sky in the general vicinity

of Jupiter. After a few moments of sweeping and focusing, he found the dot of

light, but couldn't hold the glasses still enough to make out moons. Becky

pulled away from the telescope, rubbing her eye and making a face. "That's

hard," she said.


"All right. Let me use it again,"

Arthur said.


Marty asked his cousin if she had seen it.


"I don't know. It was hard to see

anything."


Arthur applied his eye to the eyepiece and

found a third moon visible, also comparatively dim. Callisto, Io, and bright

Ganymede. No sign of a fourth.


The rest of the family soon tired of the

vigil and went inside, where they played a noisy game of Scrabble.


After two hours of straining his eyes,

Arthur stood up. He felt dizzy. His legs tingled painfully from the knees down.

Francine returned to the backyard around ten o'clock and stood next to him,

arms folded.


"You have to see for yourself?"

she asked.


"You know me," Arthur said.

"It should be visible, but it isn't."


"Pretty big thing to lose, a moon,

isn't it?"


"Unheard of."


"Any idea what it means?"


Arthur looked up at her. "There's only

three. I know I should have seen four by now."


"What does it mean, Arthur?"


"Damned if I know. Somebody's

collecting moons, maybe?"


"It scares me," Francine said.

"If it's true." She looked at him plaintively. He said nothing.

"Then it's true?"


"I suppose it is."


"Doesn't it scare you?"


Arthur stretched to relieve cramped muscles

and took his wife's hands in his. "I don't know what it means yet,"

he said.


Francine moved almost as easily and blissfully

in the sciences as he, albeit on a more instinctive level. He valued her

insights, and the thought of her fear sobered him further. "Why are you

scared?"


"A moon is bigger than a mountain, and

if a mountain, or the river, disappeared without a trace, wouldn't you be

afraid?"


"I might," he conceded. He picked

up the telescope and replaced its aperture cover. "That's enough for

tonight."


Francine wrapped her arms around herself.

"Bed?" she asked. "Grant and Danielle and the children are

asleep. Gauge is with Marty."


Arthur's mind raced as he lay next to

Francine. The wide bed's flannel winter sheets hadn't been changed to the

regular percale spring and summer sheets. He was glad for their fuzzy comfort.

His emotions had caught up with him.


Europa had been around for billions of

years, silently orbiting Jupiter. Some scientists had thought there might be

life there, but that had never been proved or disproved.


_If a mountain or the river disappears,

that's much closer to home…


Arthur dreamed of fishing with his best

friend, Harry Feinman. They sat in a boat on the river, lines trailing in the

current, wearing wide-brimmed hats against a sun that was not all that bright.

In the dream, Arthur remembered Harry playing with Martin at the house, lifting

the boy high in the air and making an airplane noise as he ran around the tree

in the backyard. Harry's wife-tall, stately Ithaca-had watched in this dream

memory, her smile carrying a slight edge; she was barren, and had never given

Harry the child he wanted. Only occasionally did Harry seem to regret the

missed opportunities. _I haven't seen Harry in over eight months, Arthur

thought. _Yet here he is.


_How are you doing, fellah? Arthur asked Harry in the boat. _Any nibbles?

It was curious to realize that the figure of Harry, sitting with hat slouched

over his face, was part of a dream. Arthur wondered what the dream Harry would

say. _You asleep?


He reached over to lift the hat.


The Earth's moon lay under Harry's hat,

bright and full. Harry's face was in the craters and seas of its surface. _Wow,

Arthur said. _That's really beautiful.


But he worried for the merest instant that

he was not dreaming, and awoke with a start.


_QUID SUM, MISER! TUNC DICTUROS?


PERSPECTIVE


_AP/Home _Info _Service, September 2, 1996: WASHINGTON, D. C. -Scientists are convening at the

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Conference to listen

to speakers presenting papers on subjects ranging from "Lack of Proof for

Supermassive Intergalactic Gravitational Lenses" to "Distribution of

Wild Rodent Plague Through Ground Squirrel Fleas ( _Diamanus Montanus )

in Southern California." Yesterday, one of the most hotly debated papers

was presented by Dr. Frank Drinkwater of Balliol College, Oxford University.

Dr. Drinkwater maintains that there are no intelligent extraterrestrial

civilizations. "If there were, we would certainly have seen their effects

by now." Dr. Drinkwater maintains that one civilization, creating

self-reproducing planet-visiting spacecraft, would permeate the galaxy in less

than a million years.


No conclusion was reached by conference

scientists regarding the recent disappearance of Jupiter's sixth moon, Europa.

Professor Eugenie Cook of the University of Washington, Seattle, maintains that

the moon has been displaced from its orbit by collision with a massive and

heretofore unknown asteroid. Famed astronomer Fred Accord maintains that such a

collision would have "shattered the moon, and we would still be able to

see the orbiting fragments." No such sightings have been reported. Many

scientists remarked on public apathy over such an unprecedented event. After a

month, the story of Europa has almost vanished from the media. Accord

commented, "Obviously, more provincial difficulties, like the U. S.

presidential election, loom larger. ".


September 28-29


Camped beside the mountain that should not

have been there, wrapped in cold desert darkness, Edward Shaw could not sleep.

He heard steady breathing from the still forms of his two companions, and

marveled at their ease.


He had written in his notebook:


The mound is approximately five hundred

meters long and half as wide, perhaps a hundred meters high, (apparently) the

basaltic cinder cone of a dead volcano, covered with boulder- and cobble-sized

chunks of dark black scoria and surrounded by fine white quartz sand. It is not

on our maps nor in the 1991 Geosat directory. The flanks of the cone are

steeper than the angle of repose, as much as fifty and sixty degrees. The

weathering is haphazard at best- some parts open to the sun and rain are jet

black, shiny, and other areas are only mildly rusty. There are no insects on

the mound-specifically, lift any rock and you will _not find a scorpion

or millipede. There are no beer cans.


Edward, Brad Minelli, and Victor Reslaw had

journeyed from Austin, Texas, to combine a little geology with a lot of camping

and hiking across the early autumn desert. Edward was the eldest, thirty-three;

he was also the shortest and in a close race with Reslaw to lose his hair the

fastest. He stood five feet nine inches in his hiking boots, and his slender

frame and boyish, inquisitive features made him seem a lot younger, despite the

thinning hair. To see objects closer than two feet from his round nose, he wore

gold wire-framed round-lensed glasses, a style he had adopted as an adolescent

in the late seventies.


Edward lay on his back with his hands

clasped behind his head and stared up at the clear steady immensity of the sky.

Three days before, dark and gravid clouds had conspired in the flaming sunset

to drop a true gully-washer into Death Valley. Their camp had been on high

ground, but they had seen basketball-sized boulders slide and roll down freshly

gouged channels.


The desert seemed once again innocent of

water and change. All around the camp hung a silence more precious than any

amount of gold. Not even the wind spoke.


He felt very large in the solitude, as if

he might spread his fingers over half the land from horizon to horizon, and

gather a mica coat of stars on his fingers. Conversely, in his largeness, he

was also a little frightened. This inflated magnitude of self could easily be

pricked and shrink to nothing, an illusion of comfort and warmth and high

intellectual fever.


Not once in his six-year career as a

professor of geology had he found a major error in the U.S. Geological Survey

Death Valley charts. The Mojave Desert and Death Valley were the Mecca and Al

Medina of western U.S. geologists; they had tramped over the regions for well

over a century, drawn by the nakedness and shameless variety of the Earth. From

its depths miners had hauled borax and talc and gypsum and other useful,

unglamorous minerals. In some places, niter-lined caves wedged several hundred

feet into the Earth. A spelunker need descend only twenty or thirty feet to

feel the heat; creation still lay close under Death Valley.


There were hundreds of dead volcanoes,

black or sullen red on the tan and gray and pink desert, between the resort at

Furnace Creek and the small town of Shoshone, yet each one had been charted and

was likely featured in some graduate research paper or another.


This mountain was an anomaly.


That was impossible.


Reslaw and Minelli had shrugged it off as

an interesting if unique error on the maps; a misplacement, like the discovery

of some new island in an archipelago, known to the natives but lost in a

shuffle of navigators' charts; a kind of Pitcairn of volcanic mounds.


But the cinder cone was too close to routes

traveled at least once or twice a year. Edward knew that it had not been

misplaced. He could not deceive himself as his friends did.


Neither could he posit any other

explanation.


They walked once again around the base of

the mound at midmorning. The sun was already high in the flat, still blue sky.

It was going to be a hot day. Red-haired, stocky Reslaw sipped coffee from a

green-enameled Thermos bottle, a serviceable antique purchased in a

rock-and-junk shop in Shoshone; Edward chewed on a granola bar and sketched

details in a small black cloth-bound notebook. Minelli trailed them, idly

chipping at boulders with a rock pick, his loose, lanky form, unkempt black

hair, and pale skin giving him the appearance of a misplaced urban scrounger.


He stopped ten yards behind Edward.

"Hey," he called out. "Did you see this?"


"What?"


"A hole."


Edward turned back. Reslaw glanced back at

them, shrugged, and continued around the mound to the north.


The hole was about a meter wide and slanted

upward into the mass of the mound. Edward had not seen it because it began in

deep shadow, under a ledge illuminated by the warm rays of the sun. "It's

not a flow tube. Look how smooth," Minelli said. "No collapse, no

patterns."


"Bad geology," Edward commented. _If

the mound is a fake, then this is the first mistake.


"Hm?"


"It's not natural. Looks like some

prospector got here before us."


"Why dig a hole in a cinder

cone?"


"Maybe it's an Indian cave,"

Edward offered lamely. The hole disturbed him.


"Indians with diamond drills? Not

likely," Minelli said with a faint edge of scorn. Edward ignored his tone

and stepped on a lava boulder to get a better look up into the darkness. He

pulled a flashlight from his belt and squeezed it to shine a beam into the

depths. Smooth-bored matte-finish lava walls absorbed the light beyond eight or

ten meters; to that point, the tunnel was straight and featureless, inclining

upward at about thirty degrees.


''Do you smell something?" Minelli

asked.


Edward sniffed. "Yeah. What is

it?"


"I'm not sure…"


The odor was faint and smooth and sweet,

slightly acrid. It did not encourage further investigation. "Like a lab

smell," Minelli said.


"That's it," Edward agreed.

"Iodine. Crystalline iodine."


"Right."


Minelli's forehead wrinkled in a mock fit

of manic speculation. "Got it," he said. "This is a junkie rock.

A sanitary junkie cinder cone."


Edward ignored him again. Minelli was

infamous for a sense of humor so strange it hardly ever produced anything

funny. "Needle mark," Minelli explained in an undertone, realizing

his failure. "You still think this isn't a map mistake?"


"If you found a street in New York

City, not on any map, wouldn't you be suspicious?"


"I'd call up the mapmakers."


"Yeah, well, this place is as crowded

as New York City, as far as geologists are concerned."


"All right," Minelli conceded.

"So it's _new. Just popped up out of nowhere."


"That sounds pretty stupid, doesn't

it?" Edward said. "Your idea, not mine."


Edward backed away from the hole and

suppressed a shiver. _A new mole and it won't go away; a blemish that

shouldn't be here.


"What's Reslaw doing?" Minelli

asked. "Let's find him."


"This-a-way," Edward said,

pointing north. "We can still catch up."


They heard Reslaw call out.


He had not gone far. At the northernmost

point of the mound's base, they found him squatting on top of a beetle-shaped

lava boulder.


"Tell me I'm not seeing what I'm

seeing," he said, pointing to the shade below the rock. Minelli made a

face and hurried ahead of Edward.


In the sand, two meters from the boulder,

lay something that at first glance resembled a prehistoric flying creature, a

pteranodon perhaps, wings folded, canted over to one side.


It was not mineral, Edward decided

immediately; it certainly didn't resemble any animal he had seen. That it might

be a distorted plant, a peculiar variety of succulent or cactus, seemed the

most likely explanation.


Minelli edged around the find, cautiously

giving it a berth of several yards. Whatever it was, it was about the size of a

man, bilaterally symmetric and motionless, dusty gray-green with touches of

pastel flesh-pink. Minelli stopped his circling and simply gaped.


"I don't think it's alive,"

Reslaw said.


"Did you touch it?" Minelli

asked.


"Hell no."


Edward kneeled before it. There was a

definite logic to the thing; a kind of head two feet long and shaped rather like

a bishop's miter, or a flattened artillery shell, point down in the sand; a

knobby pair of shoulder blades behind the fan-crest of the miter; short thin

trunk and twisted legs in squat position behind that. Stubby six-digit feet or

hands on the ends of the limbs.


_Not a plant.


"Is it a corpse, maybe?" Minelli

asked. "Wearing something, like a dog, you know, covered with clothes."


"No," Edward said. He couldn't

take his eyes away from the thing. He reached out to touch it, then

reconsidered and slowly withdrew his fingers.


Reslaw climbed down from the boulder.

"Scared me so bad I jumped," he explained.


"Jesus Christ," Minelli said.

"What do we do?"


The snout of the miter lifted from the sand

and three glassy eyes the color of fine old sherry emerged. The shock was so

great that none of the three moved. Edward finally took a step back, almost

reluctantly. The eyes in the miter-head followed him, then sank away again, and

the head nodded back into the sand. A sound issued from the thing, muffled and

indistinct.


"I think we should go," Reslaw

said.


"It's sick," Minelli said.


Edward looked for footprints, hidden

strings, signs of a prank. He was already convinced this was no prank, but it

was best to be sure before committing oneself to a ridiculous hypothesis.


Another muffled noise.


"It's saying something," Reslaw

said.


"Or trying to," Edward added.


"It isn't really ugly, is it?"

Minelli asked. "It's kind of pretty."


Edward hunkered down and approached the

thing again, edging forward one booted foot at a time.


The thing lifted its head and said very

clearly, "I am sorry, but there is bad news."


"What?" Edward jerked, his voice

cracking.


"God almighty," Reslaw cried.


"I am sorry, but there is bad

news."


"Are you sick?" Edward asked.


"There is bad news," it repeated.


"Can we help you?"


"Night. Bring night." The voice

had the whispering quality of wind-blown leaves, not unpleasant by itself, but

chilling in context. A waft of iodine smell made Edward recoil, lips curled

back.


"It's morning," Edward said.

"Won't be night for…"


"Shade," Minelli said, his face

expressing intense concern. "It wants to be in shade."


"I'll get the tent," Reslaw said.

He jumped down from the boulder and ran back to the camp. Minelli and Edward

stared at each other, then at the thing canted over in the sand.


"We should get the hell out of

here," Minelli said.


"We'll stay," Edward said.


"Right." Minelli's expression

changed from concern to puzzled curiosity. He might have been staring at a

museum specimen in a bottle. "This is really, wonderfully

ridiculous."


"Bring night," the thing pleaded.


Shoshone seemed little more than a truck

stop on the highway, a café and the rock shop, a post office and grocery store.

Off the highway, however, a gravel road curved past a number of tree-shaded

bungalows and a sprawling modern one-story house, then ran arrow-straight

between venerable tamarisk trees and by a four-acre swamp to a hot-spring-fed

pool and trailer court. The small town was home to some three hundred permanent

residents, and at the peak of the tourist season-late September through early

May-hosted an additional three hundred snowbirds and backpackers and the

occasional team of geologists. Shoshone called itself the gateway to Death

Valley, between Baker to the south and Furnace Creek to the north. To the east,

across the Mojave, the Resting Spring, Nopah and Spring ranges, and the Nevada

state line, was Las Vegas, the closest major city.


Reslaw, Minelli, and Edward brought the

miter-headed creature into Shoshone after joining California state highway 127

some fifteen miles north of the town. It lay under moistened towels in the back

of their Land Cruiser on the spread fabric of the tent, where once again it

seemed dead.


"We should just go into Las

Vegas," Minelli said. He shared a front seat with Reslaw. Edward drove.


"I don't think it would last,"

Edward said.


"How can we find help for it

here?"


"Well, if it really _is dead,

there's a big meat locker in that grocery."


"It doesn't look any more dead than

before it spoke," Reslaw said, glancing back over the seat at the still

form. It had four limbs, two on each side, but whether it stood or walked on

all four, none of them knew.


"We've touched it," Minelli said

mournfully.


"Shut up," Edward said.


"That cinder cone's a spaceship, or a

spaceship is buried underneath, obviously." Minelli blurted.


"Nothing's obvious," Reslaw said

calmly.


"I saw that in _It Came From Outer

Space."


"Does that look like a big eye

floating on a tentacle?" Edward asked. He had seen the movie, too. Its

memory did not reassure him.


"Meat locker," Minelli responded,

his hands trembling.


"There's a phone. We can call

ambulances in Las Vegas, or a helicopter. Maybe we can call Edwards or

Goldstone and get the authorities out here," Edward said, extending his

actions.


"What'll we tell them?" Reslaw

asked. "They won't believe the truth."


"I'm thinking," Edward said.


"Maybe we saw a jet plane go

down," Reslaw suggested.


Edward squinted dubiously.


"It spoke English," Minelli

commented, nodding.


None of them had mentioned that point in

the hour and a half since they had hauled the creature away from the base of

the cinder cone.


"Hell," Edward said, "it's

been listening to us out there in space. Reruns of _I Love Lucy."


"Then why didn't it say 'Hey,

Ricky!'?" Minelli asked, covering his fear with a manic grin.


_Bad news. Like a mole that shouldn't be

there.


Edward pulled the truck into the service

station, its heavy-duty tires tripping the service bell. A deeply tanned

teenage boy in jeans bleached to nondescript pale gray and a Def Leppard

T-shirt walked out of the garage attached to one side of the grocery and

approached the Land Cruiser. Edward warned him back with his hands. "We

need to use a phone," he said.


"Pay phone right there," the boy

drawled suspiciously.


"Anybody got quarters?" Edward

asked. Nobody did. "We need to use the store phone. This is an

emergency."


The boy saw the towel-shrouded shape

through the Land Cruiser windows. "Somebody hurt?" he asked

curiously.


"Stay back," Minelli warned.


"Shut up, Minelli," Reslaw

whispered through gritted teeth.


"Yeah."


"Dead?" the boy asked, one cheek

jumping with a nervous tic.


Edward shrugged and entered the grocery.

There, a short and very wide woman clerk in a muumuu adamantly refused to let

him use the phone. "Look," he explained. "I'll pay for it with

my credit card, my phone card," he said.


"Shoa me the cahd," she said.


A tall, slender, attractive black-haired

woman came in, dressed in unfaded jeans and a white silk blouse. "What's

wrong, Esther?" she asked.


"Man's givin' us a royal payin,"

Esther said. "Woan use the pay phone ahtside, but sayes he's gaht a credit

cahd."


"Jesus, thanks, you're right,"

Edward said, glancing between them. "I'll use my card on the pay

phone."


"Is it an emergency?" the

black-haired woman asked.


"Yeah," Edward said.


"Well, go ahead and use the store

phone."


Esther glared at her resentfully. Edward

sidled behind the counter, the clerk moving deftly out of his way, and punched

a button for an open line. Then he paused.


"Hospital?" the black-haired

woman asked.


Edward shook his head, then nodded. "I

don't know," he said. "Maybe the Air Force."


"You've seen an airplane go

down?" the woman asked.


"Yeah," Edward said, for the sake

of simplicity.


The woman gave him an emergency hospital

number and suggested he use directory assistance for the Air Force. But he did

not dial the emergency number first. He dithered, glancing nervously around the

store, wondering why he hadn't planned a clear course of action earlier.


_Goldstone, or Edwards, or maybe even

Fort Irwin?


He asked directory assistance for the

number of the base commander at Edwards. As the phone rang, Edward hunted for

an excuse. Reslaw was right: telling the truth would get them nowhere.


"General Frohlich's office, Lieutenant

Blunt speaking."


"Lieutenant, my name is Edward

Shaw." He tried to be as smooth and calm as a television reporter. "I

and two of my friends-colleagues-have seen a jet go

down about twenty miles north of Shoshone, which is where I'm calling from."


The lieutenant became very interested

immediately, and asked for details.


"I don't know what kind of jet,"

Edward continued, unable to keep a slight quiver from his voice. "It

didn't look like any I'm familiar with, except maybe…Well, one of us thinks

it looked like a MiG we've seen in _AvWeek."


"A MiG?" The lieutenant's tone became more skeptical.

Edward's culpable squint intensified. "Did you actually see the plane go

down?"


"Yessir, and the wreckage. I don't

read Russian…But I think there were Cyrillic markings."


"Are you positive about this? Please

give me your name and proof of identity."


Edward gave the lieutenant his name and the

numbers on his license plate, driver's license, and, for good measure, his

MasterCard. "We think we know where the pilot is, but we didn't find

him."


"The pilot is alive?"


"He was dangling on the end of a

chute, Lieutenant. He seemed alive, but he went down in some rocks."


"Where are you calling from?"


"Shoshone. The…I don't know the name

of the store."


"Charles Morgan Company Market," the black-haired woman said.


Edward repeated the name. "The town's

grocery store."


"Can you lead us to where you saw the

aircraft?" the lieutenant asked.


"Yessir."


"And you realize the penalty for

giving false information about an emergency of this sort?"


"Yessir, I do."


Both women regarded him with wide eyes.


"A MiG?" the slim, black-haired

woman asked after he hung up. She sounded incredulous.


"Listen," Edward said. "I

lied to them. But I'm not going to lie to you. We might need your meat

locker."


Esther looked as if she might faint.

"What's happenin' heah?" she asked. "Stella? What's this awl

abauht?" Her drawl had thickened and her face was sweaty and pasty.


"Just you," Edward said to

Stella.


She examined him shrewdly and pointed to

his belt and rock hammer, still slung in its leather holder. "You're a

rock hound?"


"A geologist," he said.


"Where?"


"University of Texas," he said.


"Do you know Harvey Bridge from…"


"U.C. Davis. Sure."


"He comes here in the winter…"

She seemed markedly less skeptical. "Esther, go get the sheriff. He's at

the café talking to Ed."


"I don't think we should let everybody

in on this," Edward suggested. _Bad feeling.


"Not even the sheriff?"


He glanced at the ceiling. "I don't

know…"


"Okay, then, Esther, just go home. If

you don't hear from me in a half an hour, go get the sheriff and give him this

man's description." She nodded at Edward.


"You'll be okay heah?" Esther

asked, short thick fingers rapping delicately on the counter.


"I'll be fine. Go home."


The store had only one customer, a young

kid looking at the paperback and magazine rack. With both Stella and Edward

staring at him, he soon moved out through the door, shrugging his shoulders and

rubbing his neck.


"Now, what's going on?" Stella

asked.


Edward instructed Minelli to drive the Land

Cruiser around to the back of the store. He motioned for Stella to follow him

through the rear door. "We'll need a cool dark place," he told her as

they waited.


"I'd like to know what's

happening," she repeated, her jaw firm, head inclined slightly to one

side. The way she stood, feet planted solidly on the linoleum and hands on her

hips, told Edward as plain as words she would stand for no more evasion.


"There's a new cinder cone out

there," he said. Minelli parked the vehicle near the door. Talking rapidly

to keep his story from crashing into splinters, Edward opened the Land

Cruiser's back gate, pulling aside the tent and moist towels. "I mean, not

fresh…Just new. Not on any charts. It shouldn't be there. We found this next

to it."


The miter-head lifted slightly, and the

three sherry-colored eyes emerged to stare at the three of them. Reslaw stood

by the store's far corner, keeping a lookout for gawkers.


To her credit, Stella did not scream or

even grow pale. She actually leaned in closer. "It's not a fake," she

said, as quickly convinced as he had been.


"No, ma'am."


"Poor thing…What is it?"


Edward suggested she stand back. They

unloaded it and carried it through the delivery door into the refrigerated meat

locker.


PERSPECTIVE


_East Coast News Network interview with

Terence Jacobi, lead singer for the Hardwires, September 30, 1996:


ECNN: Mr. Jacobi, your group's music has

consistently preached-so to speak-the coming of the Apocalypse, from a rather

radical Christian perspective. With two songs in the Top 40 and three records

totaling ten million sales, you've obviously hit a nerve with the younger

generation. How do you explain your music''spopularity?


Jacobi ( _Laughing, then snorting and

blowing his nose ): Everybody knows, between the ages of fourteen and

twenty-two, you've got only two best friends: your left hand and Christ. The

whole world's out to get you. Maybe if the world went away, if God wiped the

slate clean, we could get on with just being ourselves. God''sa righteous God.

He will send his angels to Earth to warn us. We believe that, and it shows in

our music.


October 3


Harry Feinman stood near the back of the

boat untangling line from the spindle of his reel. Arthur let the boat drift

with the slow-moving water. He dropped anchor a dozen yards south of the big

leaning pine that marked the deep, watery hollow where, it was rumored,

fishermen had pulled in so many big ones the past few years. Marty played with

the minnows in the bait bucket and opened the cardboard containers full of dirt

and worms. The sun was a dazzle outlined by thin high clouds; the air smelled

of the river, a fresh, pungent greenness, and of coolness, of the early fall.

In the calm backwater of the hollow, orange and brown leaves had collected in a

flat, undulating clump.


"Do I have to bait my own hook?"

Marty asked.


"That's part of the game," Harry

said. Harry Feinman was stocky and muscular, six inches shorter than Arthur,

with premature ash-gray hair receding on all fronts but his neck, where it

ventured as stiff fuzz below the collar of his black leather jacket. His face

was beefy, friendly, with small piercing eyes and heavy dark eyebrows. He

reeled in loose nylon vigorously and propped the pole between the bait can and

a tackle box. "You don't earn your fish without doing the whole

thing."


Arthur winked at Marty's dubious glance.


"Might hurt the worms," Marty

said.


"I honestly don't know whether they

feel pain or not," Harry said. "They might. But that's the way of

things."


"Is that the way of things, Dad?"

Marty asked Arthur.


"I suppose it is." In all the

time they had spent living by the river, Arthur had never taken Marty fishing.


"Your dad's here to break things easy

to you, Marty. I'm not. Fishing is serious business. It's a ritual."


Marty knew about rituals. "That means

we're supposed to do something a certain way so we won't feel guilty," he

said.


"You got it," Harry said.


Marty put on the vacant look that meant he

was hatching an idea. "Peggy getting married…is that a ritual, because

they're going to have sex? And they might be guilty?"


In the morning, Francine and Martin would

drive to Eugene to attend her niece's wedding. Arthur would have accompanied

them, but now there were far more important things.


Arthur raised his eyebrows at Harry.

"You've done all the talking so far," he said.


"He's your son, fellah."


"Getting married is celebration. It's

a ritual, but it's joyous. Not at all like baiting a hook."


Harry grinned. "Nobody's guilty about

having sex anymore."


Marty nodded, satisfied, and took a hooked

line from Arthur. Arthur gingerly pulled a worm out of the carton and handed it

to his son. "Twist it around and hook it several times."


"Blecchh," Martin said, doing as

he was told. "Worm blood is yellow," he added. "Squishy."


They fished in the hollow for an hour

without luck. By nine-thirty, Martin was ready to put the pole down and eat a

sandwich. "All right. Wash your hands in the river," Arthur told him.

"Worm juice, remember."


"Bleechh." Marty bent over the

gunwale to immerse his hands.


Harry leaned back, letting his knees grip

the pole, and locked his hands behind his neck, grinning broadly. "We

haven't done this in years."


"I don't miss fishing much,"

Arthur said.


"Sissy."


"Dad's not a sissy," Marty

insisted.


"You tell him," Arthur

encouraged.


"Fishing's gross," Marty said.


"Like father, like son," Harry

lamented.


Harry's floppy fisherman's cap cast a

shadow over his eyes. Arthur suddenly remembered the dream, with Harry's head a

full moon, and shuddered. The wind rose cool and damp in the tree shadows of

the hollow with a beautiful, mourning sigh.


Marty ate his sandwich, oblivious.


October 4


Beyond the wide picture windows and a

curtain of tall pines, the river eddied quiet and green around a slight bend.

To the west, white clouds rolled inland, their bottoms heavy and gray.


In the kitchen, amid hanging copper pots

and pans, Arthur cracked eggs into an iron skillet on the broad gas stove.


"We've known each other for thirty

years," he said, bringing out two plates of scrambled eggs and sausage and

laying one on the thick oak table before his friend. "We don't see nearly

enough of each other."


"That's why we've been friends for so

long." Harry tapped the end of his fork lightly on the tabletop.

"This air," he said. "Makes me feel like thirty years ago was

when I last ate. What a refuge."


"You're cramping my

sentimentality," Arthur said, returning to the kitchen for a pitcher of

orange juice.


"The sausages…?"


"Hebrew National."


"God bless." Harry dug into the

fluffy yellow pile on the round stoneware plate. Arthur sat down across from

him.


"How do you ever get any work done

here? I prefer concrete cells. Helps the concentration."


"You slept well."


"I _snore , Arthur, whether I

sleep well or not."


Arthur smiled. "And you call yourself

an outdoorsman, a fisherman." He cut the tip from a sausage and lifted it

to his mouth. "Between consulting and reeducating myself, I've been trying

to write a book about the Hampton administration. Haven't even seriously

started on chapter one. I'm not sure how to describe what happened. What a

wonderful tragic comedy it all was."


"Hampton gave science more credibility than any President

since…Well," Harry said, "since." He lifted one hand and

splayed his fingers.


"I'm hoping Crockerman."


"That name. A president."


"May not be so bad. He's part of the

reason I invited you out here."


Harry raised a bushy eyebrow. The two were

as much a contrast as any classic comedy team-Arthur tall and slightly stooped,

his brown hair naturally tousled; Harry of medium height and stocky to the edge

of plumpness in his middle years, with a high forehead and a friendly,

wide-eyed expression that made him seem older than he was. "I told

Ithaca." Ithaca, the lovely, classically proportioned wife, whom Arthur

hadn't seen in six years, was a decade younger than Harry.


"What did you tell her?"


"I told her you used the tone of voice

that means you have some job for me."


Arthur nodded. "I do. The bureau is

being revived. In a way."


"Crockerman's reviving Betsy?"


"Not as such." The Bureau of

Extraterrestrial Communication-BETC or "Betsy" for short-had been

Arthur's last hurrah in Washington. He had served as science advisor and

Secretary of BETC for three years under Hampton, who had appointed him after

the Arecibo Incident in 1992. That had turned out to be a false alarm, but

Hampton had kept Arthur on until his assassination in Mexico City in August of

1994. Vice President William Crockerman had been sworn in on a train in New Mexico,

and had immediately moved to place his own stamp on the White House, replacing

most of the Cabinet with his own choices. Three months after the swearing-in,

the new chief of staff, Irwin Schwartz, had told Arthur, "No little green

men, no lost ships off Bermuda…might as well go home, Mr. Gordon."


"Is he going to make you science

advisor?" Harry asked. "Kick out that idiot Rotterjack?"


Arthur shook his head, grinning. "He's

forming a special presidential task force."


"Australia," Harry said, nodding

sagely. He put down his glass of orange juice without taking a sip, braced as

if for an assault, his eyes fixed on the salt and pepper shakers in the center

of the table. "Great Victoria Desert."


Arthur was not surprised. "How much do

you know?" he asked.


"I know it was found by opal

prospectors and that it's not supposed to be there. I know that it could be a

virtual duplicate of Ayers Rock."


"That last part isn't quite true. It

differs substantially. But you're right. It's recent, and it shouldn't be

there." Arthur was relieved to know that Harry hadn't heard of the

incident much closer to home.


"What do we have to do with it?"


"Australia is finally asking for

advice. The Prime Minister is going public with a report in three days or less.

He's under some pressure."


"Little green men?"


"I can't even comment on that until

I've asked you the questions, Harry."


"Then ask," Harry said, still

braced.


"The President has put me in charge of

the civilian science investigation team. We work with the military and with State.

You're my first choice."


"I'm a biochemist. That means…"


Arthur shook his head slowly. "Hear me

out, Harry. I need you for biochemistry, and as my second-in-command. I'm pushing

for Warren from Kent State for geology, and Abante from Malibu for physics.

They've agreed, but they have to go through political examination."


"You think I'd pass Crockerman's

political pop quiz?" Harry asked.


"You will if I insist, and I

will."


"You need a biochemist…really?"


"That's the rumor," Arthur said,

his grin widening.


"It would be lovely." Harry

pushed his chair back with only half his eggs and one sausage eaten. "Old

friends, working together again. Ithaca would agree. Hell, even if she

didn't…but…"


"There will never be another chance

like this;" Arthur said, emphasizing each word as if he were putting some

essential point across to a dunderhead student.


Harry wrinkled his forehead, staring up at

Arthur. "Dupres at King's College?"


"I've asked for him. He hasn't

answered yet. We may not be able to get extranationals on the team."


"I wouldn't turn you down

lightly," Harry said. Arthur saw his friend's eyes were red. He appeared

close to tears. "You need somebody reliable."


"What does that mean?"


Harry looked out the window, hand tensing

on a fork handle, relaxing. "I just told Ithaca three weeks ago."


Arthur's face became placid, clear of all

the excitement he had exhibited seconds before. "Yes?"


"Chronic leukemia. I've got it. It has

me."


Arthur blinked twice. Harry would not look

straight at him.


"It's not good. In a few months, I'll

be spending most of my time fighting this. I can't see how I'll be anything but

a hindrance."


"Terminal?" Arthur asked.


"My doctors say perhaps not. But I've

been reading." He shrugged.


"These new treatments…"


"Very promising. I have hope. But you

must see…" Harry turned his bright gaze on Arthur. "This thing's as

big as Ayers Rock, and it's been there how long?"


"No more than six months. Survey

satellites mapped that area just over six months ago and it wasn't there."


Harry grinned broadly. "That's

wonderful. That's truly wonderful. What the hell is it, Arthur?"


"A piece of Europa, perhaps?"

Arthur's voice was far away. His friend still wouldn't meet his gaze.


Harry laughed out loud and flung his napkin

on the table. "I'll not be sad and weepy. Not with this."


Arthur's throat tightened. He had

practically grown up with Harry. They had known each other for thirty years. He

couldn't possibly be dying. Arthur coughed. "We'll become adults with this

one, Harry. The whole human race. I need you very much."


"Can you take on a might-be

invalid?" Now their eyes met, and this time Arthur glanced away, shoulders

stiff. With an effort, he looked back. "You'll make it, Harry."


"Lord, speak of will to live."


"Join the team."


Harry wiped his eyes with the forefinger of

his right hand. "Travel? I mean, much…"


"At first, but you can stay in Los

Angeles if you wish, later."


"I'll need that. The treatment is at

UCLA."


Arthur offered his hand. "You'll make

it."


"After this, maybe it won't be so

bad," Harry said. He took the offered hand and squeezed it firmly.


"What?"


"Dying. What a thing to see…Little

green men, Arthur?"


"Are you with us?"


"You know I am."


"Then you get the big picture. It's

not just Australia. There's something in the Mojave Desert, Death Valley,

between a resort called Furnace Creek and a little town called Shoshone. It

resembles a cinder cone. It's new. It doesn't belong there."


Harry grinned like a little boy.

"Wonderful."


"And yes, there's an LGM."


"Where?"


"For the moment, Vandenberg Air Force

Base."


Harry glanced at the ceiling and lifted

both arms, tears spilling from his eyes. "Thank you, Lord."


PERSPECTIVE


_WorldNet USA Earthpulse, October 5, 1996: Almost all's well with the world today. No

earthquakes, no typhoons, no hurricanes approaching land. Frankly, we'd say

today was bright and glorious, but for early light snows in the northeastern

United States, rain by tonight in the Pacific Northwest, and the confirmation

last week that the ever-popular El Nino has returned to the South Pacific .

Australians are bracing for another long drought in the face of this climactic

scourge.


When Trevor Hicks told Shelly Terhune, his

publicist, that the morning interview with KGB was on, she paused, snickered,

and said, "Vicky won't like you turning traitor." Vicky Jackson was

his editor at Knopf.


"Tell her it's FM, Shelly. I'm going

to be squeezed between the surf report and the morning news."


"The KGB do a surf report?"


"Look, it was on your list of

stations," he said, mock-exasperated. "I'm not responsible."


"All right, let me look," Shelly

said. "KGB-FM. You're right. You've confirmed the slot?"


"The news manager says ten or fifteen

minutes, but I'm sure it'll end up about thirty seconds."


"At least you'll reach the surfers.

Maybe they haven't heard of you."


"If they haven't, it's not for want of

your trying." He tried to put on a petulant tone. He was in fact quite

tired; he was sixty-eight years old, after all, and while comparatively hale

and hearty, Hicks was not used to such a schedule anymore. Ten years ago, he

could have done it standing on his head.


"Now, now. Tomorrow we have you set up

for that morning TV talk show."


"Confirmed, tomorrow morning. Live so

they can't edit."


"Don't say anything rude," Shelly

admonished him. This was hardly necessary. Trevor Hicks gave some of the most

polite and erudite interviews imaginable. His public image was bright and stylishly

rumpled; he resembled both Albert Einstein and a middle-aged Bertrand Russell;

what he had to say was consensus technocracy, hardly controversial and always

good for a short news item. He had founded the British chapter of the Trojans

Society, devoted to space exploration and the construction of huge orbiting

space habitats; he was a forty-seven-year member of the British Interplanetary

Society; he had written twenty-three books, the most recent being _Starhome

, a novel about first contact; and last but not least, he was the most public

spokesman in the so-called "civilian sector" for manned exploration

of space. His was not quite a household name, but he was one of the most

respected science journalists in the world. Despite spending twelve years in

the United States, he had not lost his English accent. In short, for both radio

and television he was a natural. Shelly had taken advantage of this by booking

him on a generic "whirlwind" tour of seventeen cities in four weeks.


This week, he was in San Diego. He had not

been in San Diego since 1954, when he had covered the flight trials of the

first jet fighter seaplane, the _Sea Dart , in San Diego Bay. The city

had changed greatly since then; it was no longer a sleepy Navy town. He had

been booked in the new and stylish Hotel Inter-Continental, on the harbor, and

from his tenth-story window could see the entire bay.


In those years, he had been a wire service

reporter with Reuters, concentrating on science stories whenever possible. The

world, however, had seemed to fall into a deep and troubled sleep in the 1950s.

Few of his science stories had received much attention. Science was equated

with H-bombs; politics was the sexier and more easily encompassed subject of

the time. Then he had flown to Moscow to cover an agricultural conference, as

part of the background for a planned book on the Russian biologist Lysenko and

the Stalinist cult of Lysenkoism. That had been in late September.


The conference had dragged on for five

excruciatingly dull days, with no meat for his book and worse, no stories to

convince Reuters he even had a clue as to why he was there, On the last day of

the conference, news of the launch of the world's first artificial moon, a

184-pound silvery metal ball called _Sputnik , had come just in time to

save his career. _Sputnik had returned science to the forefront of world

journalism. Trevor Hicks had suddenly found his focus: space. He had buried his

book on Lysenkoism and forged ahead without a backward glance.


He had shed a wife-there really was no

kinder word for it-in 1965, and had lived with and broken up with three women

since. Currently, he was a confirmed bachelor, though he had fancied the

reporter from _National Geographic he had met at the _Galileo flyby

celebration in Pasadena last year. She had not fancied him.


Trevor Hicks was not just accumulating a

greater store of historical memories; he was growing old. His hair was solidly

gray. He kept in shape as best he could, but…


He drew the draperies on the bay and the

glittering, Disneylandish conglomeration of shops and restaurants called

Seaport Village.


His portable computer sat silent on the

room's maple-veneer desk, its unfolded screen filled with black characters on a

cream background. The screen looked remarkably like a framed sheet of typing

paper. Hicks sat on the chair and gnawed a callus on the first knuckle of his

middle finger. He had gained that callus, he thought idly, from thousands of

hours with pencil in hand, taking notes that he could now just as easily type

on the lap-sized computer. Many younger reporters did not have calluses on

their middle fingers.


"That's it," he said, turning the

machine off and pushing the chair back. "Nothing for it. Chuck it."

He closed the screen and put on his shoes. The evening before, he had seen an

old sailing ship and a maritime museum on the wharf, just a short hike.


Whistling, he locked the hotel room behind

him and walked on powerful short legs down the hallway.


 


"What do you expect mankind to find in

space, Mr. Hicks?" asked the news manager, a young, bushy-haired man in

his late twenties. The microphone on its tilting arm and spring suspension

poked up under Hicks's nose, forcing him to lift his chin slightly to speak.

Hicks dared not adjust it now; it was live. The interview was being taped on an

ancient black and gray reel-to-reel deck behind the news manager.


"The war for resources is hotting

up," Hicks said. More romance than that. "The sky is full of metals,

iron and nickel and even platinum and gold…Flying mountains called asteroids.

We can bring those mountains to Earth and mine them in orbit. Some of them are

almost pure metal."


"But what would convince, say, a

teenage boy or girl to study for a career in space?"


"They have a choice," Hicks said,

still cold to the microphone and the interviewer, his mind elsewhere. Call it a

reporter's instinct, but he had been feeling uneasy for days. "They can

elect to stay on Earth and live an existence, a life, very little different

from the lives their parents led, or they can try their wings on the high

frontier. I don't need to convince the young folks out there who are really

going into space in the next ten or twenty years. They know already."


"Preaching to the choir?" the

news manager asked.


"Rather," Hicks said. Space was

no longer controversial. Hardly the sort of topic likely to get much air time

on a rock-and-surf radio station.


"Did fears of 'preaching to the choir'

lead you to write your novel, perhaps in hopes of finding a wider

audience?"


"I beg pardon?"


"An audience beyond science books.

Dabbling in science fiction."


"Not dabbling. I've read science

fiction since I was a lad in Somerset. Arthur Clarke was born in Somerset, you

know. But to answer your question: no. My novel is not written for the masses,

more's the pity. Anyone who enjoys a solid novel should enjoy mine, but I must

warn them"-oh, Lord, Hicks thought-not just cold; bloody well frozen -

"it's technical. No ignoramuses admitted. Dust jacket locks tight on their

approach."


The manager laughed politely. "I

enjoyed it," he said, 'and I suppose that means I'm not an

ignoramus."


"Certainly not," Hicks allowed.


"Of course you've heard of the

Australian reports."


"No. Sorry."


"They've been coming in all day."


"Yes, well, it's only ten o'clock in

the morning and I slept late." His neck hair was standing on end. He

regarded the news manager steadily, eyes slightly protruding.


"I was hoping we could get a comment

from you, an expert on extraterrestrial phenomena."


"Tell me, and I'll comment."


"The details are sketchy now, but

apparently the Australian government is asking for advice on dealing with the

presence of an alien spacecraft on their soil."


"Pull the other one," Hicks said

reflexively.


"That's what's been reported."


"Sounds loony."


The manager's face reddened. "I only

bring the news, I , don't make it."


"I have been waiting all my life for a

chance to report on a true extraterrestrial encounter. Call me a romantic, but

I've always held out hope as to the possibility of such an encounter. I have

always been disappointed."


"You think the report's a hoax?"


"I don't know anything about it."


"But if there _were alien

visitors, you'd be among the first to go talk with them?"


"I'd invite them home to meet my mum.

My mother."


"You'd welcome them in your

house?"


"Certainly," Hicks said, feeling

himself warming. Now he could show his true wit and style.


"Thank you, Mr. Hicks." The

manager addressed his microphone now, cutting Hicks out. "Trevor Hicks is

a scientist and a science reporter whose most recent book is a novel, _Star

home , dealing with the always-fascinating subjects of space colonization

and first contact with extraterrestrial beings. Coming next on '90's News:

another attempt to capture drift sand in Pacific Beach, and the birth of a gray

whale at Sea World."


"May I see these Australian

reports?" Hicks asked when the news manager had finished. He thumbed

through the thin sheaf of wire service printouts. They were sketchy at best. A

new Ayers Rock in the middle of the Great Victoria Desert. Geologists

investigating. Anomalous formation.


"Remarkable," he said, returning

the sheaf to the news manager. "Thank you."


"Anytime," the manager said,

opening the door.


A bright yellow cab awaited him in the

station parking lot. Hicks climbed into the back seat, neck hair still prickling.

"Can you find a newsstand?" he asked the driver.


"Newsstand? Not in Clairemont

Mesa."


"I need a paper. A good paper. Morning

edition."


"I know a place on Adams Avenue that

sells the New York _Times , but it's going to be yesterday's."


Hicks blinked and shook his head. His

technological reflexes were slow. "To the Inter-Continental, then,"

he said. Large parts of his brain still lived twenty years in the past. On his

desk in the hotel was a device that could get him all the news he needed: his

computer. With its built-in modem, he could access a dozen big newsnets within

the hour. He could also peek into a few esoteric space bulletin boards for

information the newspapers might not deem reliable enough to print. And there

was always the enigmatic _Regulus . Hicks hadn't accessed _Regulus

during his periodic ramblings through the boards and nets, but he had been

given the number and ID code by a friend, Chris Riley at Cal Tech.


_Regulus , Riley had told him, knew unholy things about

space and technology.


To hell with promoting a book. Hicks hadn't

felt this charged since 1969, when he had covered the lunar landing for _New

Scientist.


 


Arthur lay in bed, arms folded behind his

head. Francine sat against bunched pillows beside him. She and Martin had

returned the day before, to find him preoccupied with deep secrets. A

preliminary task force scheduling and planning book was spread open but unread

in his lap.


He was assessing a life without Harry. It

seemed bleak, even when charged with mystery and events of more than historic

significance.


Francine, black hair loose around her

shoulders, glanced at her husband every few minutes, but did not interrupt his

reverie. Arthur intercepted these glances without reacting. He almost wished

she would ask.


He had spent all of his adult life knowing

that Harry was available for discussion, by phone or letter; available for

visits on a day's notice, whenever they weren't both too involved in work. They

had matured together, double-dated (quaintly enough); Harry had approved wholeheartedly

of Francine when a much younger Arthur had introduced them. "I'll marry

her if you don't," Harry had said, only half joking. Together, for ten

years, Francine and Arthur had arranged meeting after meeting of various

eligible and sensible women and Harry, but Harry had always politely drifted

away from these good matches. It had surprised everybody when he met and

married Ithaca Springer in New York in 1983. The marriage, against all

predictions, had prospered. Young socialite banker's daughter and scientist;

not a likely success story, yet Ithaca had proved remarkably adept at keeping

up with the rudiments of her husband's work, and had brought Harry a most

useful dowry: loving, persistent training in the social graces.


Both had kept a stubborn independence, but

Arthur had sensed early on that Harry could no longer do without Ithaca. How

would Ithaca get along without Harry?


Arthur hadn't told Francine yet. Somehow,

the news seemed Harry's property, to be dispensed with his permission alone, but

that prohibition was silly and Arthur's wall of resistance was wearing thin.


Tomorrow morning he would fly to Vandenberg

and be introduced to the "evidence." That would be the biggest moment

of his life, bar none, and yet here he was on the edge of tears.


His best friend might be dead within a

year.


"Shit," he said softly.


"All right," Francine said,

putting down her own book and rolling to lay her head on his shoulder. He

closed the notebook and stroked her forehead. She wound her fingers through the

thick salt-and-pepper patch of hair on his chest. "Are you going to tell

me? Or is it more security stuff?"


"Not security," he said. He ached

to tell her about that. Perhaps in a few weeks he could. News was leaking

rapidly; he suspected that soon even the Death Valley find would be public

knowledge. Everybody was too excited.


"What, then?"


"Harry."


"Well, what about him?"


The tears started to come.


"What's wrong with Harry?"

Francine asked.


"He has cancer. Leukemia. He's working

with me on…this project, but he might not see it through to the end."


"Jesus," Francine said, laying

her palm flat on his chest. "Isn't he getting treatment?"


"Of course. He just doesn't think it

will save him."


"Five more years. We keep on hearing

five more years, and it won't be a killer anymore."


"He doesn't have five years. He may

not have one."


Francine hugged him closer and they lay

together in silence for a moment. "How do you feel?" she finally

asked.


"About Harry? It makes me

feel…"He thought for a moment, frowning. "I don't know."


"Betrayed?" she asked softly.


"No. We've always been very

independent friends. Harry doesn't owe me anything, and I don't owe him

anything. Except the friendship, and…"


"Being there."


"Yeah. Now he's not going to be

there."


"You don't know that."


"He does. You should have seen

him."


"He looks bad?"


"No. He looks pretty good,

actually." Arthur tried to imagine one's entire body a battleground, with

cancer spreading from point to point, or through the blood, unchecked, a kind

of biological madness, a genetic suicide aided by mindless, lifeless clumps of

protein and nucleic acid. He hated all errant microscopic things with a sudden

passion. Why could not God have designed human bodies with seamless efficiency,

that they might face the challenge of everyday life feeling at the very least

internally secure?


"How was the visit?" Francine

asked.


"We had a good couple of days. We'll

see each other tomorrow, too, and that's all I can tell you."


"A week, two weeks?"


"I'll call if it's longer than a

week."


"Sounds like something big."


"I'll tell you just one more

thing," he said, aching with greater intensity to reveal it all, to share

this incredible news with the person he loved most on Earth. (Or did he love

Francine less than Harry? Different love. Different niches.)


"Don't spill the beans," she

warned him, smiling slightly.


"No beans, no cats, just this. If it

wasn't for Harry, right now I'd be the happiest man on Earth."


"Jesus," she said again.

"Must be something."


He wiped his eyes with a corner of the

flannel bed sheet. "Yup."


 


Edward Shaw swirled the spoon in the cup of

coffee and stared at the glass port mounted at head level in the sealed chamber

door. He had slept soundly during the night. The chamber was as quiet as the

desert. The clean white walls and hotel-style furniture made it reasonably

comfortable. He could request books and watch anything he wished on the TV in

one corner: two hundred channels, the chamber supervisor informed him.


By intercom, he could speak with Reslaw or

Minelli or Stella Morgan, the black-haired woman who had given him

permission to call from the grocery store in Shoshone, seven days before. In

other rooms, Minelli had told him, were the four Air Force enlisted men who had

investigated his call and seen the creature. All of them were undergoing

long-term observation. They might be "in stir" for a year or more,

depending on…Depending on what, Edward was not sure. But he should have known

the creature would mean enormous trouble for all of them.


The threat of extraterrestrial diseases was

sufficiently convincing that they had submitted to the rigorous two-day round

of medical tests with few complaints. The days since had been spent in

comparative boredom. Apparently, nobody was quite sure what their status was,

how they should be treated or what they should be told. Nobody had answered

Edward's most urgent question: What had happened to the creature?


Four days ago, as they were being led to

the sealed chambers by men in white isolation suits, Stella Morgan had turned

to Edward and asked, conspiratorially, "Do you know Morse code? We can tap

out messages. We're going to be here for a long time."


"I don't know any code," Edward

had answered.


"It's okay," an attendant had

said from behind his transparent visor. "You'll have commlink."


"Can I call my lawyer?" Stella

had asked.


No answer. A shrug of heavily protected

shoulders.


"We're pariahs," Morgan had

concluded.


Breakfast was served at nine o'clock. The

food was selected and bland. Edward ate all of it, at the recommendation of the

duty officer, an attractive woman in a dark blue uniform with short, bobbed

hair. "Any drugs in it?" He had asked the question before; he was

becoming boring, even to himself.


"Please don't be paranoid," she

said.


"Do you people _really know what

you're doing?" Edward asked. "Or what's going to happen to us?"


She smiled vaguely, glanced to one side,

then shook her head no. "But nobody's in any danger."


"What if I start growing fungus up my

arm?"


"I saw that one," the duty

officer said. "The astronaut turns into a blob. What was its name?"


"_The Creeping Unknown , I

think," Edward said.


"Yeah. 'Creeping' or 'Crawling.'"


"Goddammit, what will you do if we

actually get sick?" Edward asked.


"Take care of you. That's why you're

here." She didn't sound convinced. Edward's intercom panel buzzed and he

pushed the tiny red button below a blinking light. There were eight lights and

eight buttons in two corresponding rows on the panel, three of them live.


"Yeah?"


"This is Minelli. You owe us another

apology. The food here is terrible. Why did you have to call the Air

Force?"


"I thought they'd know what to

do."


"Do they?"


"Apparently."


"They going to shoot us up on a

shuttle?"


"I doubt it," Edward said.


"I wish I'd majored in biology or medicine

or something. Then I might have some idea what they're planning."


Edward wondered aloud whether they had

isolated all of Shoshone, blocking off the highway and the desert around the

cinder cone.


"Maybe they've put a fence around

California," Minelli suggested. "And maybe that's not enough. All of

the West Coast. They're building a wall across the plains, not letting fruits

and vegetables through."


The intercom system was wired so they could

all talk at once or privately. They could not exclude the watch or the chamber

duty officers. Reslaw joined them. "There's only four of us, plus the four

investigators-they didn't isolate that clerk, what's her name."


"Esther," Edward said. "Or

the kid at the service station."


"That must mean they're holding only

those people who might have touched it, or came close enough to breathe

microbes in the air."


Morgan joined in. "So what are we

going to do?" she asked.


Nobody answered.


"I'll bet my mother is frantic."


None of them had been allowed to make calls

out.


"You own the store?" Edward

asked. "I've been wanting to thank you…"


"For letting you call? Really smart of

me, wasn't it? My family owns the store, the cafe, the trailer court, propane

distributorship, beer distributorship. It's not going to be easy keeping this

quiet. I hope she's okay. God, I hope she hasn't been arrested. She's probably

called our lawyer already. I sound just like a spoiled rich kid, don't I?

'Wait'll my mommy hears about this.'" She laughed.


"Well, who else here has

connections?" Edward asked.


"We're supposed to be gone for two

more weeks," Reslaw said. "None of us is married. Are

you…Stella?"


"No," she said.


"There it is," Minelli concluded.

"You're our only hope, Stella."


"Don't be so glum," the chamber

supervisor intruded. He was in his mid-twenties, a first lieutenant.


"Are we being bugged?" Edward

asked, angrier than he had any real right to be.


"Of course," the supervisor

replied. "I'm listening. Everything's being recorded on audio and

video."


"Are you running security checks on

us?" Stella asked.


"I'm sure they are."


"Damn," she said. "Count me

out, guys. I was a student radical."


Edward cut through his anger and

frustration and forced a laugh. "You and me both. Minelli?"


"Radical? Hell, no. First time I voted

it was for Hampton."


"Traitor," Reslaw said.


"Speak not ill of the dead,"

Edward cautioned. "Hell, he was good for science. He boosted the space

program."


"And cut the hell out of domestic

spending," Morgan added. "Crockerman's no better."


"Maybe we'll meet the President,"

Minelli said. "Get on TV."


"We're going to be here for the rest

of our lives," Reslaw predicted with Vincent Price intonation. Edward

couldn't tell whether he was being serious or melodramatic.


"Who's the oldest?" Edward asked,

deliberately asserting leadership and moving them on to less timely subjects.

"I'm thirty-three."


"Thirty," Minelli said.


"Twenty-nine," Reslaw said.


"Then I'm the oldest," Stella

said.


"How old are you?" Edward asked.


"None of your business."


"_They know," Reslaw said.

"Let's ask."


"Don't you dare," Morgan warned,

laughing.


_All right , Edward thought, _we're in good spirits, or as

good as can be expected. We're not being tortured, beyond a few pinpricks. No

sense learning everything about each other right away. We might be here for a long

time .


"Hey," Minelli shrieked.

"Supervisor! Supervisor! My face…My face. There's something growing on

it."


Edward felt his pulse quicken. Nobody

spoke.


"Oh, thank God," Minelli said a

few moments later, milking the situation for all it was worth. "Just a

beard. Hey! I need my electric razor."


"Mr. Minelli," the supervisor

said, "no more of that, please."


"We should have warned you about

him," Reslaw said.


"I'm known to be something of an

asshole," Minelli explained. "Just in case you might be having second

thoughts about keeping me here."


PERSPECTIVE


_AAP/NBS WorldNet, Woomera, South

Australia, October 6, 1996 (October 5, USA) : Despite Prime Minister Stanley Miller's decision to "go

public" with news of extraterrestrial visitors in South Australia, scientists

at the site have heretofore released very little information. What is known is

this: The object discovered by opal prospectors in the Great Victoria Desert is

less than eighty miles from Ayers Rock, just over the border into South

Australia. It lies some 210 miles due south of Alice Springs. Its appearance

has been disguised to resemble the three great granite tors of the region,

Ayers Rock and the Olgas, although it is apparently smaller than these

well-known formations. The Department of Defense has surrounded the site with

some 90 miles of razor wire in three concentric circles. Current investigations

are being carried out by scientists from the Ministry of Science and the

Australian Academy of Science. Help has been offered by officials at the

Australian Space Research Center at Woomera and NASA's Island Lagoon tracking

facility, although scientific and military cooperation with other nations is by

no means certain at present.


The dark gray Mercedes bus took Arthur

Gordon and Harry Feinman from the small Air Force passenger jet through a

heavily guarded gate into the Vandenberg Space Operations Center. Through the

window, over a concrete hill about a mile north, Arthur could see the top half

of a space shuttle and its mated rust-orange external tank and white booster

rockets poised beside a massive steel gantry.


"I didn't know you were prepared for

this sort of thing, I mean, to bring specimens here," Arthur said to the

blue-uniformed officer sitting beside him, Colonel Morton Hall. Hall was about

Arthur's age, slightly shorter, husky and trim, with a narrow mustache and an

air of quiet patience.


"We aren't, speaking frankly,"

Hall said.


Harry, seated in front of them next to a

black-haired lieutenant named Sanborn, turned and peered around the neck rest.

Each member of the civilian group was accompanied by an officer. "Then why

is everything here?" Harry asked.


"Because we're the closest, and we can

improvise," Hall said. "We have some isolation facilities here."


"What are they used for, under normal

circumstances?" Harry asked. He glanced at Arthur with an expression

between roguishness and pique.


"I'm not at liberty to discuss

that," Hall said, smiling slightly.


"It's what I thought," Harry said

to Arthur. "Yes, indeed." He nodded and faced forward.


"What were you thinking, Mr.

Feinman?" Colonel Hall asked, still smiling, albeit more tightly.


"We're moving biological weapons

research into space," Harry said tersely. "Automated modules

controlled from Earth. Bring them back here, and they'll have to be isolated.

Son of a bitch."


Hall's smile flickered but, to his credit,

did not vanish completely. He had sprung his own trap. "I see," he

said.


"We all have the highest clearances

and presidential authorization," Arthur reminded him. "I doubt that

there's anything we can be kept from knowing, if we press hard enough."


"I hope you appreciate our position

here, Mr. Gordon, Mr. Feinman," Hall said. "This whole thing was

tossed into our laps just a week ago. We haven't straightened out all of our

security procedures, and it'll be some time before we decide who needs to know

what."


"I would think this takes priority

over practically everything," Arthur said.


"We're still not sure what we have

here," Colonel Hall admitted. "Perhaps you gentlemen can help us

clear up our priorities."


Arthur grimaced. "Now the ball's in _our

court," he said. " _Touche , Colonel."


"Better your court than mine,"

Hall said. "This whole thing has been an administrative nightmare. We have

four civilians and four of our own men in isolation. We have no warrants for

arrest or any other formal papers, and there is no-well, you can imagine. We

can only stretch national security so far."


"And the LGM?" Harry asked,

turning back again.


"He's-it's-our star attraction. You'll

see it first, then we'll interview the men who found it."


"'It,'" Arthur said. "We'll

have to find a less ominous name for that soon, certainly before 'it' becomes

common knowledge."


"We've been calling it the Guest, with

a capital g," Hall said. "It almost goes without saying, we'd like to

avoid any leaks."


"Not likely to avoid it for long, with

the Australians having gone public," Harry said.


Hall nodded, facing up to practicalities.

"We still don't know whether they have what we have."


"What we have, the Russians probably

already know about," Harry said.


"Don't be cynical, Harry," Arthur

admonished.


"Sorry." Harry grinned boyishly

at the officer beside him, Lieutenant Sanborn, and then at Hall. "But am I

wrong?"


"I hope you are, sir," Sanborn

said.


On a concrete apron a mile and a half from

the shuttle runway stood an implacable concrete building with inward-sloping

walls, covering about two acres of ground. The tops of the walls rose three

stories above the surrounding plain of concrete and asphalt. "Looks like a

bunker," Harry said as the bus approached a ramp inclining below ground

level. "Built to withstand nuclear strike?"


"That's not really a priority here,

sir," Lieutenant Sanborn said. "It would be next to impossible to

harden the launch sites and runway."


"This is the Experiment Receiving

Lab," Colonel Hall explained. "ERL for short. ERL holds our civilian

guests and the specimen."


In a broad garage below ground level, the

bus parked beside a rubber-buffered concrete loading dock. The front passenger

door opened with a hiss and their escorts led Harry and Arthur out of the bus,

across the dock, and into a long, pastel green hallway lined with sky-blue

blank-faced doors. Each door was described by numbers and cryptic acronyms on

an engraved plastic plaque mounted in a small steel holder. Somewhere, air

conditioners hummed quietly. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and new

electronics.


The hall opened into a reception area

equipped with two long brown vinyl-upholstered couches and several plastic

chairs spaced around a table covered with magazines-scientific journals, _Time

and _Newsweek , and a lone _National Geographic . A young

alert-looking major sat behind a desk equipped with a computer terminal and a

card identification box. One by one, the major cleared all four of them and

then punched a code into the keypad lock of a broad double door behind his

desk. The door opened with a sucking hiss.


"The inner sanctum," Hall said.


"Where is it?" Harry asked.


"About forty feet from where we are

right now," Hall said.


"And the civilians?"


"About the same distance, on the other

side."


They entered a half-circular room equipped

with more plastic chairs, a small wash-up area and lab table, and three

shuttered windows mounted in the long curved wall. Harry stood by the bare lab

table and rubbed his hand along the shiny black plastic top, examining his

fingers briefly for dust-the gesture a professor might make in a classroom.

Arthur's mouth twitched in a brief smile. Harry caught the twitch and lifted

his eyebrows: So?


"Our Guest is behind the middle

window," Hall said. He spoke into an intercom mounted to the left of the

middle window. "Our inspectors are here. Is Colonel Phan ready?"


"I am ready," a soft, almost feminine

voice replied over a speaker.


"Then let's get started."


The shutters, mounted on their side of the

window, clacked and began to rise. The first layer of glass behind was

curtained in black. "This is not a one-way mirror or anything fancy,"

Hall said. "We're not concealing our appearance from the Guest."


"Interesting," Harry said.


"The Guest has requested a particular

environment, and we've done our best to meet its requirements," Lieutenant

Sanborn said. "It is most comfortable in conditions of semidarkness, at a

temperature of about fifteen degrees Celsius. It seems to enjoy a dry

atmosphere with approximately the same mix of gases found in our own air. We

believe it exited its normal environment at about six o'clock on the morning of

the twenty-ninth of September to explore…well, frankly, we don't know why it

left, but it was caught by daylight and apparently succumbed to the glare and

heat by about nine-thirty."


"That doesn't make sense," Harry

said. "Why would it leave its…environment…without protection? Why not

make all the necessary precautions and plan the first excursion

carefully?"


"We don't know," Colonel Hall

said. "We have not interrogated the Guest or caused it any undue strain.

We supply it with whatever it requests."


"It makes its requests in

English?" Arthur asked.


"Yes, in quite passable English."


Arthur shook his head in disbelief.

"Has anyone called Duncan Lunan?"


"We haven't 'called' anybody but

people with an immediate need to know," Hall said. "Who is Duncan

Lunan?"


"A Scottish astronomer," Arthur

explained. "He made a fair mess of a controversy about twenty-three years

ago when he claimed to have evidence of an alien space probe orbiting near the

Earth. A probe he thought might be from Epsilon Bootis. His evidence consisted

of patterns of anomalous returned radio signals that seemed to have been

bounced from an object in space. Like a great many pioneers, he had to face

disappointment and recant, after a fashion."


"No, sir," Hall said, again with

his enigmatic smile. "We haven't spoken to Mr. Lunan."


"Pity. I can think of a hundred

scientists who should be here," Arthur said.


"Eventually, perhaps," Hall

allowed. "Not right now."


"No. Of course not. Well?" Arthur

gestured at the dark window.


"Colonel Phan will give us a direct

view in a few minutes."


"Who is Colonel Phan?" Harry

asked.


"He's an expert in space medicine from

Colorado Springs," Hall said. "We couldn't find anyone better

qualified on such short notice, although I doubt we could find a better man for

the job even if we searched all year."


"You didn't ask us," Harry said.

Arthur nudged him gently in the arm.


The lights in the viewing room dimmed.

"I hope someone's making videotapes of our Guest," Harry whispered pointedly to Arthur as they

pulled their seats close to the window.


"We have a digital recorder and three

high-resolution cameras working around the clock," Lieutenant Sanborn

explained.


"All right," Harry said.


Harry was obviously nervous. For his own part,

Arthur felt both alert and vaguely anesthetized. He could not quite accept that

an age-old question had been answered affirmatively, and that they were about

to see the answer.


The black curtain drew aside. Beyond

another thick pane of glass framed in stainless steel, they saw a small, dimly

lighted, almost empty square room, watery green in color. In the middle of the

room was a low platform draped with what appeared to be blankets. A plastic

beaker of clear water sat in one corner. In the right-hand corner nearest their

window was a meter-tall transparent cylinder, open at the top. Arthur took all

this in before focusing on what lay under the blankets on the low table.


The Guest moved, raised a forward

limb-clearly a kind of arm, with a three-fingered hand, each finger divided in

two above the middle joint-and then sat up slowly, the blanket falling free of

its wedge-shaped head. The long "nose" of its head pointed at them

and the golden brown eyes emerged from the blunt end, withdrew, emerged. Arthur,

mouth dry, tried to see the being as a whole, but for the moment could only

concentrate on whether the eyes were lidded, or actually withdrew within

"pools" of pale gray-green flesh.


"Can we speak to it?" Harry asked

Hall over his shoulder.


"There's two-way communication with

the room."


Harry sat in a seat near the window.

"Hello. Can you hear us?"


"Yes," the Guest said. Its voice

was sibilant and weak but clearly understandable. It lowered itself to the

floor and stood uncertainly beside the low table. Its lower limbs-legs-were

jointed in reverse, yet not like a dog's or horse's hind legs, where the

"knee" is the analog of a human wrist. The Guest's articulation was

quite original, each joint actually reversed, with the limb's lower half dropping

smoothly, gracefully, to split into three thick extensions, the tip of each

extension splayed into two broad "toes." The legs made up much of its

height, its rhinoceros-hide "trunk" occupying only about half a meter

of its full meter and a half. The end of the long head, thrust forward on a

thick, short neck, dropped a few centimeters below the juncture of legs and

trunk. The arms rose from each side of the trunk like the folded manipulators

of a mantis.


Harry scowled and shook his head,

temporarily unable to speak. He waved a hand in front of his mouth, glancing at

Arthur, and coughed.


"We don't know quite what to say to

you," Arthur finally managed. "We've been waiting a long time for

someone to visit the Earth from space."


"Yes." The Guest's head swung

back and forth, the jewel-bright, moist, sherry-colored eyes fully revealed.

"I wish I could bring better words on such an important occasion."


"What…ah, what words do you

bring?" Harry asked.


"Are you related?" the Guest

asked in turn.


"I'm sorry-related?"


"There is a question about my

communication?"


"We are not of the same family-not

siblings, brother or father and son or…whatever," Arthur said.


"You have a social relationship."


"He's my boss," Harry said,

pointing to Arthur. "My hierarchical superior. We're friends, also."


"And you are not the same individuals

in different form as the individuals behind you?"


"No," Harry said.


"Your forms are steady."


"Yes."


"Then…" The Guest made a sharp,

high-pitched whistling noise, and the long crest above the level of the

shoulders appeared to inflate slightly. Arthur could not see a mouth or nose

near the eyes, and surmised such openings might be on the head below the neck

and facing the chest, in the area corresponding-if such correspondences were at

all useful-to a long "chin."


"I will relate my bad news to you,

as well. Are you placed highly in your group, your society?"


"Not the highest, but yes, we are

highly placed," Harry said.


"The news I bring is not happy. It may

be unhappy for all of you. This I have not spoken before in detail." Again

the whistling noise. The head lifted and Arthur spotted slitlike openings on

the underside. "If you have the ability to leave, you will wish to do so

soon. A disease has entered your system of planets. There is little time left for

your world."


Harry pulled his chair a few inches

forward, and the Guest, with an awkward sidling motion, came closer to the

thick glass. Then it sat on the floor, leaving only its upper arms and long

head visible. The three eyes pointed steadily at Harry, as if wishing to

establish some unbreakable and facile rapport, or as if commiserating…


"Our world is doomed?" Harry

asked, somehow avoiding all melodrama, giving the last word a perfectly

straightforward and unstrained emphasis.


"Unless I sadly misknow your

abilities, yes. This is bad news."


"It does seem so," Harry said.

"What is the cause of this disease? Are you part of an army of

conquest?"


"Conquest…Uncertain. Army?"


"Organized group of soldiers,

fighters, destroyers and occupiers. Invaders."


The Guest was silent and still for a few

minutes. It might have been a statue but for the almost invisible throbbing of

its upper crest. "I am a parasite, a happen-by voyager."


"Explain that, please."


"I am a flea, not a soldier or a

builder. My world is dead and eaten. I travel here within a child of a machine

that eats worlds."


"You've come on a spaceship?"


"Not my own. Not _ours ."

The emphasis there was striking.


"Whose, then?" Harry pursued.


"Its forebears made by very distant

people. It controls itself. It eats and reproduces."


Arthur trembled with confusion and fear and

a deep anger he could not explain. "I don't understand," he said,

blocking Harry's next words.


"It is a traveler that destroys and

makes the stars safe for its builders. It gathers information, learns, and then

eats worlds and makes new younger forms of itself. Is this clear?"


"Yes, but why are _you

here?" Arthur almost shouted.


"Shh," Harry said, holding up one

hand. "It just said that. It's hitched a ride. It's a flea."


"You didn't build the rock, the

spaceship or whatever it is, in the desert? That's not your vehicle?"

Colonel Hall asked. Obviously, they had heard none of this before. Young

Lieutenant Sanborn was visibly shaken.


"Not _our vehicle," the

Guest affirmed. "It is powerful enough not to fear our presence. We cannot

hurt it. We sacrifice…" Again it whistled. "We survive only to warn

of the death our kind has met."


"Where are the pilots, the

soldiers?" Harry asked.


"The machine does not live as we

do," the Guest said.


"It's a robot, automatic?"


"It is a machine."


Harry pushed his chair back and rubbed his

face vigorously with both hands. The Guest appeared to observe this closely,

but otherwise did not change position.


"We have a couple of names for that

kind of machine," Arthur said, facing Colonel Hall. "It sounds like a

von Neumann device. Self-replicating, without outside instructions. Frank

Drinkwater thinks the lack of such machines proves there is no intelligent life

besides our own in the galaxy."


"Playing devil's advocate, no

doubt," Harry said, still massaging the bridge of his nose. "What

scientist would want to _prove intelligence was unique?"


Colonel Hall regarded the Guest with an

expression of mild pain. "It's saying we should be on war alert?"


"It's saying…" Harry began

angrily, and then controlled his tone, "it's saying we haven't got the

chance of an ice cube in hell. Art, you read more science fiction than I do.

Who was that fellow…"


"Saberhagen. Fred Saberhagen. He

called them 'Berserkers.'"


"I am not being spoken with," the

Guest said. "Have you become aware of the results of this

information?"


"I think so," Arthur replied.

They had not asked a perfectly obvious question. Perhaps they didn't want to

know. He appraised the Guest in the silence that fell over them. "How long

do we have?"


"I do not know. Perhaps less than an

orbit."


Harry winced. Colonel Hall simply gaped.


"How long ago did your-did the ship

land?" Arthur continued.


The Guest made a small hissing sound and

turned away. "I do not know," it replied. "We have not been

aware."


Arthur did not hesitate to ask the next

question. "Did the ship stop by a planet in our solar system? Did it

destroy a moon?"


"I don't know."


A short, powerfully built Asiatic man with

close-trimmed black hair, dark pockmarked skin, and broad cheekbones entered

the room. Arthur slapped his hands on his knees and glared at him.


"I beg your pardon, gentlemen,"

he said.


Sanborn cleared his throat. "This is

Colonel Tuan Anh Phan." He introduced Arthur and Harry.


Phan greeted each with a reserved nod.

"I've just been informed that the Australians are releasing news photos

and motion pictures. I believe this is important. Their visitors are not like

our own."


PERSPECTIVE


_Info_Net Political News Forum, October 6, 1996, Frank Topp,

commentator : President

Crockerman's rating in the World-News public opinion polls has been a

rocksteady 60 to 65 percent approval since June, with no signs of change as

Election Day approaches. Political pundits in Washington doubt that anything

can derail the President ''seasy victory in November, not even the

hundred-billion-dollar trade imbalance between the Eastern Pacific Rim nations

and Uncle Sam…or the enigmatic situation in Australia. I, for one, am not

even wearing campaign buttons. It's going to be a dull election.


_QUARENS ME, SEDISTI LASSOS


-


Hicks, bleary-eyed, clothing rumpled, sat

on the straight-backed hotel desk chair and scanned the contents of the file he

had marked "Hurrah."


"Hurrah" contained the choicest bits of

information from twenty-two hours and perhaps three hundred dollars' worth of

accessing specialist bulletin boards around the world. He did not care about

costs. He was still high.


Australia did indeed have an artifact in

their Great Victoria Desert, something apparently disguised to resemble a huge

chunk of red granite. The Australian government had kept the find secret for

about thirty days, until leaks through investigating military and scientific

agencies threatened to scoop them on the greatest story of all time. This much

and more-speculation, rumors-had been repeated again and again on all the

networks he had accessed. While the government had not released full details,

they were expected to do so any day.


The _Regulus bulletin board was used

solely by radio astronomers belonging to the 21cm Club, of which he was an

honorary member. After searching through the general and special interest

messages, in a small area headlined "Irresponsible Murmurs," Hicks

had found a cryptic and unsigned note: "Ham fanatic, right? Say no more

about identity. Picked up unscrambled transmission to AFI"- that, Hicks

decided, must be _Air Force One , the President's plane - "concerning 'our own

bogey in the Furnace.' The Man's heading west to Vandenberg. Could this be…?"


Hicks frowned again, reading that. He knew

several shuttle pilots currently flying out of Vandenberg. Dare he call them up

and ask if anything untoward had been happening? Dare he mention "our own

bogey in the Furnace"?


A knock interrupted his reverie. He was

heading for the door when it opened and a young Asian woman in lime-green

blouse and slacks backed in. "Housekeeping," she announced, seeing

him. "Okay?"


Hicks looked over his room abstractedly,

relieved that he had chosen to wear a robe. He often worked in the buff,

paunch, gray chest hairs, and all-the habit of a bachelor of long standing.

"Please, not yet."


"Soon?" she asked, smiling.


"Soon. An hour."


She shut the door behind her. Hicks paced

back and forth from curtained window to bathroom door, chin in hand, face as

clear and guileless as an infant's. "I cannot think straight," he

muttered. Turning on the television and selecting a twenty-four-hour news

station, he sat on the corner of the bed.


For a moment, he thought he had tuned to a

movie channel by mistake. Three shiny silver objects, shaped like long-necked

gourds, hovered above arid sandy ground. Nearby squatted a large van topped by

an array of electronic sensing equipment. The van gave the objects scale; each

was as tall as a man. Hicks reached over to turn up the volume, joining a male

announcer in midsentence:


"-from four days ago, shows the three

mechanical remote devices which the Australian government claims emerged from a

disguised spacecraft. The government says these devices have communicated with

their scientists."


The video of the silvery gourds and van was

replaced by a typical press conference scene, with a slender, thirtyish man in

a brown suit standing behind a clear plastic podium, reading a prepared

statement: "We have communicated with these objects, and we can now affirm

that they are not living creatures, but robots, representing the builders of

the spacecraft-it is now confirmed to be a spacecraft-buried within the rock.

While the actual communications are still being analyzed and will not be

released immediately, the substance of the information supplied was positive,

that is, not threatening or alarming in any fashion."


"Jesus bloody Christ," Hicks

said.


The image of the hovering gourds returned.

"They're flying," Hicks said. "What's holding them up? Come on,

you bastards. Do your job and say what the bloody hell's going on."


"Commentary from world leaders,

including the Pope, after these messages…"


Hicks flung his arms out and swore, kicked the

cabinet holding the television, and punched the set off. He could spend another

three hundred dollars chasing rumors across all the networks and bulletin

boards in the world, or-


Or he could stop being a novelist wallah

and start being a journalist again by finding the news behind the news.

Certainly not in Australia. The Great Victoria Desert, by now, had

representatives of the media three-deep, trying to interview every grain of

sand.


A faint memory of some obligation suddenly

flared into consciousness. He had had an appointment this morning.

"Damn." That single word, said almost happily, adequately expressed

his slight irritation at having forgotten the local television interview. He

should have been at the studio five hours ago. It hardly seemed to matter. He

was on to something.


The "Furnace"…Where in hell

would that be? Somewhere near Vandenberg, apparently. He had visited Vandenberg

seven times in his career, twice covering important combined civilian-military

shuttle launches to polar orbit. Hicks pulled out his pocket compact disk

player from a suitcase and hooked it into the computer. He indexed the World

Atlas sector on his reference disk and searched through the F's in the

gazetteer. "Furnace, furnace, furnace…"


He quickly found several Furnaces, the

first in Argyll County, Scotland. There was also Furnace, Kentucky, and Furnace

L ("What is L, lake?") in County Mayo, Ireland. Furnace,

Massachusetts…And Furnace Creek, California. He entered the map number and

coordinates. In less than two seconds, he had a detailed color map of an area a

hundred kilometers square. A flashing icon in the lower left-hand corner

indicated a comparative satellite photograph was available. His eye searched

the map until an arrow appeared, flashing next to a tiny dot.


"Furnace Creek," he said,

smiling. "On the edge of Death Valley proper, not far from Nevada

actually…" But not very close to Vandenberg-across the state from it, in

fact. He switched disks and keyed in a request for Automobile Club of Southern

California information. The computer found a year-old listing. "1995L

Brief: Furnace Creek Inn. 67 units. Golf, riding. Long-established, picturesque

location overlooking Death Valley. Three stars."


Hicks thought for a moment, very much aware

that the facts were not coming together perfectly. Operating solely on

instinct, he picked up the phone, punched a button for an outside line, and

requested the area code for Furnace Creek. It was the same as San Diego's

although it was hundreds of miles north-northeast. Shaking his head, he called

information and asked for the number of Furnace Creek Inn. A mechanical voice

informed him, and he jotted it down, whistling.


The phone rang three times. A

sleepy-voiced, young-sounding girl answered. Hicks checked his watch again, for

the fourth time in ten minutes. For the first time, he actually paid attention

to the dials. One-fifteen p.m. He hadn't slept all night. "Reservations,

please."


"That's me," the girl said;


"I'd like to book a room for

tomorrow."


"I'm sorry, sir, we can't do that.

We're completely full."


"Can I make a reservation for your

dining room, then?"


"The inn is closed for the next few

days, sir."


"Big traveling party?" Hicks

asked, his smile broadening. "Special reservations?"


"I can't tell you that, sir."


"Why not?"


"I'm not allowed to give out that

information now."


Hicks could almost see the girl biting her

lip. "Thank you." He hung up and fell back on the bed, suddenly'

exhausted.


Who else would have tracked this down?


"Can't sleep," he resolved,

sitting up again. He called room service and asked for coffee and a substantial

breakfast-ham, eggs, whatever they had. The clerk offered a three-egg

concoction with ham and bell peppers mixed in-a Denver omelet, as if pigs and

peppers might be special to that city. He agreed, held down the button, and

called the downstairs travel agency listed in the hotel directory.


The agent, an efficient-sounding woman,

informed him that there was a private airstrip near Furnace Creek, but the

closest he could fly in commercially would be Las Vegas.


"I'll take a seat on the next flight

out," he said. She gave him the flight number and departure time-about an

hour from now, cutting it close-and the gate number at Lindbergh Field, and

asked if he would need a rental car.


"Yes, indeed. Unless I can fly

directly in."


"No, sir. Only small airfields out

that way, no commuter flight service. The drive between Vegas and Furnace Creek

will take about two or three hours," she said, adding, "if you're

like everybody else who drives on the desert."


"Madmen all, eh?" he asked.


"Madwomen, too," the agent said

briskly.


"Mad, all mad," Hicks said.

"I'd like a hotel room for the night, as well. Quiet. No gambling."

It would be late afternoon by the time he arrived in Las Vegas, and he would

not be able to make it to Death Valley before dark. Best to get a good night's

sleep, he thought, and start out in the morning.


"Let me confirm your reservations,

sir. I'll need your credit card number. You're a guest at the

Inter-Continental?"


"I am. Trevor Hicks." He spelled

the name and gave his American Express number.


"Mr. Trevor Hicks. The writer?"

the agent asked.


"Yes, indeed, bless you," he

said.


"I heard you on the radio

yesterday."


He pictured the travel agent as a well-tanned

blond beach bunny. Perhaps he had been unfair to KGB-FM. "Oh,

indeed?"


"Yes. Very interesting. You said you'd

take an alien home to meet your mum. Your mother. Even now?"


"Yes, even now," he said.

"Feeling very friendly toward extraterrestrials, aren't we all?"


The agent laughed nervously.

"Actually, it frightens me."


"Me, too, dear," Hicks said.

Delicious, lovely fright.


-


Harry stood before the glass, hands in his

pockets, staring at the Guest. Arthur conferred with two officers at the rear of

the room, discussing how the first physical examination was going to be

conducted. "We won't be entering the room this time," he said.

"We have your photographs and…tissue samples from the first day. They'll

keep us busy."


Harry felt a small flush of anger.

"Idiots," he said under his breath. The Guest, as usual, was curled

beneath the blankets on the low platform, only a "foot" and

"hand" sticking out from the covers.


"Beg pardon, sir?" asked the

current duty officer, a tall, muscular Nordic-looking fellow of about thirty.


"I said 'idiots,'" Harry

repeated. "Tissue samples."


"I wasn't there, sir, but we didn't

know whether the Guest was alive or dead," the Nordic man said.


"Whatever," Arthur broke in,

waving his hand at Harry: slack off. "They're useful, however they were

taken. Today, I'm going to ask the Guest to stand up, allow us to photograph

it…him…"


"It," Harry said. "Don't

coddle our prejudices."


"It, then, from all sides, in all

postures, while active. I'll also ask if it will submit to further examinations

later."


"Sir," the Nordic man said,

"we've discussed this, and considering the warning the Guest has

delivered, we believe absolute caution is called for."


"Yes?"


"We're revealing a great many things

about ourselves. It could be an information conduit to the object in Death

Valley, and how we carry out our examinations, X rays, whatever, could tell

them a lot about how advanced we are and what our capabilities are."


"For God's sake," Harry said. He

ignored Arthur's sharp glance. "They've been listening to our broadcasts

for who knows how many decades. They know everything there is to know about us

by now."


"We don't believe that's necessarily

so. A lot of information is simply not conveyed in civilian broadcasts, and

certainly not in military broadcasts."


"They can type us down to our toenails

just by the fact that we still broadcast analog radio waves," Harry said,

not moving from the window.


"Yes, sir, but…"


"Your warnings are well taken,

Lieutenant Dreyer," Arthur said. "But we can't get anywhere unless we

examine the Guest. If this means some two-way exchanges, so be it. If the Guest

is a conduit to the ship, we might be able to learn how through the

exams."


"It's an interesting idea," Harry

conceded in an undertone.


"Yes, sir," Dreyer said.

"I've been told to pass these on to you-your itineraries for the Commander

in Chiefs visit. We're at your disposal."


"All right. Let's have two-way back

on." Arthur walked down the slightly sloping floor to the window and stood

beside Harry. He pushed the button activating the intercom to the Guest's

chamber.


"Excuse me. We'd like to continue our

questions and examinations."


"Yes," the Guest said, pushing

aside the blankets and standing slowly.


"What is the state of your

health?" Arthur asked. "Are you feeling well?"


"Not altogether well," the Guest

said. "The food is adequate, but not sustaining."


The Guest had been allowed to choose

between a variety of carefully prepared "soups." The first tissue

samples had revealed that the Guest could conceivably digest dextrorotary

sugars and proteins generally found in Earth life forms. Purified water was

being supplied in beakers passed through with the "food." Thus far,

the Guest had not excreted anything into the wide stainless-steel sample tray

left open in another corner. The Guest had eaten sparingly, and without

apparent enthusiasm.


"Can you describe substances that

would please you?"


"In space, we hibernated."


Harry emphasized the "we" in his

notepad.


"And our nutrition was provided by

synthesizing machines throughout the voyage."


Arthur blinked. Harry scribbled furiously.


"I am not aware of the names of

substances in this language to describe them. The food you provide seems

adequate."


"But not enjoyable."


The Guest didn't respond.


"We'd like to conduct another physical

examination," Arthur said. "We are not going to take any more tissue

samples."


The Guest withdrew its three brown eyes and

then produced them again, but said nothing, standing in what might have been a

dejected posture-if the Guest could feel dejected, and if body language was at

all similar…


"You do not have to cooperate,"

Arthur said. "We don't want to force anything on you."


"Difficulties with speaking, with

language," the Guest said. It stepped sideways in one fluid motion to the

far right corner of the room. "There are questions you do not ask.

Why?"


"I'm sorry, I don't understand."


"You do not ask questions about

interior thoughts."


"You mean, what you are

thinking?"


"Interior states are far more

important than physical construction, are they not? Is this not true for your

intelligences?"


Harry glanced at Arthur. "All

right," Harry said, putting down his notes. "What is your interior

state?"


"Disorganized."


"You're confused?" Harry asked.


"Not at ease. Mission is completed. We

will not survive this incident."


"You won't…" Arthur searched

for clear words. "When the ship leaves, you won't be aboard?"


"You are not asking proper

questions."


"What questions should we ask?"

Harry tapped his pencil on a chair arm. The Guest appeared to focus its three

sherry-colored eyes on this gesture. "What questions should we ask?"

he repeated.


"Process of destruction. Past deaths

of worlds. How you fit into the scheme."


"Yes, you're right," Arthur said

quickly. "We haven't been asking those questions. We experience fear, a

negative emotional state, and we do not really want to know. This may be

irrational."


The Guest lifted its "chin" high,

revealing the two slits and a shadowed, two-inch-wide depression on the underside

of the miter. "Negative emotions," it repeated. "When will you

ask these questions?"


"Some of our leaders, including our

President, will be joining us tomorrow. That might be a good time," Harry

said.


"I think we'd better hear it now,

first." Arthur was uneasy at the thought of blindly springing information

on Crockerman. He had no idea how the man would react.


"Yes," the Guest said.


"First question, then," Arthur

began. "What happened to your world?"


The Guest began its story.


_OFFERTORIUM


-


"You're privileged, folks," the

new duty officer, a young, slender black woman in gray blouse and slacks, told

her four isolated charges.


Ed Shaw sat up on his bunk and blinked.


"The President's coming here this

evening. He wants to talk with you and commend you all."


"How long until we get out of

here?" Stella Morgan asked, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat and

repeated her question.


"I have no idea, Miss Morgan. We have

a message from your mother. It's in your food drawer. We can relay any message

from you to her that does not carry information as to your whereabouts or why

you are here."


"She's putting on the pressure, isn't

she?" Minelli said. They had been discussing Stella's mother, Bernice

Morgan, a few hours earlier. By now, Stella was convinced, Mrs. Morgan would

have marshaled half the lawyers in the state.


"She is indeed," the duty officer

said. "You've got quite a mother, Miss Morgan. We hope to get this all

straightened out quickly. Labs are running tests around the clock. So far, we

haven't found any foreign biologicals on you or the Guest."


Edward lay back on his bunk. "What's

the President going to do here?" he asked.


"He wants to talk to the four of you.

That's all we've been told."


"And see the alien," Minelli

said. "Right?"


The duty officer smiled.


"When are you going to tell the

press?" Reslaw asked.


"Lord, I wish we could do it right

now. The Australians have told just about everything, and their case is even

weirder than our own. They have _robots coming out of their rocks."


"What?" Edward sat on the edge of

the bunk. "Is it on the news?"


"You should watch your TVs. There are

newspapers in your food drawers now. Starting tomorrow, you'll be getting CD

machines. Infonet players. We don't want you to be ignorant when

the President gets here."


Edward pulled open his food drawer, a

stainless-steel tray that shuttled through the walls of the isolation unit, and

pulled out a folded newspaper. There were no personal messages for him. His

off-and-on girlfriend in Austin didn't expect him back for a month or two; he

hadn't spoken to his mother in months. Edward began to regret his fancy-free

life-style. He unfolded the newspaper and quickly scanned the headlines.


"Jesus, are you reading what I'm

reading?" Reslaw asked.


"Yeah," Edward said.


"They look like chrome-plated

gourds."


Edward flipped through the pages. The

Australian Armed Forces had gone on alert. So had the United States Air Force

and Navy. (Not the Army? Why not the Army?) Shuttle launches had been canceled,

for reasons not clearly spelled out.


"Why robots?" Minelli asked after

a few minutes of silence. "Why not more creatures?"


"Maybe they found out they can't take

the atmosphere and the heat," Minelli suggested. "So they send

remotes."


That seemed to make the most sense. But if

there were two disguised spacecraft-and why disguised?-then there could

certainly be more.


"Maybe it's an invasion," Stella

said. "We just don't know it yet."


Edward tried to recall the various science

fiction scenarios he had read in books or seen in television and movies.


Motivations. No intelligent beings did

things without motives. Edward had always sided with the scientists who thought

Earth too puny and out of the way to be of interest to potential spacefarers.

Of course, that was geocentrism in reverse. He wished he had read more on SETI,

the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Nearly all of his science

reading was in geology now; he seldom read magazines like _Scientific

American or even _Science unless he needed to catch up on relevant

articles.


Like most experts, he had grown insular.

Geology had been his life. Now he doubted whether he would ever again have a

private life. Even if the four of them were released-and that question worried

him more than he wanted to admit-they would all be public figures, celebrities.

Their lives would change enormously.


He shut off the player and turned to the

comics page of the Los Angeles _Times . Then he lay back on the bunk and

tried to sleep. He had slept enough. His anger was getting to the point where

he didn't think he could control it. What would he tell Crockerman? Would he

rattle the bars of his cage and hoot miserably? That seemed the only

appropriate response.


"But look at the big picture," he

murmured to himself, not caring whether anybody else heard. "This is

history."


"This is _history! "

Minelli yelled from his cell. "We're _history! Isn't everybody

thrilled?"


Edward heard Reslaw clapping slowly,

resolutely. "I want to see my agent," Minelli said.


-


Harry looked over the President's

itinerary-and their own, neatly appended with a plastic clip-and sighed.

"The big time," he said. "You're used to it. I'm not. Stifling

security and appointments timed by the minute."


"I've grown accustomed to being away

from it," Arthur said. They shared a room in the Vandenberg Hilton, as the

blocky, elongated, three-story concrete officer's quarters had been dubbed by

the shuttle pilots who generally occupied the austere rooms. Harry handed him

the paper and shrugged.


"Mostly, I'm just tired," he

said, lying back and clasping his hands behind his neck. Arthur regarded him

with some worry. "No, not because I'm ill," Harry said testily.

"It's all this thinking. Coming to grips."


"Tomorrow's going to be very busy. Are

you sure you're up to it?" Arthur asked.


"I'm sure."


"All right. Tonight we brief the

President and whichever members of his staff and Cabinet he's brought along,

and then sit in on the President's interviews with the Guest and the

citizens."


Harry grinned and shook his head, still

dubious.


Arthur put the papers down on the table

between their beds. "What will he do when he hears the story?"


"Christ, Art, you know the man better

than I."


"I never even met him before I was

canned. When he was Veep, he stayed in the background. To me, he's a riddle

wrapped in an enigma. You read the papers; what do you think?"


"I think he's a reasonably intelligent

man who doesn't belong in the White House. But then, I'm a radical from way

back. I was a communist when I was three years old, remember. My father put me

in red sweaters."


"I'm serious. We have to soften the

blow for him. And it _will be a blow, however much he's prepared by his

staff. Seeing our Guest. Hearing from its own lips, or whatever…"


"That Earth is doomed. Lambs to the

slaughter."


It was Arthur's turn to grin. The grin

almost hurt. "No," he said.


"You don't believe it?"


Arthur stared up at the ceiling.

"Don't you feel something's not right here?"


"Doom is never right," Harry

said.


"Questions. Lots and lots of

questions. Why does this spacecraft allow 'fleas' to ride on its back and warn

the populace before it can destroy their home?"


"Smugness. Absolute assurance of

power. Assurance of our weakness."


"When we have nuclear weapons, for

Christ's sake?" Arthur asked sharply. "A fighter pilot down in some

jungle should show respect for the natives' arrows."


"It probably-it _should have

weapons and defenses we know nothing about."


"Why hasn't it used them?"


"Obviously, it used _something

to land huge rocks without being detected by radar or satellites."


Arthur nodded agreement. "If what

landed wasn't something small, to start with…But that would contradict our

Guest's story."


"All right," Harry said, propping

himself up against the wall with a pillow as a cushion. "It doesn't make

sense to me either. This Australian statement that _their aliens have

come in peace for all mankind. Same group of invaders? Apparently; same

tactics. Bury themselves in a duck blind. One ship has 'fleas,' the other

doesn't. One ship has robot publicity agents. The other keeps silent."


"We haven't seen the complete text

from the Australians."


"No," Harry admitted. "But

they seem to have been candid so far. What's the obvious answer?"


Arthur shrugged.


"Maybe the powers behind these ships

are incredibly unorganized or inconsistent or just plain callous. Or there's

some sort of dispute within their organization."


"Whether to eat the Earth or

not."


"Right," Harry said.


"Do you think Crockerman will make

this public?"


"No," Harry said, fingers wrapped

on his ample stomach. "He'd be crazy if he did. Think of the disruption.

If he's smart, he's going to sit back and wait until the very last minute-he's

going to see how people react to the Good News spaceship."


"Perhaps we should be bombing Death

Valley right now." Arthur stared at a painting over the nightstand between

the two single beds. It showed four F-104 fighters climbing straight up over

China Lake. "Cauterize the whole area. Act without thinking."


"Make them madder than hell,

right?" Harry said. "If they are being incredibly arrogant, then it

means they have some assurance we can't hurt them. Not even with nuclear

weapons."


Arthur sat in a straight-backed chair,

facing away from the windows and the painting. High-tech fighters and bombers.

Cruise missiles. Mobile laser defenses. Thermonuclear weapons. No better than

stone axes.


"Captain Cook," he said, and then

gently bit his lower lip.


"Yes?" Harry encouraged.


"The Hawaiians managed to kill Captain

Cook. His technology was at least a couple of hundred years more advanced than

theirs. Still, they killed him."


"What good did it do them?" Harry

asked.


Arthur shook his head. "None, I guess.

Some personal satisfaction, perhaps."


 


President William D. Crockerman,

sixty-three, was certainly one of the most distinguished-looking men in

America. With his graying black hair, penetrating green eyes, sharply defined,

almost aquiline nose, and lines of goodwill around his eyes and mouth, he might

be equally the revered head of a corporation or some teenager's favorite

grandparent. On television or in person, he projected self-confidence and a

trenchant wit. There could be no doubt that he took his job seriously, but not

himself-this was the image portrayed, and it had won him election after

election along his twenty-six-year career in public office. Crockerman had only

lost one election: his first, as a mayoral candidate in Kansas City, Missouri.


He entered the Vandenberg isolation

laboratory accompanied by two Secret Service agents, his national security

advisor-a thin, middle-aged Boston gentleman named Carl McClennan-and his

science advisor, David Rotterjack, soporifically calm and thirty-eight years of

age. Arthur knew the tall, plump blond-haired Rotterjack well enough to respect

his credentials without necessarily liking the man. Rotterjack had tended

toward science administration, rather than doing science, in his days as

director of several private biological research laboratories.


This entourage was ushered into the

combination laboratory and viewing room by General Paul Fulton, Commander in

Chief of Shuttle Launch Center 6, West Coast Shuttle Launch Operations. Fulton,

fifty-three, had been a football player in his academy days, and still carried

substantial muscle on his six-foot frame.


Arthur and Harry awaited them in the

central laboratory, standing by the Guest's covered window. Rotterjack

introduced the President and McClennan to Harry and Arthur, and then

introductions were made in a circle around the chairs. Crockerman and Rotterjack

sat in the front row, with Harry and Arthur standing to one side.


"I hope you understand why I'm

nervous," Crockerman said, concentrating on Arthur. "I haven't been

hearing good things about this place."


"Yes, sir," Arthur said.


"These stories…these statements

about what the Guest has been saying…Do you believe them?"


"We see no reason not to believe them,

sir," Arthur said. Harry nodded.


"You, Mr. Feinman, what do you think

of the Australian bogey?"


"From what I've seen, Mr. President,

it appears to be an almost exact analog of our own. Perhaps larger, because

it's contained within a larger rock."


"But we haven't the foggiest notion

what's in either of the rocks, do we?"


"No, sir," Harry said.


"Can't X-ray them, or set off blasts

nearby and listen on the other side?"


Rotterjack grinned. "We've been

discussing a number of sneaky ways to learn what's inside. None of them seem

appropriate."


Arthur felt a twinge, but nodded. "I

think discretion is best now."


"What about the robots, the

conflicting stories? Some folks in my generation are calling them'shmoos,' did

you know that, Mr. Gordon, Mr. Feinman?"


"The name occurred to us, sir."


"Bringers of everything good. That's

what they've been telling Prime Minister Miller. I've spoken to him. He's not

necessarily convinced, or at least he doesn't let us think he is, but…he saw

no reason to keep everybody in the dark. It's a different situation here, isn't

it?"


"Yes, sir," Arthur said.


McClennan cleared his throat. "We

can't predict what kind of harm might come if we tell the world we have a

bogey, and it says doomsday is here."


"Carl takes a dim view of any plans to

release the story. So we have four civilians locked up, and we have agents in

Shoshone and Furnace Creek, and the rock is off limits."


"The civilians are locked up for other

reasons," Arthur said. "We haven't found any evidence of biological

contamination, but we can't afford to take chances."


"The Guest appears to be free of

biologicals, true?" Rotterjack asked.


"So far," General Fulton said.

"We're still testing."


"In short, it's not happening the way

we thought it might," Crockerman said. "No distant messages in Puerto

Rico, no hovering flying saucers, no cannon shells falling in the boondocks and

octopuses crawling out."


Arthur shook his head, smiling. Crockerman

had a way of coercing respect and affection from those around him. The

President cocked one thick dark eyebrow at Harry, then Arthur, then briefly at

McClennan. "But it _is happening."


"Yessir," Fulton said.


"Mrs. Crockerman told me this would be

the most important meeting of my life. I know she's right. But I am scared,

gentlemen. I'll need your help to get me through this. To get _us through

this. We are going to get through this, aren't we?"


"Yes, sir," Rotterjack said

grimly.


Nobody else answered.


"I'm ready, General." The

President sat straight- backed in the chair and faced the dark window. Fulton

nodded at the duty officer.


The curtain opened.


The Guest stood beside the table,

apparently in the same position as when Arthur and Harry had left it the day

before.


"Hello," Crockerman said, his

face ashen in the subdued room light. The Guest, with its light-sensitive

vision, could see them perhaps more clearly than they saw it.


"Hello," it replied.


"My name is William Crockerman. I'm

President of the United States of America, the nation you've landed in. Do you

have nations where you live?"


The Guest did not answer. Crockerman looked

aside at Arthur. "Can he hear me?"


"Yes, Mr. President," Arthur

said.


"Do you have nations where you

live?" Crockerman repeated.


"You must ask important questions. I

am dying."


The President flinched back. Fulton moved

forward as if he were about to take charge, clear the room, and protect the

Guest from any further strain, but Rotterjack put a hand on his chest and shook

his head.


"Do you have a name?" the

President asked.


"Not in your language. My name is

chemical and goes before me among my own kind."


"Do you have family within the

ship?"


"We are family. All others of our kind

are dead."


Crockerman was sweating. His eyes locked on

the Guest's face, on the three golden-yellow eyes that stared at him without

blinking. "You've told my colleagues, our scientists, that this ship is a

weapon and will destroy the Earth."


"It is not a weapon. It is a mother of

new ships. It will eat your world and make new ships to travel elsewhere."


"I don't understand this. Can you

explain?"


"Ask good questions," the Guest

demanded.


"What happened to your world?"

Crockerman said without hesitating. He had already read a brief of Gordon and

Feinman's conversation with the Guest on this subject, but obviously wanted to

hear it again, for himself.


"I cannot give the name of my world,

or where it was in your sky. We have lost track of the time that has passed

since we left. Memory of the world is dimmed by long cold sleeping. The first

ships arrived and hid themselves within ice masses that filled the valleys of

one continent. They took what they needed from these ice masses, and parts of

them worked their way into the world. We did not know what was happening. In

the last times, this ship, newly made, appeared in the middle of a city, and

did not move. Plans were made as the planet trembled. We had been in space,

even between planets, but there were no planets that attracted us, so we stayed

on our world. We knew how to survive in space, even over long times, and we

built a home within the ship, believing it would leave before the end. The ship

did not prevent us. It left before the weapons made our world melted rock and

gaseous water, and took us with it, inside. No others live that we are aware

of."


Crockerman nodded once and folded his hands

in his lap. "What was your world like?"


"Similar. More ice, a smaller star.

Many like myself, not in form but in thought. Our kind was many-formed, some

swimming in cold melt-seas, some like myself walking on ground, some flying,

some living in ice. All thought alike. Thousands of long-times past, we had

molded life to our own wishes, and lived happily. The air was rich and filled

with smells of kin. Everywhere on the world, even in the far lands of thick

ice, you could smell cousins and children."


Arthur felt his throat catching.

Crockerman's cheek was wet with a single tear. He did not wipe it away.


"Did they tell you why your world was

being destroyed?"


"They did not speak with us," the

Guest said. "We guessed the machines were eaters of worlds, and that they

were not alive, just machines without smells, but with thoughts."


"No robots came out to speak with

you?"


"I have language difficulties."


"Smaller machines," Rotterjack

prompted. "Talk with you, deceive you."


"No smaller machines," the Guest

said.


Crockerman took a deep breath and closed

his eyes for a moment. "Did you have children?" he asked.


"My kind were not allowed children. I had

cousins."


"Did you leave some sort of family

behind?"


"Yes. Cousins and teachers. Ice

brothers by command bonding."


Crockerman shook his head. That meant

nothing to him; indeed, it meant little to anybody in the room. Much of this

would have to be sorted out later, with many more questions:-if the Guest lived

long enough to answer all their questions.


"And you learned to speak our language

by listening to radio broadcasts?"


"Yes. Your wasting drew the machines

to you. We listened to what the machines were gathering."


Harry scribbled furiously, his pencil

making quick scratching noises on the notepad.


"Why didn't you try to sabotage the

machine-destroy it?" Rotterjack asked.


"Had we been able to do that, the

machine would never have allowed us on board."


"Arrogance," Arthur said, his jaw

tightening. "Incredible arrogance."


"You've told us you were asleep,

hibernating," Rotterjack said. "How could you study our language and

sleep at the same time?"


The Guest stood motionless, not answering.

"It is done," it finally replied.


"How many languages do you know?"

Harry asked, pencil poised.


"I am speaker of English. Others,

still within, speak Russian, Chinese, French."


"These questions don't seem terribly

important," Crockerman said quietly. "I feel as if a nightmare has

come over us all. Who can I blame for this?" He glanced around the room,

his eyes sharp, hawklike. "Nobody. I can't simply announce we have

visitors from other worlds, because people will want to see the visitors. After

the Australian release, what we have here can only demoralize and

confuse."


"I'm not sure how long we can keep

this a secret," McClennan said.


"How can we hold this back from our

people?" Crockerman seemed not to have heard anybody but the Guest. He

stood and approached the glass, grimly concentrating on the Guest. "You've

brought us the worst possible news. You say there's nothing we can do.

Your…civilization…must have been more advanced than ours. It died. This is

a _terrible message to bring. Why did you bother at all?"


"On some worlds, the contest might

have been more equal," the Guest said. "I am tired. I do not have

much more time."


General Fulton spoke in an undertone with

McClennan and Rotterjack. Rotterjack approached the President and put a hand on

his shoulder. "Mr. President, we are not the experts here. We can't ask

the right questions, and clearly there isn't much time remaining. We should get

out of the way and let the scientists do their work."


Crockerman nodded, took a deep breath, and

closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he seemed more composed.

"Gentlemen, David is correct. Please get on with it. I'd like to speak to

all of you before we go out to the site. Just one last question." He

turned back to the Guest. "Do you believe in God?"


Without a moment's hesitation, the Guest

replied, "We believe in punishment."


Crockerman was visibly shaken. Mouth open

slightly, he glanced at Harry and Arthur, then left the room on trembling legs,

with McClennan, Rotterjack, and General Fulton following.


"What do you mean by that?" Harry

asked after the door had closed. "Please expand on what you just

said."


"Detail is unimportant," the

Guest said. "The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death

removes the unnecessary and the false. No more talk now. Rest."


—


_Bad news. Bad news.


Edward awoke from his dreaming doze and

blinked at the off-white ceiling. He felt as if somebody very important to him

had died. It took him a moment to orient to reality.


He had had a dream he couldn't remember

clearly now. His mind shuffled palm leaves over the sand to hide the tracks of

the subconscious at play.


The duty officer had told them an hour

before that nobody was sick, and no _biologicals had been discovered in

their blood or anywhere else. Not even on the Guest, which seemed as pure as

the driven snow. Odd, that.


In any ecology Edward Shaw had heard of,

which meant any _Earth ecology, living things were always accompanied by

parasitic or symbiotic organisms. On the skin, in the gut, within the

bloodstream. Perhaps ecologies differed on other worlds. Perhaps the Guest's

people - wherever they came from - had advanced to the point of _purity:  only the primaries, the smart folks, left

alive; no more little mutating beasties to cause illness.


Edward sat up and drew himself a glass of

water from the lavatory sink. As he sipped, his eyes wandered to the window and

the curtain beyond. Slowly but surely, he was losing the old Edward Shaw, and finding a new one:  an ambiguous fellow, angry but not overtly

so, afraid but not showing his fear, deeply pessimistic.


And then he remembered his dream.


He had been at his own funeral. The casket

had been open and somebody had made a mistake, because within the box was the

Guest. The minister, presiding in a purple robe with a huge medallion on his

chest, had touched Edward on the shoulder and whispered into his ear,

"This is Bad News indeed, don't you think?"


He had never had dreams like that before.


The intercom signaled and he shouted,

"No! Go away. I'm fine. Just go away. I'm _not sick . I'm not

dying."


"That's okay, Mr. Shaw." It was

Eunice, the slender black duty officer who seemed most sympathetic to Edward.

"You go ahead and let it out if you want. I can't shut off the tapes, but

I'll shut down my speaker for a while if you wish."


Edward sobered immediately. "I'm all

right, Eunice. Really. Just need to know when we're going to get out of

here."


"I don't know that myself, Mr.

Shaw."


"Right. I don't blame you." And

he didn't. Not Eunice, not the other duty officers, not the doctors or the

scientists who had spoken to him. Not even Harry Feinman or Arthur Gordon. The

tears were turning to laughter he could barely suppress.


"Still all right, Mr. Shaw?"

Eunice asked.


"I'm a _victim of coicumstance,'

" Edward quoted Curly, the plump and shave-pated member of the Three

Stooges. He punched the intercom button for Minelli's room. When Minelli

answered, Edward imitated Curly again, and Minelli did a perfect _"Whoop

hoop ooop." Reslaw joined in, and Stella laughed, until they sounded

like a laboratory full of chimpanzees. And that was what they became,

chittering and eeking and stomping the floor. "Hey, I'm scratching my

armpits," Minelli said. "I really am. Eunice will vouch for me. Maybe

we can get the sympathy of Friends of the Animals or something."


"Friends of Geologists," Reslaw

said.


"Friends of Liberal

Businesswomen," Stella added.


"Come on, you guys," Eunice said.


 


At eight o'clock in the evening, Edward

glanced at his face in the shaving mirror over the sink. "Here comes the

Prez," he murmured. "I won't even vote for the man, but I'm primping

like a schoolgirl." They wouldn't be shaking hands. Yet the President

would look in upon Shaw and Minelli and Reslaw and Morgan, would see them-and

that was enough. Edward smiled grimly, then checked his teeth for food specks.


-


The Secretary of Defense, Otto Lehrman,

arrived at seven-fifteen. After Crockerman had had a half hour alone with him

and Rotterjack - sufficient time to gather his wits, Arthur surmised - they

entered the laboratory around which the sealed cubicles were arranged, and onto

which their windows all opened, a larger version of the central complex that

held the Guest. Colonel Tuan Anh Phan stood before the isolation chambers'

control board.


Crockerman shook the doctor's hand and

slowly surveyed the laboratory. "One more civilian witness and they'd have

had to double up with the military, right?" he asked Phan.


"Yes, sir," Phan said. "We

did not plan to incarcerate entire towns." This was evidently a struggling

attempt at humor, but the President was not in a bantering mood.


"Actually," Crockerman said,

"this isn't funny in the least."


"No, sir," Phan said,

crestfallen.


Arthur came to his rescue. "We

couldn't ask for better facilities, Mr. President," he said. Crockerman

had been behaving strangely since the meeting with the Guest. Arthur was

worried; that conversation had upset them all on a deep psychological level,

but Crockerman seemed to have taken it particularly to heart.


"Can they hear us?" Crockerman

asked, nodding at the four steel shutters.


"Not yet, sir," Phan said.


"Good. I'd like to get my thoughts in

order, especially before I talk to Mrs. Morgan's daughter. Otto, Mr. Lehrman

here, was delayed by his duties in Europe, but Mr. Rotterjack has briefed him

on what we've already heard."


Lehrman took a shallow but obvious breath

and nodded. Arthur had heard many things about Lehrman - his rise from

microchip magnate to head of the President's Industrial Relations Council, and

only two months before, his confirmation as Secretary of Defense, replacing Hampton's more hawkish appointee. He appeared to be a

philosophical twin to Crockerman.


"I have a question for Mr.

Gordon," Lehrman said. He looked at Arthur and Harry, standing beside each

other near the lab's hooded microbiologicals workbench.


"Ask away," Arthur said.


"When are you going to authorize a

military investigation of the Furnace?"


"I don't know," Arthur said.


"That's your area, Arthur," the

President said in an undertone. "You make the decision."


"Nobody has put the issue to me before

now," Arthur said. "What sort of investigation did you have in

mind?"


"I'd like to find the site's

weaknesses."


"We don't even know what it is,"

Harry said.


Lehrman shook his head. "Everybody's

guessing it's a disguised spaceship. Do you disagree?"


"I don't agree or disagree. I simply

don't know," Harry replied.


"Gentlemen," Arthur said, "I

think this isn't quite the time. We should discuss this after the President has

talked with the four witnesses and we've all seen the site together."


Lehrman conceded this with a nod and

gestured for them to continue. General Fulton entered the lab carrying a thick

sheaf of papers in a manila folder and sat to one side, saying nothing.


"All right," Crockerman said.

"Let's have a look at them."


 


Eunice's voice came over Edward's intercom

speaker: "Folks, you're going to meet the President now." With a

hollow humming noise, the window cover slid down into the wall, revealing a

transparent panel about two meters wide and one high. Through the thick double

layers of glass, Edward saw President Crockerman, two men he didn't recognize,

and several other faces he knew vaguely from television.


"Excuse me for intruding, gentlemen

and Ms. Morgan," Crockerman said, bowing slightly. "I believe we know

each other, even if we haven't been introduced formally. This is Mr. Lehrman,

my Secretary of Defense, and this is Mr. Rotterjack, my science advisor. Have

you met Arthur Gordon and Harry Feinman? No? They're in charge of the

presidential task force investigating what you've discovered. I suspect you

have a few complaints to pass on to me."


"Pleased to meet you, sir,"

Minelli said. Crockerman changed his angle. Edward realized they were all

facing into the central laboratory. In the farthest window, at the opposite end

of the curved wall, he could see Stella Morgan, face pale in the fluorescent

lighting.


"I'd shake your hands if I could. This

has been hard on all concerned, but especially hard on you."


Edward mumbled something in agreement.

"We don't know what our situation is, Mr. President."


"Well, I've been told you're in no

danger. You don't have any…ah, space germs. I'll level with you, in

fact-you're probably here more for security reasons than for your health."


Edward could see why Crockerman was called

the most charming of presidents since Ronald Reagan. His combination of

dignified good looks and open manner-however illusory the latter was-might have

made even Edward feel better.


"We've been worried about our

families," Stella said.


"I believe they've been informed that

you are safe," Crockerman said. "Haven't they, General Fulton?"


"Yes, sir."


"Ms. Morgan's mother has been giving

us fits, however," Crockerman said.


"Good," was Stella's only

comment.


"Mr. Shaw, we've also informed the University

of Texas about you and your students."


"We're assistant professors, not

students, Mr. President," Reslaw said. "I haven't received any mail

from my family. Can you tell me why?"


Crockerman looked to Fulton for an answer.

"You haven't been sent any," Fulton said. "We have no control

over that."


"I just wanted to stop by and tell you

that you haven't been forgotten, and you won't be locked away forever. Colonel

Phan informs me that if no germs are discovered within a few more weeks, there

will be no reason to keep you here. And by that time…well, it's difficult to

say what will be secret and what won't be."


Harry glanced at Arthur, one eyebrow

lifted.


"I have a question, sir," Edward

said.


"Yes?"


"The creature we found…"


"We're calling it a Guest, you

know," Crockerman interrupted with a weak smile.


"Yes, sir. It said it had bad news.

What did it mean by that? Have you communicated with it?"


Crockerman's face became ashen. "I'm

afraid I'm not allowed to tell you what's happening with the Guest. That's

irritating, I know, but even I have to dance to the tune when the fiddler

plays. Now I have a question for you. You were the first to find the rock, the

cinder cone. What first struck you as odd about it? I need impressions."


"Edward thought it was odd before we

did," Minelli said.


"I've never seen it," Stella

added.


"Mr. Shaw, what struck you most?"


"That it wasn't on our maps, I

guess," Edward answered. "And after that, it was…barren. It looked

new. No plants, no insects, no graffiti new or old. No beer cans."


"No beer cans," Crockerman said,

nodding. "Thank you. Ms. Morgan, I plan on seeing your mother sometime

soon. May I take any personal message to her? Something uncontroversial, of

course."


"No, thank you," Stella said. _Atta

woman , Edward thought.


"You've given me something to think

about," Crockerman said after a moment's silence. "How strong

Americans are. I hope that doesn't sound trite or political. I mean it. I need

to think we're strong right now. That's very important to me. Thank you."

He waved at them, and turned to leave the laboratory. The curtains hummed back

into place.


-


October 7


The sky over Death Valley was a leaden gray

and the air still carried the chill of morning. The presidential helicopter

landed at the temporary base set up by the Army three miles from the false

cinder cone. Two four-wheel-drive trucks met the party and drove them slowly

over the paved roads and unpaved Jeep trails, and then off the trails, lurching

and growling around creosote bushes and mesquite and over salt grass, sand,

chunks of lava, and desert-varnished rocks. The false cinder cone loomed a

hundred yards beyond their stopping point, the edge of a bone-white desert wash

that had been filled with water just ten days before. The perimeter of the mound

was cordoned off by Army troops supervised by Lieutenant Colonel Albert Rogers

from Army Intelligence. Rogers, short, wiry, swarthy-skinned, and gentle-eyed,

met the presidential party of eight, including Gordon and Feinman, at the

cordon perimeter.


"We've had no activity," he

reported. "We have our surveillance truck on the other side now, and a

survey team on the top. There's been no radiation of any sort beyond the kind

of signature we expect from sun-heated rock. We've inserted sensors on poles up

into the hole the three geologists found, but we haven't sent anybody past the

bend. Give us the order, and we will."


"I appreciate your eagerness,

Colonel," Otto Lehrman said. "I appreciate your caution and

discipline more."


The President approached the cinder cone's

tall black north face, accompanied by two Secret Service agents. The Marine officer who carried the "football" -

presidential wartime codes and emergency communications system in a

briefcase-stayed by the truck.


Rotterjack dropped back a few paces to snap

a series of pictures with a Hasselblad. Crockerman ignored him. The President

seemed to ignore everybody and everything but the rock. Arthur worried about

the expression on his face; tense yet slightly dreamy. _A man informed of a

death in the immediate family, Arthur thought.


"This is where the alien was

found," Colonel Rogers explained, pointing to a sandy depression in the

shadow of a lava overhang. Crockerman walked around a big lava boulder and

knelt beside the depression. He reached out to touch the sand, still marked by

the Guest's movements, but Arthur restrained him. "We're still nervous

about biologicals," he explained.


"The four civilians," Crockerman

said, not completing his thought. "I met Stella Morgan's granddaddy thirty

years ago in Washington," he mused. "A real country gentleman. Tough

as nails, smart as a whip. I'd like to meet Bernice Morgan. Maybe I could

reassure her…Can we arrange something for tomorrow?"


"We go to Furnace Creek Resort, after

this, and tomorrow you're meeting with General Young and Admiral Xavier."

Rotterjack looked over the President's schedule. "That's going to fill

most of the morning. We're to have you back at Vandenberg and aboard the Bird

at two p.m."


"Make a slot for Bernice Morgan,"

Crockerman ordered. "No more arguments."


"Yes, sir," Rotterjack said,

pulling out his mechanical pencil.


"They should be here with me, those

three geologists," the President said. He got to his feet and walked away

from the overhang, brushing his hands on his pants. The Secret Service agents

watched him closely, faces impassive. Crockerman turned to Harry, still

clutching his black notebook, and then nodded at the cinder cone. "You

know what my conference with Young and Xavier is all about."


"Yes, Mr. President," Harry said, matching Crockerman's steady gaze.


"They're going to ask me if we should

nuke this whole area."


"I'm sure that's going to be

mentioned, Mr. President."


"What do you think?"


Harry considered for a moment, eyebrows

meeting. "The entire situation is an enigma to me, sir. Things don't fit

together."


"Mr. Gordon, can we effectively

retaliate against this?" He indicated the cinder cone.


"The Guest says we cannot. I tend to

accept that statement for the time being, sir."


"We keep calling him the Guest, with a

capital G," Crockerman said, coming to a halt about twenty yards from the

formation, then turning to face south, examining the western curve. "How

did that come about?"


"Hollywood's absorbed just about every

other name," McClennan observed.


"Carl has been an avid watcher of

television," Crockerman explained candidly to Arthur," before his

duties made that impossible. He says it lets him keep in touch with the public

pulse."


"The name obviously evolved as a way

to avoid other, more highly colored words," McClennan said.


"The Guest told me he believes in

God."


Arthur chose not to correct the President.


"From what I understand,"

Crockerman continued, his face drawn, eyes almost frantic above a forced calm,

"the Guest's world was found wanting, and eliminated." He seemed to

be searching the faces of Arthur and those nearest to him for sympathy or

support. Arthur was too stunned to say anything. "If that's the case, then

the agency of our own destruction awaits us inside this mountain."


"We _must have more cooperation

from Australia," McClennan said, clenching one fist and shaking it in

front of him.


"They're telling quite a different

story down there, aren't they?" The President began walking back to the

trucks. "I think I've seen enough. My eyes can't squeeze truth out of

rocks and sand."


"Making tighter arrangements with

Australia," Rotterjack observed, "means telling them what we have

here, and we're not sure we can risk that yet."


"There's a possibility we're not the

only ones who have 'bogeys,'" Harry said, giving the last word an almost

comic emphasis.


Crockerman stopped and turned to face

Harry. "Do you have any evidence for that?"


"None, sir. But we've asked for the

NSA and some of our team to check it out."


"How?"


"By comparing recent satellite

photographs with past records."


"More than two bogeys,"

Crockerman said. "That would be something, wouldn't it?"


-


Trevor Hicks slowed the rented white

Chevrolet as he approached the small town of Shoshone - little more than a junction, according to the

map. He saw a cinder-block U.S. post office flanked by tall tamarisk trees and

beyond it, a stark sprawling white building housing a gas station and grocery

store. On the opposite side of the highway was a coffee shop and attached to

it, a spare building with neon beer advertisements in its two small square

windows. A small sign spelled out "Crow Bar" in flickering light

bulbs - a local tavern or pub, obviously. Hicks had always been partial to local

pubs. This one, however, did not seem to be open.


He pulled into the post office's gravel

parking lot, hoping to ask someone if the coffee shop was worth a visit. He

didn't trust local American eateries any more than he liked most American beer,

and he did not think the appearance of the coffee shop - or cafe, as it styled

itself on an inconspicuous sign - was very encouraging.


It was almost five o'clock and the desert

was already chilly. Twilight was an hour or so away and a mournful wind blew

through the tamarisk trees beside the post office. His morning and afternoon

had been frustrating - a rental car breakdown fifty miles outside Las Vegas, a

ride in the tow truck, arranging for another car, and as a lagniappe, a heated

conversation with his publisher's publicist when he thought to call and explain

his missed interview…Delay after delay. He stood near the car for a moment,

wondering what sort of idiot he was, then chose the glass door on his right. As

it happened, that led him into the local equivalent of a branch library - two

tall shelves of books in a corner, with a child-sized reading table squatting

before them. A counter stood opposite the shelves, and

beyond it the furniture and apparatus - so a small plaque read - of the Charles

Morgan Company. The door on the left led into a separate alcove that was the

post office proper. The air of the office was institutional but friendly.


Beyond the counter, seated before an old

desktop computer, was a stately woman of about seventy-five or eighty years,

wearing jeans and a checked blouse, her white hair carelessly combed back. She

spoke into a black phone receiver cradled between her neck and shoulder.

Slowly, she swiveled on her chair to glance at Hicks, then raised one hand,

requesting patience.


Hicks turned to examine the books in the

library.


"No, Bonnie, not a word," the

woman said, her warm voice cracking slightly. "Not a word since the

letter. I'm just about at my wits' end, you know. Esther and Mike have quit.

No. I'm doing fine, but things are kind of sliding here…"


The library held a fair selection of

science books, including one of his own, an early popular work on

communications satellites, long since out of date.


"It's all crazy," the woman said.

"We used to worry about Gas Buggy, and all the radiation from the test

site, and now this. They closed down our meat locker. It's enough to scare the

hell out of me. Frank came in with Tillie yesterday and they were so nice. They

worried about Stella so much. Well, thank you for calling. I've got to start

closing up now. Yes. Jack is in the warehouse and he'll walk me down to the

trailer park. Thanks. Goodbye."


She replaced the phone and turned to Hicks.

"Can I help you?"


"I didn't mean to interrupt. I was

wondering about the coffee shop across the street. Is it recommended?"


"I'm not the one to ask," the

woman said, standing.


"I'm sorry," Hicks said politely.

"Why?"


"Because I own the place," she

answered, smiling. She approached the counter and leaned on it. "I'm

prejudiced. We serve good solid food there. Emphasis sometimes on the solid.

You're English, aren't you?"


"Yes."


"On your way to Las Vegas?"


"From, actually. Going to Furnace

Creek."


"Might as well turn back. Everything's

sealed up that way. The highway's closed. They'll just turn you around."


"I see. Any idea what's

happening?"


"What's your name?" the woman

asked.


"Hicks. Trevor Hicks."


"I'm Bernice Morgan. I was just

talking about my daughter. She's being held by the federal government. Nobody

can tell me why. She writes to say she's well, but she can't say anything about

where she is, and I can't talk to her. Isn't that crazy?"


"Yes," Hicks said, his neck hair

prickling again.


"I've got lawyers all over the state

and in Washington trying to find out what's going on. They might think they're

tangling with some small-town yo-yos, but they're not. My husband was a county

supervisor. My father was a state senator. And here I am, talking your ear off.

Trevor Hicks." She paused, examining him more closely. "Are you the

science writer?"


"Yes, actually," Hicks said,

pleased at being recognized twice in as many days.


"What brings you out this way?"


"A hunch."


"Mind if I ask what sort of

hunch?" Clearly, Bernice Morgan, for all her warm voice and hospitable

manner, was a tough-minded woman.


"I suppose it could connect with your

daughter," he said, deciding to go for broke. "I'm following a very

thin trail of clues to Death Valley. Something important has happened there -

important enough to draw your President to Furnace Creek Resort."


"Maybe Esther isn't hysterical,"

Mrs. Morgan mused.


"I'm sorry?"


"My store clerk. She says some men

talked about a MiG crashing in the desert."


Hicks's heart fell. Was that all it was,

then? Some sort of unusual defection? No connection with the Great Victoria Desert?


"And Mike, he's a young fellow who

worked in our service station, he says some men came to the store in a Land

Cruiser and talked to my daughter. They had something covered up in the back. Mike sneaked a look when they took it around the rear and he thought it was

something green - dead-looking, he said. Then the government comes in here and

sprays this awful stuff all over the inside of my meat locker, closes it off,

and says we can't use it…We lost five hundred dollars in meat. They carted it

away, said it was spoiled. Said the locker was contaminated with

salmonella."


Hicks's intuition made his skin crawl.

"Where were you when this happened?"


"In Baker visiting my brother."


Bernice Morgan gave not the slightest

impression of frailty, despite her years. Nor did she appear leathery or

"grizzled." She was the last sort of person Hicks expected to find in

a small American desert town. But for her manner of speech, she might have been

the elderly wife of an English lord.


"How long has your daughter been

missing?"


"A week and a half."


"And you're certain she was taken by

federal authorities?"


"Air Force types, I've been

told."


Hicks frowned. "Have you heard of

anything odd in the area - around Furnace Creek Inn, perhaps?"


"Only that it's closed off temporarily.

I called about that, and nobody knows anything. The phone service went out this

afternoon."


"Do you think that's where your

daughter is?"


"It's a possibility, isn't it?"


He pursed his lips.


"I don't think they're holding her so

she can talk to the President about business. Do you?" She raised a

skeptical eyebrow.


An old, battered primer-gray Ford truck

pulled off the road and into the parking lot with a spray of dust and gravel.

Two young men in straw cowboy hats jumped from the back, while a third boy and

a heavy-paunched, bearded man with oversized wire-framed MacArthur sunglasses

stepped down from the driver's seat. They all came through the glass door. The

bearded man nodded at Hicks, then faced Mrs. Morgan. "We've been out and

back. Road's still closed. George is out there, like Richard said, but he

doesn't know what's going on."


"George is one of our highway patrol

boys," Mrs. Morgan explained to Hicks.


"Ron, here, thinks his Lisa is still

in Furnace Creek," the bearded man continued. A doe-eyed, thin young man

nodded wearily. "We're going to take the plane and fly over. Find out what

the hell's going on."


"They've probably got the airstrip out

there closed," Mrs. Morgan said. "I'm not sure that's smart,

Mitch."


"Smart, hell. I never let no government

folks push me around before. Kidnapping and shutting down public roads for no

good reason - it's time somebody did something." Mitch stared pointedly at

Trevor Hicks, surveying his suede jacket, slacks, and running shoes.

"Mister, we haven't met."


Mrs. Morgan did the favor. "Mitch,

this is Mr. Trevor Hicks. Mr. Hicks, Mitch Morris. He's our maintenance man and

drives the propane truck."


"Pleased to make your acquaintance,

Mr. Hicks," Morris said in a formal tone. "You're interested in

this?"


"He's a writer," Bernice said.

"Pretty well known, too."


"I have an idea something is happening

near Furnace Creek, something important enough to bring the President

here."


"President like from the White

House?"


"The same."


"He thinks Stella might be at Furnace Creek,"

Mrs. Morgan said.


"All the more reason for us to fly

over there and find out," Morris said. "Frank Forrest has his

Comanche ready to go. We have room for five. Mr. Hicks, are you interested in

coming with us?"


Hicks realized he was becoming much too

involved. Mrs. Morgan continued her protest about the risks, but Morris paid

her only polite attention. His mind was made up.


There was no other way to see what was

happening in Furnace Creek. He would be stopped on the highway as everybody

else had been.


"There's too many of us here, with a

pilot, already," Hicks said.


"Benny doesn't fly," Morris said.

"He gets terrible airsick."


Hicks took a shallow, spasmodic breath.

"All right," he said.


"It's not far at all. A few minutes

there and back."


"I don't like it. Don't do this just

for Stella," Mrs. Morgan said. "I'm still trying other ways. Don't

get foolish and…"


"No heroics, no daring rescues,"

Morris assured her. "Let's go. Mr. Hicks…?"


"Yes," Hicks said, following them

out the glass door. Mrs. Morgan laid her hands on the counter top and watched

them grimly as they climbed into the truck, Benny giving up his shotgun seat to

Hicks and sitting in the back.


 


He had never done anything so stupid in his

life. The Piper Comanche's wheels pulled free of the runway and the twin-engine

aircraft leaped into the air, leaving the weathered asphalt landing strip and

corrugated metal hangar far behind and below.


Mitch Morris turned to regard Hicks and Ron

Flagg in the back seat. Frank Forrest, in his mid-sixties and as burly as

Morris, banked the plane sharply and brought them around to an easterly

direction, then banked again before they had time to catch their breath. Morris

hung on to Forrest's seat with a huge, callused hand. "You all

right?" he asked Hicks, with barely a glance at Ron.


"Fine," Hicks said, swallowing an

anonymous something in his gullet.


"You, Ron?"


"Ain't flown much," Flagg said,

his skin pale and damp.


"Frank's an expert. Flew Sabres during

the war. Korean War. His daddy flew Buffaloes at Midway. That's where he died,

wasn't it, Frank?"


"Goddamn planes were flying

coffins," Forrest said.


Hicks felt the Comanche shudder in an

updraft from the low hills below. They were flying under five hundred feet. A

cinder-covered hill near Shoshone passed below them with breathtaking

closeness.


"I hope you don't think we're

impetuous," Morris said.


"Perish the idea," Hicks

returned, concentrating on his stomach.


"We owe a lot to Mrs. Morgan. We like

Stella just fine, and Ron's Lisa is a great girl. We want to make sure they're

okay, wherever they are. Not like they've been spirited off to the Nevada test

site to be used as guinea pigs or something, y'know?"


Whether Morris was suggesting this or

dismissing it as a possibility, Hicks couldn't decide.


"So what do you think they've got in

Furnace Creek?" Forrest asked. "Mike the garage boy says they've got

a dead Russian pilot. That why you're here-to scoop everybody on a dead Russian

pilot?"


"I don't think that's what they

have," Hicks said.


"So what is it, then? What would bring

ol' Crockerman out here?"


Hicks thought for a moment about the

possible unpleasant effects of discussing visitors from space with these men.

He could almost sympathize with any government efforts to keep such things secret.

Yet Australia was loaded with men like these: tough, resourceful, valiant, but

not particularly imaginative or brilliant. Why would Australia trust public

reaction, and not the United States?


"I'm not sure," he said.

"I've come out here on a hunch, pure and simple."


"Hunches are never pure and

simple," Forrest shot back. "You're a smart man. You've come out here

for a reason."


"Mrs. Morgan seems to think you're

important," Morris said.


"Well…"


"You a doctor?" Flagg asked,

looking as if he might need some medical assistance.


"I'm a writer. I have a Ph.D. in

biological science, but I'm not an M.D."


"We get all sorts of Ph.D.'s in

Shoshone," Morris said. "Geologists, archaeologists, ethnologists -

study Indians, you know. Sometimes they come into the Crow Bar and sit down and

we get into some real interesting conversations. We're not just a bunch of

desert rats."


"Didn't think you were," Hicks

responded. _Oh?


"All right. Frank?"


"Coming up on Furnace Creek

shortly."


Hicks looked through the side window and

saw tan and white sand and patches of scrub, HO-scale dirt roads and tracks.

Then he saw the highway. Forrest banked the Comanche again. Hicks's stomach

kept its discipline, but Flagg moaned. "You got a bag?" he asked.

"Please."


"You can keep it down," Morris

assured him. "Hold up on the aerobatics, Frank."


"There it is," Forrest said. He

inclined the plane so Hicks was staring practically straight down at a cluster

of buildings spread among rust-brown rocks, copses of green trees and low

hills. He could make out a golf course spreading lush green against the waste,

a tiny airstrip and an asphalt parking lot filled with dark cars and trucks,

and rising from the parking lot, a green two-seat Army Cobra helicopter.


"Shit," Forrest said, pulling

back sharply on the wheel. The plane's engines screamed and the Comanche swung

around like a leaf in a strong wind.


The helicopter intercepted them and kept

pace with the Comanche no matter what twists and turns Forrest executed. Flagg

threw up and his vomit struck the side windows and Hicks and seemed to have a

life of its own, hobbling about between surfaces and air. Hicks wiped it away

frantically with his hands. Morris yelled and cursed.


The Cobra quickly outmaneuvered them. A

uniformed and helmeted copilot in the rear seat gestured for them to land.


"Where's your radio?" Hicks

demanded. "Turn it on. Let them talk with us."


"Hell no," Forrest said.

"I'd have to acknowledge."


"Goddammit, Frank, they'll shoot us

down if you don't go where he says," Morris said, beard curling up and

then back with the aircraft's motion.


The helicopter's copilot meticulously

pointed down to the road below. Green cars and camouflaged trucks raced along

the highway.


"We'd better land," Forrest

agreed. He peeled away from the helicopter, descended with astonishing speed,

pitched his Comanche nose-high, and brought the aircraft down with at least

four hard jounces on the gray asphalt airstrip.


Quietly heaving without issue, Hicks tried

to control himself. By the time they were surrounded by what he took to be

Secret Service men - in gray suits and brown - and military police in dark blue

uniforms, he had his nausea largely under control. Flagg had bumped his head

and lay stunned in his seat.


"God damn," Morris said, none the

worse for wear.


-


Arthur, stooped even more than usual,

walked down the inn's flagstoned hallway, barely glancing at the adobe walls

and black, white, and gray Navajo carpets hung above antique credenzas. He

knocked on Harry's door and stepped back, hands in pockets. Harry opened the

door and swung his arm impatiently for him to come in. Then he returned to the

bathroom to finish shaving. They were all joining the President for dinner in

the resort's spacious dining room within the hour.


"He's not taking it well," Arthur

said.


"Crockerman? What did you

expect."


"Better than this."


"We're all staring down the barrel of

a gun."


Arthur glanced up at the bright open

doorway of the bathroom. "How are _you feeling?"


Harry came out lifting one ear to poke the

razor beneath it, his face lined with remnants of shaving cream. "Well

enough," he said. "I have to leave in two days for treatment. Warned

you."


Arthur shook his head. "No problem.

It's scheduled. The President's leaving day after tomorrow. Tomorrow he confers

with Xavier and Young."


"What's next?"


"Negotiations with the Australians.

They show us theirs, we show them ours."


"Then what?"


Arthur shrugged. "Maybe our bogey is a

liar."


"If you ask me," Harry said, "the…"


"I know. The whole thing stinks."


"But Crockerman's swallowed the

message. It's working on him. Young and Xavier will have seen the site…Ah,

Lord." Harry wiped his face with a towel. "This is not nearly as much

fun as I thought it would be. Isn't it a bitch? Life is always a bitch. We were

so excited. Now it's a nightmare."


Arthur raised his hand. "Guess who was

captured riding an airplane with three desert types?"


Harry blinked. "How the hell should I

know?"


"Trevor Hicks."


Harry stared. "You're not

serious."


"The President is reading his novel

now, which is trendy enough, and not quite pure coincidence. He obviously felt

it was research material. The three desert types have been returned to Shoshone

with a stiff reprimand and the loss of their plane and license. Hicks has been

invited to dinner tonight."


"That's insane," Harry said,

turning off the bathroom light and picking up his dress shirt from the corner

of the bed. "He's a journalist."


"Crockerman wants to talk things over

with him. Get a second opinion."


"He has a hundred opinions all around

him."


"I last met Hicks," Arthur mused,

"three years ago, at Cornell."


"I've never met him," Harry said.

"I suppose I'd like to."


"Now's your chance."


Arthur left his friend's room a few minutes

later, feeling worse than ever. He could not shake the sensibilities of a disappointed

child. This had been a wonderful early Christmas present, bright and filled

with hope for an unimaginable future, a future of humans interacting with other

intelligences. Now, by Christmastime, the Earth might not even exist.


He took a deep breath and squared his

shoulders, not for the first time hoping by physical effort to shake the gloom.


 


The waitresses and cooks behind the white

walls and copper-paneled pillars of the dining room had come up with a formal

repast of prime rib, wild rice, and Caesar salad, the salad greens a trifle

wilted because of the halt in deliveries, but all else quite acceptable. Around

a rectangular table assembled from four smaller tables sat the principals of

the action at the "Furnace," plus Trevor Hicks, who acted as if he

were taking it all in stride.


_I have stumbled into a jackpot, he thought as the President and the Secretary of

Defense entered and took their seats. Two Secret Service agents ate at a small

table near the doorway.


Crockerman nodded cordially at Hicks,

seated beside the President and across from Lehrman.


"These people have really done a fine

job, haven't they?" the President said after the main course had been

served and the dishes cleared. By a kind of silent and mutual decree, all talk

during dinner had been of trivial things. Now coffee was brought out in an old,

dented silver service, poured into the owner's personal Wedgwood bone china

cups, and served around the long table. Harry declined. Arthur loaded his coffee

with two cubes of sugar.


"So you are acquainted with Mr.

Feinman and Mr. Gordon," Crockerman said as they sat back with cups in

hand.


"I know them by reputation, and met

Mr. Gordon once when he was in command of BETC," Hicks said. He smiled and

nodded at Arthur as if for the first time this evening.


"I'm sure our people have asked you

what moved you to come to Furnace Creek Inn."


"It's an ill-kept secret that

something extraordinary is happening here," Hicks said. "I was

working on a hunch."


The President gave another of his weak,

almost discouraged smiles, and shook his head.


"I am amazed I was brought here,"

Hicks continued, "after the way we were initially treated. And I am truly

astounded to find you here, Mr. President, even though I had deduced you would

be, by a chain of reasoning I've already described to your Army and Secret

Service agents. Let us say, I am astounded to find my hunch proving out. What _is

happening here?"


"I'm not sure we can tell you that. I'm

not sure why I've invited you to dinner, Mr. Hicks, and no doubt the other

gentlemen here are even more unsure than I. Mr. Gordon? Do you object to the

presence of a writer, a reporter?"


"I am curious. I do not object."


"Because I think we are _all out

of our depth," Crockerman said. "I would like to solicit outside

opinions."


Harry winked without humor at Arthur.


"I am in the dark, sir," Hicks

said.


"Why do you think we are here?"


"I have heard - never mind how, I will

not tell - that there is a bogey here. I presume it has something to do with

the Australian discovery in the Great Victoria Desert."


McClennan shaded his eyes with one hand and

shook his head. "The unscrambled transmission from _Air Force One .

This has happened before. They should all be shot."


Crockerman dismissed this with a wave of

his hand. He pulled a cigar from his pocket, then asked by an inclination of

eyebrows whether anyone would share his vice. Politely, all around the table

declined. He clipped the cigar and lit it with an antique silver Zippo. "I

trust you've been cleared to enter military bases and research

laboratories."


"Yes," Hicks said.


"You're not a United States citizen,

however."


"No, Mr. President."


"Is he a security risk, Carl?"

Crockerman asked McClennan.


The national security advisor shook his

head, lips pursed. "Other than being a foreign national, he's got a good

record."


Lehrman leaned forward and said, "Mr.

President, I believe this conversation should end now. Mr. Hicks has no formal clearance, and…"


"Dammit, Otto, he's an intelligent

man. I'm interested in his opinion."


"Sir, we can find and clear all sorts

of experts for you to talk to," McClennan said. "This sort of thing

is counterproductive."


Crockerman slowly looked up at McClennan,

lips drawn tight. "How much time do we have until this machine starts

dismantling the Earth?"


McClennan's face reddened. "Nobody

knows, Mr. President," he said.


Hicks stiffened his back and glanced around

the table. "Excuse me," he said, "but…"


"Then, Carl," Crockerman continued,

"isn't the time-consuming, formal way of doing things

counterproductive?"


McClennan stared pleadingly at Lehrman. The

Defense Secretary held up both hands. "You're the boss, sir," he

said.


"Within limits, I am," Crockerman

affirmed peevishly. "I have chosen to bring Mr. Hicks into our

confidence."


"Mr. Hicks, if I may say so, is a

media celebrity," Rotterjack said. "He has done no research, and his

qualifications are purely as a journalist and a writer. I am amazed, sir, that

you would extend this kind of privilege to a _journalist ."


Hicks, eyes narrow, said nothing. The

President's gentle, dreaming smile returned.


"Are you finished, David?"


"I may very well be, sir. I agree with

Carl and Otto. This is highly irregular and dangerous."


"I asked if you were finished."


"Yes."


"Then allow me to repeat myself. I

have decided to take Mr. Hicks into our confidence. I assume his security

clearance will be processed immediately?"


McClennan did not meet the President's

eyes. "I'll get it started."


"Fine. Mr. Gordon, Mr. Feinman, I am

not expressing any doubts about your capabilities. Do you object to Mr.

Hicks?"


"No, sir," Arthur said.


"I have nothing against journalists or

writers," Harry said. "However wrong Mr. Hicks's novel has turned out

to be."


"Fine." Crockerman mused for a

moment, then nodded and said, "I believed we turned down Arthur's request

for a Mr. Dupres, simply because he is a foreign national. I hope none of you

mind a little inconsistency now."


"We do indeed have a bogey, Mr. Hicks.

It released an extraterrestrial visitor we call the Guest. The Guest is a

living being, not a robot or a machine, and it tells us it rode a spaceship

from its world to this one. But…" The President told Hicks most of the story,

including his version of the Guest's dire warning. Again, nobody corrected him.


Hicks listened intently, his face white.

When Crockerman finished, puffing at the cigar and blowing out an expanding

globule of smoke, Hicks leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table.

"I'll be damned," he said, his voice low and deliberately casual.


"So will we all if we don't decide

what to do, and soon," Crockerman said. All others kept their counsel.

This was the President's show, and few if any were happy with it.


"You're speaking with the Australians.

They know about this, of course," Hicks said.


"They haven't been told yet,"

Crockerman said. "We're worried about the effect the news might have on

our people if it leaks."


"Of course," Hicks said.

"I… don't know quite what to make of it myself. I seemed to have stepped

into a real hornet's nest, haven't I?"


Crockerman stubbed out his cigar half

smoked. "I'll be returning to Washington tomorrow morning. Mr. Hicks, I'd

like you to come with me. Mr. Gordon, you also. Mr. Feinman, I understand you

won't be able to accompany us. You have an important medical appointment in Los

Angeles."


"Yes, Mr. President."


"Then if you will, after your

treatment - and my sincere good wishes go with you there - I would like you to

recommend a group of scientists to meet with the Guest, conduct further

interrogations-that doesn't sound good, does it? Ask more questions. This team

will be our liaison with the Australian scientists. Carl, I'd like you to

arrange with the Australians for one of their investigators to be flown to Vandenberg

and sit in on these sessions."


"Are we sharing with the Australians,

sir?" Rotterjack asked.


"I think that's the only rational

approach."


"And if they're reluctant to go along

with our stance on security?"


"We'll climb that wall when we come to

it."


A tired-looking young man in a gray suit

entered the dining hall and approached Rotterjack. He handed the science

advisor a slip of paper and stood back, eyes darting nervously around the

table. Rotterjack read the paper, the lines around his mouth and on his

forehead deepening.


"Colonel Phan sends us a

message," he said. "The Guest died at eighteen hundred hours this

evening. Phan is conducting an autopsy at midnight. Mr. Feinman and Mr. Gordon

are requested to attend."


Silence around the table.


"Mr. Gordon, you are free to do so,

and then please come to Washington as soon as you can," Crockerman said.

He put his napkin next to his plate, backed his chair away from the head of the

table, and stood. He appeared very old in the dining room's subdued light.

"I'm retiring early tonight. This day has been exhausting, and there is

much to think about. David, Carl, please make sure Mr. Hicks is

comfortable."


"Yes, sir," McClennan said.


"And Carl, make sure the staff here

realizes how much we appreciate their service and the hardship."


"Yes, sir."


PERSPECTIVE


_AAP/UKNet, October 5, 1996; Woomera,

Local Church of New Australia:


The Reverend Brian Caldecott has proclaimed

the Australian extraterrestrials to be "patent frauds." Caldecott,

long known for his fiery harangues against all forms of government, and for

leading his disciples in a return to "the Garden of Eden," which he

claims was once located near Alice Springs, came to Woomera in a caravan of

thirty white Mercedes-Benzes to hold a tent rally this evening. "These

'aliens' are the Country Party's attempt to mislead the citizens of the world,

and to make the Australian Government, under Prime Minister Stanley Miller, the

center of a world government, which I of course deplore." Caldecott's crusade

suffered a public relations setback last year when it was discovered he was

married to three women. The Church of New Australia promptly declared bigamy to

be a religious principle, stirring a legal stew as yet unsettled.


_AGNUS


-


October 8, 12:15 A.M.


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?" Crockerman

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," Crockerman 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.


-


October 8


Arthur unfolded a newspaper as the Learjet taxied across

the runway. On a far apron, B-1 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,


PRESIDENT

ON SECRET

DEATH VALLEY VISIT

Details Unclear:

May Be Related to Australian Aliens


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. Somehow, 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.


-


October 10


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.


-


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.


-


October 11


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."


-


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.


PERSPECTIVE


_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."


October 13


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.


-


October 20, Australia (October 19, USA)


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?"


_-


November 1, Eastern Pacific Time

(November 2, (USA)


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.


PERSPECTIVE


_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''tready 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

Crockerman 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.


-


Novembers


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 corner 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."


-


November 5


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.


November 10


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 International 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."


-


November 15


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 Samshow 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."


PERSPECTIVE


_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.


—


November 17


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 in 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.


PERSPECTIVE


_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.


-


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, turfüng 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.


-


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 Samshow?"


"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.


November 22


"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.


-


November


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.


-


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, Samshow 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:


Kemp and I will meet you in Oz at 5:30.

Drinks on Kemp.


D.S.


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."


-


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.


-


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.


-


November


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 responsibility

it 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 cafe 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:


MYSTERY OBJECT MOVING WITHIN EARTH


"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 she's 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."


PERSPECTIVE


_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''score, 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''sconvictions. 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."


-


December 1


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.


-


December 15


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.


-


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."


PERSPECTIVE


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''sstatement 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?


-


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.


-


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.


PERSPECTIVE


_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''ssomething 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.


-


December 23


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.


-


December 24


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:


PRESIDENTIAL CRONY ASSASSINATED

Reverend Ormandy Shot by Lone Gunman in

New Orleans

CROCKERMAN VETOES ALIEN DEFENSE ACT

FORGE OF GODDERS GATHER TO "PROTECT" ALIEN CRAFT

Gathering of England-Based Cultists in California


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.


PERSPECTIVE


_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.


-


January

 3, 1997


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 Gaia'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.


-


January 4


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 spot lighted 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 lips. 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.


-


January 6


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.


PERSPECTIVE


_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.


January 15


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?" Samshow 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.


PERSPECTIVE


_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…


-


February 19


"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.


-


February 24


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 his 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.


-


March 10


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.


-


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.


-


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,


Dad,


Still working steady here and elsewhere.

Thinking about you.


Take care of yourself.


Reubena nd 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.


-


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.


-


March 20


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.


-


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.


-


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.


PERSPECTIVE


_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''ssecond

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…


_LACRIMOSA DIES ILLA!


-


Smoky haze hung high over the valley from

fires in the east: Idaho, Arizona, Utah. The morning sun glowered bright orange

through the pall, casting all Yosemite in a dreamy shadow-light the color of

Apocalypse.


Edward walked past the general store and

saw Minelli sitting in the open doorway of his car in the parking lot,

listening to the radio with one leg drawn up on the other knee, picking mud out

of his boot tread with a twig.


"What's the word?" Edward asked,

leaning his walking stick on the car's bumper.


"Nothing close to us yet,"

Minelli answered. "Fires to the south, spreading south but not north, and

fires to the east about three, four hundred miles."


"Anything else?"


"The bullets have dropped below

microseismic background. Nobody can hear them now." He smirked and flipped

the mud-tipped twig onto the asphalt. "Makes you wish- we were out there

at work, doesn't it? Feeling the patient's pulse."


"Not really," Edward said.

"Walking today?"


"Been," Minelli said, gesturing

to the west. "Since about five. It's nice getting up in the dark. The

sunrise was spectacular. Lots of my habits are changing. I'm feeling very calm

now. Does that make any sense?"


"Denial, anger,

withdrawal…acceptance," Edward said. "The four stages."


"I don't _accept at all,"

Minelli said. "I'm just calm about what's going to happen. Where are you

going?"


"I'm taking the Mist Trail up to

Vernal and Nevada falls. Never been there."


Minelli nodded. "You know, I've

specked out where I want to be when the crunch comes." He raised a finger

to Glacier Point. "You can see everything up there, and it's going to be

spectacular. I'll hike up and camp out for a week or however long it takes,

just to be ready."


"What if you meet some kind

female?"


"I expect she'll go with me,"

Minelli said. "But I'm not holding out much hope." He rubbed his

beard and grinned fiendishly. "I'm not grade-A Choice."


Edward glanced at a sticker in the side

window: BORN TO RAISE HECK. " _Mazel ," he called back over his

shoulder, walking east.


"I'm a Catholic boy. I don't know that

stuff."


"I'm Episcopalian," Edward said.


"When are you coming back?"


"In time for the meeting at

five."


Edward followed the switchbacks of the

first leg of the Muir Trail, pausing on rock-masonry vantage points to gaze out

over gorges filled with roaring white water. He was halfway up the steep Mist

Trail by eleven. The smell of moss and spray and damp humus filled his nose.

Vernal Fall bellowed constantly on his left, ghostly clouds of moisture soaking

his clothes and beading on his face and hands. He grimaced against the chill

but refused to wear a parka or anything else that would isolate him.


The wet dark gray trail rocks reflected the

sky and became a somber orange-brown. When the breeze blew thick fingers of

mist in his direction, he seemed suspended in a warm amber fog, the fall and

weathered, moss-covered granite walls lost in a general vaporous void.


_I saw Eternity the other night , he quoted, and not remembering the rest,

concluded aloud with, "And it gave me quite a fright…"


At the top of Vernal Fall, he walked across

a broad, almost level expanse of dry white granite, one hand on an iron

railing, and stood near the wide, sleek green lip of plummeting water. Here was

the noise and the power, but little of the wetness; observation and immediacy

and yet isolation. The true experience, Edward thought, would be sweeping down

the falls in the middle of the water, suspended in cold green and white,

curtains of bubbles and long translucent vertical surfaces distorting all sky

and earth. What would it be like to live as a water sprite, able to magically

suspend oneself in the middle of certain death?


He looked across at Liberty Cap and thought

again of the vast granite spaces within the domes, unseen. _Why an obsession

with places out of view?


He frowned in concentration, trying to

bring up the monstrous big thought he had so loosely hooked. _Living things

see only the surface, can't exist in the depths. Life is painted on the surface

of the real. Death is the great unexplored volume. Death rises from the

inaccessible , depth _and death _sounding so much alike…


There had been only three other people on

the trail that morning, one descending, two climbing behind Edward. Another he

had not seen, a blond-haired woman in a tan parka arid dark blue shorts lugging

a big expensive blue backpack. She stood on the opposite side of the granite

block, looking over Emerald Lake, the pool where water from 600-foot Nevada

Fall rested before slipping over the shorter Vernal Fall. She must have camped

overnight, or was perhaps on the morning leg of a long trek around the rim of

the valley.


The woman turned and Edward saw she was

strikingly beautiful, tall and Nordic, a long face with perfectly cut nose,

clear blue eyes, and lips both sensual and faintly disapproving. He looked away

quickly, all too intensely aware she was outside his range. He had long since

learned that women this beautiful paid little attention to men of his mild

appearance and social standing.


Still, she seemed to be alone.


Came that high, painful interior singing he

had always known when in the presence of the desirable and inaccessible woman,

not lust, but an almost religious longing. It was not a sensation he wanted

now; he did not wish to be seduced away from worshiping the land, the Earth, to

focus on a single woman, let alone one he could not possibly have. The woman or

women he had imagined the night before would not evoke this kind of response;

they would be safe, undemanding, undistressing. Quickly, with nothing more than

a polite smile and nod, he passed the woman where she stood by the bridge and

continued along the trail.


In the rocky tree-spotted upland meadow

beyond Emerald Lake, he found a natural granite bench and laid out his lunch of

two processed-American-cheese sandwiches and dried fruit, very much like what

he had eaten on hikes in the valley as a boy. Facing the white plume of Nevada

Fall, still a few hundred yards distant, he chewed crescents from a leathery

apricot and brewed hot tea on a tiny portable stove.


Someone came up behind him, tread so light

as to be almost undetected. "Excuse me."


He twisted his torso and stared at the

blond woman. She smiled down on him. She was at least six feet tall.

"Yes?" he asked, swallowing most of a mouthful of half-chewed

apricot.


"Did you see a man here, a little

taller than I, with a very black full beard and wearing a red parka?" She

indicated the man's height with a hand held level above her head.


Edward hadn't, but the woman's worried

expression suggested that it would be best if he paused to consider before

answering. "No, I don't think so," he said. "There aren't many

people here today."


"I've been waiting two days," she

said, sighing. "We were supposed, to meet here, at the Emerald Lake,

actually."


"I'm sorry."


"Did you see anybody like him down on

the valley floor? You came up from there, didn't you?"


"Yes, but I don't remember any men

with black beards and red parkas. Or any with just black beards, for that

matter-unless he's a biker."


"Oh, no." She shook her head and

turned away, then turned back. "Thank you."


"You're welcome. May I offer some tea,

fruit?"


"No thank you. I've eaten. I carried

food for both of us."


Edward watched her with an embarrassed

smile. She seemed unsure what to do next. He half wished she would go away; his

attraction to her was almost painful.


"He's my husband," she said,

staring up at Liberty Cap, shading her eyes against the hazy glare. "We're

separated. We met in Yosemite, and we thought if we came back here,

before…" Her voice trailed off and she made a negligible shrug of her

shoulders and arms. "We might be able to stay together. We agreed to meet

at Emerald Lake."


"I'm sure he must be here

someplace." He gestured at the lake and trail and the Nevada Fall.


"Thank you," she said. This time,

she did not smile, simply turned and walked back toward the head of Vernal Fall

and the descending Mist Trail. He watched her go and took a deep breath, biting

into his second sandwich.


He stared at the sandwich ruefully as he

chewed. "Must be the white bread," he told himself. "Can't catch

a beauty like that with anything less than whole wheat."


At three, the meadow and the perimeter of

the lake, the falls and the trail below, were empty. He was the only human for

miles, or so it seemed; might even be true, he thought. He crossed the bridge

and lingered in the trees on the other side, with only the roar of the falls

above and below and snatches of birdsong. He knew rocks of any description but

little about birds. Red-winged blackbirds and robins and jays were obvious; he

thought about buying a book in the general store to learn the others, but then,

what use applying names? If his memories were soon to be scattered fine-ground

over space, education was a waste.


What was important was finding his center,

or pinning down some locus of being, establishing a moment of purity and

concentrated awareness. He did not think that was possible with people all

around; now was a chance to try.


Prayer perhaps. God had not been on his

mind much recently, a telltale void; he did not wish to be inconsistent when

all the world was a foxhole. But consistency was as useless now as nature

studies, and not nearly so tempting.


The valley was still in sun, Liberty Cap

half shadowed. The smoke had cleared some and the sky was bluer, green at the

edges of the haze, more real than it had been.


"I am going to die," he said out

loud, in a normal tone of voice, experimenting. "What I am will come to an

end. My thoughts will end. I will experience nothing, not even the final

end." _Rising rocks and smoke and lava. No; probably not like that. Will

it hurt? Will there be time for pain?


Mass death; God was probably busy also with

mass prayer.


God.


Not a protector, unless there be miracles.


He shuffled his booted feet in the dry

trail dirt. "What in hell am I looking for? Revelation?" He shook his

head and forced a laugh. "Naive sonofabitch. You're out of training; your

prayer muscles, your enlightenment biceps, they're all out of shape. Can't lift

you any higher than your goddamned head." The bitterness in his voice

shook him. Did he really want revelation, confirmation, assurance of existence

or meaning beyond the end?


"God is what you love." He said

this softly; it was embarrassing to realize how much he believed it. Yet he had

never been particularly good at love, neither the love of people in all its

forms nor the other kinds, except perhaps love of his work. "I love the

Earth."


But that was rather vague and broad. The

Earth offered only unthinking obstacles to love: storms, rock slides,

volcanoes, quakes. Accidents. Earth could not help being incontinent. Easy to

love the great mother.


The wind picked up and carried droplets of

mist above the Vernal Fall and over the forest, landing cool and lightly

stinging-tickling on his cheek. He thought of down on his cheek and not

whiskers, and of wanting his father to stay with them, even then knowing (truly

did he realize it then?) that the unknit would soon separate.


That time, in Yosemite, had not been

altogether blissful. The memories he now recovered were of a young boy's

ignorant but sharp eye, observing a man and a woman, shakily acting the roles

of mother and father, husband and wife, not connecting anymore.


The boy had been unable to foresee what

would happen after the separation so obviously but so deniably coming.


He squinted.


_Earth = mother. God = father. No God =

no father = inability to connect with the after.


"That," he said, "cuts the

fucking cake." He swatted at a gnat and hefted his pack higher on his

back, descending along the wet dark gray rock steps carved out beside Vernal

Fall, and then following the path above the foaming, violently full Merced.


Pausing with a slight smile, he left the

path and stood on a granite boulder at the very edge of the tumult, contemplating

the lost green volumes of water beneath and between the white bubbles. The roar

seemed to recede; he felt almost hypnotized. He could just lean forward, shift

one foot beyond the edge, and all would end very quickly. No suspense. His

choice.


Somehow, the option was not attractive. He

shook his head slowly and glanced up at the trees on the opposite side of the

spill. Glints of silver shined through the boughs and moved along the trunks.

It took him a moment to resolve what he was seeing. The trees were crawling

with fist-sized silvery spiders. Two of them scuttled along a branch, carrying

what appeared to be a dead jay. Another had stripped away a slice of bark from

a pine trunk, revealing a wedge of white wood.


He thought of the Guest, and did not doubt

his eyes.


_Who controls them? he asked himself. _What do they mean? He

watched them for several minutes, vaguely bothered by their indifference, and

then shrugged-yet another inexplicable marvel-and returned to the path.


Edward was back in the valley, freshly

showered and in clean jeans and white shirt, by five o'clock, as he had

promised. The amphitheater was more crowded than it had been for yesterday's

meeting. No music was scheduled; instead, they had a minister, a psychologist,

and a second ranger arrayed before the podium, waiting their turn after

Elizabeth's introduction. Minelli grumbled at the New Age lineup, but he

stayed. There was a bond growing between all of them, even those who had not

spoken; they were in this together, and it was better to _be together

than otherwise, even if it meant sitting through a handful of puerile speakers.


Edward looked for but did not see the

jilted blonde in the audience.


-


After three days of interrogation by the

FBI and agents from the National Security Agency, as well as six hours of

intense grilling by the Secretary of the Navy, Senator Gilmonn had been set

free from his office and apartment in Long Beach, California. He had ordered

his chauffeur to drive east.


Nobody had been able, or particularly willing,

to hang anything on him, though the trail of the arrow or monkey or whatever

from the U.S.S. _Saratoga to his car was reasonably well defined. Given

more than a mere two and a half months of investigation and second-guessing, he

might have been in some trouble, and the captain of the _Saratoga

relieved of his command, but things had changed markedly now in these United

States. It was a different nation, a different government-functioning to all

intents and purposes without a head. The President, under impeachment, was

still in office but with most of his strings of influence and therefore power

severed.


Gilmonn's incarceration, which might have

been _pro forma half a year ago, was now simply out of the question.


For all that, what had they accomplished?

They had killed Lieutenant Colonel Rogers and perhaps thirty Forgers who had

refused to vacate the desert around the bogey. They had blown the bogey into

scattered pieces. Yet few involved in the conspiracy believed, now, that they

had done anything to even postpone, much less remove, the sentence of death

placed on the Earth.


He stood on the sand near the gravel road

that passed within two miles of the site of the disintegrated bogey, binoculars

hanging on a leather strap from his neck, face streaming with sweat under the

brim of his hat. The white limousine that he had hired with his own money

waited a few yards away, the chauffeur impassive behind his dark glasses and

blue-black uniform.


Army and government trucks passed along the

road every few minutes, some bearing radiation stickers; many of those outward

bound, he knew, carried fragments of the bogey. He was not privy to what they

were finding. Basically, his presence was tolerated, but now that the

conspiracy had accomplished what virtually everybody wanted, those directly

involved, while not charged, were being shunned. Scapegoats might be too strong

a word…and it might not be.


Gilmonn unabashedly cursed Crockerman for

having forced them all into an untenable and illegal no-man's-land of circumventions

and conspiracies.


And still, deep in the Earth, what

some-mostly geologists-had called "the freight trains" and others

"bullets" rumbled toward their rendezvous. They could not be traced

anymore, but few doubted they were there. The end might be a matter of days or

weeks away.


Gilmonn entered the limousine's rear door

and poured himself a Scotch and soda from the dispenser. "Tony," he

said, slowly twirling the glass between the fingers of his right hand,

"where do you want to be when it happens?"


The chauffeur did not hesitate. "In

bed," he said. "Screwing my brains out, sir."


They had talked a great deal during the

drive from Long Beach. Tony had been married only six months. Gilmonn thought

of Madeline, his wife for twenty-three years, and while he wanted to be with

her, he did not think they would be screwing their brains out. They would have

their kids together, and their two grandchildren, perhaps in the ranch house in

Arizona. A huge family gathering. The whole clan hadn't been together in five or

six years.


"All that, and we didn't accomplish a _Goddamned

thing, Tony," he said with a sudden deep flood of bitterness. For the

first time since the death of his son, he felt like cursing God. "We don't

know that for sure, Senator."


"I do," Gilmonn said. "If any

man has a right to know he's failed, I do."


_HOSTIAS ET PRECES TIBI, LAUDIS

OFFERIMUS


-


March


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.


-


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

Crockerman'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.


-


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.


-


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.


-


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.


-


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.


-


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 like 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.


DIES IRAE


-


Below San Francisco Bay, hours after

boarding the ark, the young woman who had guided them on the fishing boat-her

name was Clara Fogarty-went among the twenty in the waiting room and spoke to

them, answering questions, trying to keep them all calm. She seemed none too

calm herself; fragile, on the edge.


_Help her , Arthur was ordered. He and several others

immediately obeyed. After a few minutes, he circled back through the people to

Francine and took her hands. Marty hugged him fiercely.


"I'm going to visit the areas where

we'll be staying," he said to Francine.


"The network is telling you

this?"


"No," he said, looking to one

side, frowning slightly. "Something else. A voice I've not heard before.

I'm to meet somebody."


Francine wiped her face with her hands and

kissed him. Arthur lifted Marty with an _oomph and told him to take care

of his mother. "I'll be back in a little while."


He stood beside Clara Fogarty at the middle

hatch on the side opposite where they had entered. The hatch- little more than

an outline in the wall's surface-slid open and they passed through quickly,

before they had a clear impression of what was on the other side.


A brightly illuminated broad hallway,

curving _down , stretched before them. The hatch closed and they regarded

each other nervously. More hatches lined both sides of the hallway.


"Artificial gravity?" Clara Fogarty

asked him.


"I don't know," he said.


At a silent request, they stepped forward.

They remained upright in relation to the floor, with no odd sensations other

than the visual. At the end of the hallway, another open hatchway awaited them;

beyond was a warm half darkness. They entered a chamber similar to the waiting

room.


In the center of this chamber rose a

pedestal about a foot high and a yard wide. On the pedestal rested something

that at first examination Arthur took to be a sculpture. It stood about half as

tall as he, shaped like a hefty square human torso and head-rather, in fact,

like a squared-off and slightly flattened kachina doll. Other than an

abstracted and undivided bosom, it lacked any surface features. In color it was

similar to heat-treated copper, with oily swirls of rainbow iridescence. Its

skin was glossy but not reflective.


Without warning, it lifted smoothly a few

inches above the pedestal and addressed them both out loud:


"I am afraid your people will soon no

longer be wild and free."


Arthur had heard this same voice in his

head just a few minutes ago, beckoning them through the hatches.


"Who are you?" he asked.


"I am not your keeper, but I am your

guide."


"Are you alive?" He did not know

what else to ask.


"I am not biologically alive. I am

part of this vessel, which will in turn soon become part of a much larger

vessel. You are here to prepare your companions for me, that I may instruct

them and carry out my own instructions."


"Are you a robot?" Clara asked.


"I am a symbol, designed to be

acceptable without conveying wrong impressions. In a manner of speaking, I am a

machine, but I am not a servile laborer. Do you understand me?"


The object's voice was deep, authoritative,

yet not masculine.


"Yes," Arthur said.


"Some among your group might panic if

exposed to me without preparation. Yet it is essential that they come to know

and trust me, and come to trust the information and instructions I give them.

Is this understood?"


"Yes." They answered in unison.


"The future of your people, and of all

the information we have retrieved from your planet, depends on how your kind

and my kind interact. Your kind must become disciplined, and I must educate you

about larger realities than most of you have been used to facing."


Arthur nodded, his mouth dry. "We're

inside one of the arks?"


"You are. These vessels will join

together once we are all in space. There are now thirty-one of these vessels,

and aboard twenty-one of them, five hundred humans apiece. The vessels also

contain large numbers of botanical, zoological, and other specimens-not in most

cases whole, but in recoverable form. Is this clear?"


"Yes," Arthur said. Clara nodded.


"Most of my early communications with

you will not be through speech, but through what you might call telepathy, as you

have already been directed by the network. Later, when there is more time, this

intrusive method will be largely abandoned. For now, when you go among your

companions, I will speak through you, but you will have the discretion of

phrasing and timing. We have very little time."


"Has it begun?" Clara asked.


"It has begun," the object said.


"And we're leaving soon?"


"The last passengers and specimens for

this vessel are being loaded now."


Arthur received impressions of crates of

chromium spiders being loaded from small boats through the surface entrance of

the ark. The spiders contained the fruits of weeks of searching and sampling:

genetic material from thousands of plants and animals along the West Coast.


"What can we call you?" Arthur

asked.


"You will make up your own names for

me. Now you must return to your group and introduce them to their quarters,

which are spaced along this hallway. You must also ask for at least four

volunteers to witness the crime that is now being committed."


"We're to witness the destruction of

the Earth?" Clara asked.


"Yes. It is the Law. If you will

excuse me, I have other introductions to make."


They backed out of the shadowy room and

watched as the hatchway slid shut.


"Very efficient," Arthur said.


"The Law.'" Clara smiled thinly.

"Right now, I'm more scared than I ever was on the boat. I don't even know

all the people's names yet."


"Let's get started," Arthur said.

They traversed the curved hallway. The hatch at the opposite end opened and

they saw a cluster of anxious faces. The smell of fear drifted out.


-


Irwin Schwartz stepped into the White House

situation room and nearly bumped into the First Lady. She backed away with a

nervous nod, her hands trembling, and he entered. Everyone's nerves had been frazzled

since the evacuation the night before and the rapid return of the President to

the Capital. No one had slept for more than an hour or two since.


The President stood with Otto Lehrman

before the high-resolution data screens mounted on the wood paneling covering

the concrete walls. The screens were on and showed maps of different portions

of the Northern Hemisphere, Mercator projection, with red spots marking

vanished cities. "Come on in, Irwin," Crockerman said. "We have

some new material from the Puzzle Palace." He seemed almost cheerful.


Irwin turned to the First Lady. "Are

you here to stay?" he asked bluntly. He respected the woman, but did not

like her much.


"The President specially requested my

presence," she said. "He feels we should be united."


"Obviously, you agree with him."


"I agree with him," she said.


Never in United States history had a First

Lady deserted her husband when he was under fire; Mrs. Crockerman knew this,

and it must have taken some courage to return. Still, Schwartz had himself

given long hours of thought to resigning from the administration; he could not

judge her too harshly.


He held out his hand. She accepted and they

shook firmly. "Welcome back aboard," he said.


"We have photos about twenty minutes

old from a Diamond Apple," Lehrman said. "Technicians are putting

them on the screens any minute." Diamond Apples were reconnaissance

satellites launched in the early 1990s. The National Reconnaissance Office was

very zealous with Diamond Apple pictures. Usually, they would have been

reserved for the eyes of the President and Secretary of Defense only; that

Schwartz was seeing them indicated something extraordinary was in store.


"Here they are," Lehrman said as

the screens blanked.


Crockerman apparently had been told what to

expect. Lines of glowing white rimmed in red and blue-green laced across a

midnight-black background. "You know," Crockerman said softly,

standing back from the screens, "I was right after all. Goddammit, Irwin,

I was right, and I was wrong at the same time. How do you figure that?"


Schwartz stared at the glowing lines, not

making any sense of them until a grid and labels came up with the display. This

was the North Atlantic; the lines were trenches, midocean ridges and faults.


"The white," Lehrman said,

"is heat residue from thermonuclear explosions. Hundreds, perhaps

thousands, maybe tens of thousands-all along the Earth's deep-ocean seams and

wrinkles."


The First Lady half sobbed, half caught her

breath. Crockerman stared at the displays with a sad grin.


"Now the western Pacific,"

Lehrman said. More white lines. "By the way, Hawaii has been heavily

assaulted by tsunamis. The West Coast of North America is about twenty, thirty

minutes away from major waves; I'd guess it's already been hit by waves from

these areas." He pointed to stacks of white lines near Alaska and

California. "The damage could be extensive. The energy released by all the

explosions is enormous; weather patterns around the world will change. The

Earth's heat budget…" He shook his head. "But I doubt we'll be

given much time to worry about it."


"It's a softening up?" Schwartz

asked.


Lehrman shrugged. "Who can understand

the design, or what this means? We're not dead yet, so it's a preliminary;

that's all anybody knows. Seismic stations all over are reporting heavy

anomalistic fault behavior."


"I don't think the bullets have

collided yet," Crockerman said. "Irwin's hit the nail on the head.

It's a softening up."


Lehrman sat down at the large

diamond-shaped table and held out his hands: your guess is as good as mine.


"I think we have maybe an hour, maybe

less," the President said. "There's nothing we can do. Nothing we

could have ever done."


Schwartz studied the Diamond Apple displays

with a slight squint. They still conveyed no convincing reality. They were

attractive abstractions. What did Hawaii look like now? What would San

Francisco look like in a few minutes? Or New York?


"I'm sorry not everybody is

here," Crockerman said. "I'd like to thank them."


"We're not evacuating…again?"

Schwartz asked automatically.


Lehrman gave him a sharp, ironic look.

"We don't have a lunar settlement, Irwin. The President, when he was a

senator, was instrumental in getting those funds cut in 1990."


"My mistake," Crockerman said,

his tone almost bantering. At that moment, had Schwartz had a pistol, he would

have killed the man; his anger was a helpless, undirected passion that could

just as easily leave him in tears as draw him into violence. The displays

conveyed no reality; Crockerman, however, conveyed it all.


"We really are children,"

Schwartz said after the flush had gone out of his face and his hands had

stopped trembling. "We never had a chance."


Crockerman looked around as the floor shook

beneath their feet. "I'm almost anxious for the end," he said.

"I hurt so bad inside."


The shaking became more violent.


The First Lady held the doorframe and then

leaned on the table. Schwartz reached out to help her to a chair. Secret

Service agents entered the room, struggling to stay on their feet, catching

hold of the table edge. After Schwartz had seated the First Lady, he sat down

again himself and gripped the wooden arms of the chair. The shaking was not

dying away; it was getting worse.


"How long will it take, do you

think?" Crockerman asked nobody in particular.


"Mr. President, we should get you out

of the building and onto the grounds," said the agent who had made the

most progress into the situation room; His voice quavered. He was terrified.

"Everybody else, too."


"Don't be ridiculous," Crockerman

said. "If the roof fell on me now, it would be a goddamn blessing. Right,

Irwin?" His smile was bright, but there were tears in his eyes.


The display on the screen went out, and the

lights in the room dimmed shortly after, to return with less conviction.


Schwartz stood. Time once again to be an

example. "I think we should let these men do their job, Mr.

President." He had a sudden heavy sensation in his stomach, as if he were

in a fast-rising elevator. Crockerman stumbled and an agent caught him. The

rising sensation continued, seemingly forever, and then stopped with a

suddenness that lifted the White House a fraction of an inch from its

foundations. The framework of steel beams that had been built into the White

House shell in the late forties and early fifties squealed and groaned, but

held. Plaster fell in clouds and patches from the ceiling and a rich wood panel

split with a loud report.


Schwartz heard the President calling his

name. From where he lay on the floor-somehow he had rolled under the table-he

tried to answer, but all the breath had been knocked out of him. Gasping,

blinking, wiping plaster dust from his eyes, he listened to a hideous creaking

and splitting noise overhead. He heard enormous thuds outside-stone facing

coming loose, he guessed, or columns toppling. He was forcibly reminded of so

many movies about the demise of ancient cities by earthquake or volcano, huge

blocks of marble tumbling onto crowds of hapless citizens.


_Not the White House…Surely not that.


"Irwin, Otto…" The President

again. A pair of legs walking with short jerks near the table.


"Under here, sir," Schwartz said.

He saw a brief portrait of his wife in his mind, her features indistinct, as if

he looked at an old, badly focused picture. She smiled. Then he saw their

daughter, married and living in South Carolina…if the ocean had spared her.


Again the rising. He was pressed to the

floor. It was brief, only a second or two, but he knew it was enough. When it

stopped, he waited for the collapse of the upper floors, eyes scrunched tight. _Jesus,

is the entire eastern seaboard going up? The wait and the silence seemed

interminable. Schwartz could not decide whether to open his eyes again…or to

wait out the long seconds, _feeling the sway of the building above.


He turned his head to one side and opened

his eyes.


The President had fallen and lay faceup

beside the table, ghost-white with dust. His eyes were open but not aware.


The White House regained its voice and

screamed like a thing alive.


The massive legs of the table buckled and

exploded in splinters. They could not withstand the weight of tons of cement

and steel and stone.


-


Quaint, Edward thought; quaint and touching

and he wished he could muster up the emotion to join them; a group of twenty or

more had gathered by now in a circle a hundred yards behind the Granite Point,

singing hymns and more folk songs. Betsy clung to him on the asphalt path.

Fresh tremors had subsided, but the air itself seemed to be grumbling, complaining.


Ironically, having climbed the trail to

have a good vantage, they now stood well back from the rim. A foot-wide crack

had appeared in the terrace stonework. From where they stood, they could see

only the upper third of the opposite wall of the valley.


"You're a geologist," Betsy said,

massaging his neck with one hand, something he had not asked her to do, but

which felt good. "Do you know what's going on?"


"No," he said.


"It's not just an earthquake,

though?"


"I don't think so."


"So it's beginning now. We just got up

here."


He nodded and swallowed back a lump of

fear. Now that it had come, he was near panic. He felt trapped, claustrophobic,

with only all of the Earth and sky to move in-not even that, lacking wings. He

felt squeezed between steel plates of gravity and his own puny weakness. His

body was forcibly reminding him that fear was difficult to control, and

presence of mind in the face of death was rare.


"God," Betsy said, placing her

cheek against his, looking toward the Point. She was shaking, too. "I

thought at least we'd have time to talk about it, sit around a

campfire…"


Edward held her more tightly. He imagined

her as a wife, and then thought of Stella, marveling at the fickleness of his

fantasies; he was grasping for many lives, now that his own seemed so short.

Over his fear he thought of long years together with both of them.


The tremors had almost passed.


The hymn singers continued searching for a

common key, hopelessly lost. Minelli and Inez came from the trees and climbed

the hill between the close switchbacks of the asphalt path. Minelli whooped out

loud and ran his hand through his hair. "Jesus, isn't adrenaline

great?"


"He's crazy," Inez said,

breathing hard, her face pale. "Maybe not the craziest I've met, but close."


"Does it feel warmer to you?"

Betsy asked.


Edward considered that possibility. Would

heat transmit itself before a shock wave? No. If the bullets were colliding, or

had collided only a short time ago, deep in the center of the Earth, the

expanding and irresistible plasma of their mutual destruction would crack the

Earth wide before heat could ever reach the surface.


"I don't think it's warmer because

of…the end," Edward said. He had never felt his mind racing so rapidly

over so many subjects. He wanted to see what was happening in the valley.


"Shall we?" he asked, pointing to

the terraces and the still-intact rim.


"What else did we come here for?"

Minelli asked, laughing and shaking his head like a wet dog. Sweat flew from

his hair. He whooped again and took Inez's plump hand, dragging her across the

gravel to the terraces.


"Minelli," she protested, looking

back at them for help. Edward glanced at Betsy, and she nodded once, face

flushed.


"I am so _terrified " she

whispered. "It's like being high." They walked together toward the

edge. "I pity all those folks who stayed home. I really do."


The two couples stood alone on the terrace,

looking down into the valley. Not much had changed; there was no visible

damage, not at first glance, anyway. Then Minelli pointed to a thick column of

smoke. "Look."


The Ahwanee was on fire. Nearly the entire

hotel was ablaze.


"I love that old place," Betsy

said. Inez moaned and wrung her hands.


"How much longer, do you think?"

Inez asked, her expression that of someone about to sneeze, or shriek. She did

neither.


"It seems real close," he said.

Betsy raised her arms with a moan and he hugged her tightly, almost squeezing

the breath out of her.


"Hold me, dammit," Inez demanded.

Minelli blinked at her, then followed Edward's example.


 


Ten minutes after the meeting, Arthur and

Clara had assigned the members of their group to the new quarters along the

curved hallway. Two of the younger children were crying inconsolably and all

were emotionally exhausted; Arthur stood in the confines of the cabin he and

Francine and Marty would share, pondering the common sanitation facilities

accessible through the first doorway on the right of the sealed hatch where

they had met with the robot. A few had already used the lavatory; some had gone

in there to be sick. Clara was one of the latter. She came to the Gordons'

cabin and leaned against the edge of the hatch, rubbing her eyes with one hand.

"All settled, I think," she said. "What's next?"


 


Francine had said little for the entire

time they had been aboard. She sat on the bed, clutching her box of disks and

papers with one hand. Marty held her other hand firmly. She stared at Clara

with a vacancy that worried Arthur.


_Choose four witnesses. The restatement of the command in their minds was

polite but unequivocal. _It is the Law.


Clara jerked and stood upright. "You

heard that?" she asked.


He nodded. Francine turned to look at

Arthur. "They want us to choose four witnesses," he told her.


"Witnesses to what?" Her voice

was small, distant.


"The end," he said.


"Not the children," Francine said

firmly. Arthur briefly conferred with the voice. _Two must be younger, to

pass on the memories.


"They want two children," he

said. Francine clenched her fists.


"I don't want Martin to experience

that," she said. "It's bad enough if we have to."


"They want kids for what?" Marty

asked, looking between them, wide-eyed.


"It's the Law. Their law," Arthur

said. "They need some of us to watch the Earth when it's destroyed, and

two of them must be kids."


Marty thought that over for a moment.

"All the other kids are younger than me," he said, "except one.

That girl. I don't know her name."


Francine turned Marty to face her and

gripped his arms. "Do you know what's going to happen?" she asked.


"The Earth is going to blow up,"

Marty said. "They want us to see it so we know what it's like."


"Do you know who _they

are?" Francine asked.


"The people that talk to Dad,"

Marty said.


"He understands pretty well,"

Arthur said.


"I'll say," Clara agreed.


Francine gave her an angry glance, then

focused again on Marty. "Do you want to see?" she asked.


Marty shook his head no. "It would

give me nightmares," he said.


"Then it's decided," Francine

said. "He-"


"But Mom, if I don't see, I won't

know."


"Know what?"


"How mad I'm supposed to be."


Francine searched her son's face slowly,

and then let him go, wrapping her arms around herself. "Only four?"

she asked softly.


"At least four," he said.

"All who wish to see."


"Marty," Francine said,

"we'll share nightmares, okay?"


"Okay."


"You're a very brave boy," Clara

said.


"Are you going to watch?" Arthur

asked Francine.


She nodded slowly. "If you and Marty

watch, I can't chicken out, can I?"


_How much longer? he asked.


_There will be a gathering in the common

viewing cabin in an hour and ten minutes.


He sat on the narrow lower bed beside

Francine and Marty. "We'll be leaving the Earth soon," he said.

"In a few minutes, probably."


"Can we feel it when we take off,

Dad?" Marty asked.


"No," he said. "We won't

feel it."


 


Grant had followed the Gordons' station

wagon to the bay, and waited a hundred yards away, engine idling, as they

parked and walked to the pier. Then he had parked his BMW beside the wagon,

slung a pair of binoculars around his neck, and followed at a discreet

distance, feeling like a fool, asking himself-as Danielle had asked when he

left-why he didn't simply confront them and demand answers.


He knew he wouldn't do that. First, he

could not really believe that Arthur would be part of a government escape into

space. Grant couldn't believe such an escape was contemplated, or even

possible. Nobody could travel far enough away to survive the Earth's

destruction-not if such destruction was as spectacular as what he had seen in

the movies. And even if they could-traveling out beyond the moon, for

example-he didn't think they would be able to live very long in space.


But he was curious. He believed as firmly

as Danielle that the Gordons were up to something. In the curious kind of

floating emotional state he now experienced, tracking the Gordons offered a

possibility for diversion.


He was otherwise powerless. He could not

save his family. He felt what billions of others-all who knew and believed-were

feeling now, a deep terror surmounted by helplessness, resulting in a dopey

calmness, not unlike what his grandparents must have felt as they were led to

the death pits in Auschwitz.


This, of course, was vaster and more final

than the Holocaust. Nondiscriminatory. Thinking such thoughts pressed him up

against a wall of ignorance; he had never been particularly imaginative, and he

could not conceive the means or motives behind what he nevertheless knew was

coming.


He stood on the concrete seawall and

watched them board the fishing boat. The boat, covered with people, sailed out

to the north.


Then he sat on the concrete and rock,

buttoning his coat and slipping on a cap to keep away the chill of the breezes

off the bay.


Grant had no clear plans, or clear idea

what he was doing. If he waited, perhaps an answer would come.


Hours passed. He doubled his legs up on the

rock and pressed his knees against his chest, chin on the new denim of his

pants. The afternoon passed very slowly, but he stuck with his vigil.


The ground trembled slightly and the water

level of the bay rose a foot against the seawall, and then fell until the rocks

at the base of the wall were exposed-a drop of perhaps four or five feet. He

expected-almost welcomed the possibility-that the water would rise again

drastically and drown him.


It did not rise again.


Like a robot, he stood and walked through

the unlocked gate to the end of the pier, where he leaned his elbows against

the wood rail, staring north. He could barely see Alcatraz beyond the San

Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The water just south of Alcatraz appeared rougher

than usual, almost white.


A dark gray shape sat in the middle of the

whiteness. For a moment, Grant thought a ship had overturned in the bay and was

floating hull-up. But the gray bulk was rising higher in the water, not

sinking. He lifted his binoculars and focused on the shape.


With a jerk of surprise, he saw that it was

already out of the water, and that it had a flat bottom. He had an impression

of something shaped like a flatiron, or like the body of a horseshoe crab, four

or five hundred feet in length. It rose above the span of the bridge, lifting

on a brilliant cone of blinding green. Across the bay came a teeth-aching

high-pitched hissing, roaring sound. The object accelerated rapidly upward and

dwindled against the late morning sky. In a few seconds, it was gone. How many

others had seen it? he wondered.


Could the government really have had

something in the works-something spectacular?


He bit his lip and shook his head, crying

now, not knowing why. He felt a peculiar relief. Somehow, a few people were

getting away. That was a kind of victory, as important as his parents surviving

the death camps.


And for those still condemned…


Grant wiped the tears from his eyes and

hurried back along the pier, bumping into an iron pole as he passed through the

gate. He ran to his car, hoping he would be in time. He wanted to be home with

his family.


The bridge was practically deserted as he

crossed. He could not see the spot in the bay where the water had been white.


He did not know how he would explain this

to Danielle. Her concerns would be more immediate, less abstract; she would ask

why he did not try to find a way to save them all.


Perhaps he would say nothing, just tell her

that he had followed the Gordons as far south as Redwood City…and stopped,

waited a few hours, and turned back.


She wouldn't believe him.


-


The ship, Arthur learned, contained 412

passengers, all boarded in secrecy during the morning and the previous night.

The passengers had been divided into groups of twenty, and for the most part

would not mingle until several days had passed, and they had grown used to

their situation. The only exception would be the witnessing.


Out of their group of twenty, nine had

volunteered, two children, three women, and four men, including Arthur,

Francine, and Marty. The nine followed the stocky copper robot through the

chamber at the end of the curved hall.


They walked along a narrow black strip in a

cylindrical corridor. Arthur tried to make a map in his head, not entirely

succeeding. The ship apparently had compartments that moved in relation to each

other.


Passing through a hatch ahead of them, the

robot rolled abruptly to take up a new vertical. They found themselves doing

likewise, with a few moans of complaint and surprise. In a cabin about a

hundred feet long and forty or fifty feet deep, they faced a broad transparent

panel that gave a view of bright steady stars. Marty kept close to Arthur,

holding his arm tightly with one hand, the other clenched into a fist. The boy

had sucked his lips inward over his teeth and was making small smacking sounds.

Francine followed, tense and reluctant.


Arthur looked down at his son and smiled.

"Your choice, fellah," he said. Marty nodded. This was no longer a

youngster playing patsy to a pretty blond cousin; this was a boy feeling his

way to manhood.


More people entered through a hatch in the

opposite side of the cabin in groups of four or five or six, children among

them, until a small crowd faced the darkness and stars; Arthur estimated

seventy or eighty. He seemed to recognize some from his time on the network,

though that was hardly likely; all he had heard were their inner voices, which

almost never matched physical appearance. He thought of Hicks's inner voice,

robust and young and sharp, and of his white-haired, grandfatherly presence. _I'm

going to miss him. He could have helped us a lot here.


Arthur flashed on Harry, desiccated,

decaying, buried deep in a coffin in the Earth; or had Ithaca had him cremated?

That seemed to suit both of them better.


A tall young black man stood behind Arthur

and Francine. Arthur nodded a greeting and the man returned the nod, cordial,

dignified, terrified, his neck muscles taut as cords. Arthur examined the other

faces, trying to learn something from the mix, how they had been chosen. Age?

There were few older than fifty; but then, these were just the ones who had

chosen to witness. Race? All types found on North America were represented.

Intelligence? There was no way to tell that…


"We're in space, aren't we?" the

tall young man asked. "That's what they said, I just didn't believe them.

We're in space, and we're going to join with other arks soon. My name's

Reuben," he said, offering his hand to Arthur. They shook. Reuben's hand

was damp, but so was Arthur's. "This your son?"


"This is Martin," Arthur said.

Reuben reached down and shook Marty's hand. Marty looked up at him solemnly,

still sucking his lips. "And my wife, Francine."


"I don't know how to feel," Reuben

said. "I don't know what's real and what isn't anymore."


Arthur agreed. He did not feel like

talking.


Something flashed against the stars,

turning in the sunlight, and then steadied and approached them. Francine

pointed, awed. It was shaped like a huge, rounded arrowhead, flat on one side,

contoured to a central ridge on the opposite side.


"That's Singapore," said a woman

behind them. Not all of the network received information at once, Arthur

decided; that made sense. It would have flooded them.


"Singapore," Reuben said, shaking

his head. "I've never even been there."


"We have Istanbul and Cleveland,"

said a young man at one end of the cabin, hardly more than a boy.


The gray ship passed out of view above

them. There was still no sensation of motion, nor any sound except for the

murmurs and shuffling of the cabin's occupants. They might have been standing

in an exhibit hall waiting for some spectacular new form of entertainment to

begin.


The stars began to move all in one

direction; the ark was rotating. Arthur searched for constellations he knew,

and for a moment saw none; then he spotted the Southern Cross, and as the

rotation continued, Orion.


The white and blue limb of the Earth rose

into view and the occupants of the cabin gave a collective gasp.


_Still there. Still looks the same.


"Jesus," Reuben said.

"Poppa, Momma, Jesus."


_Danielle, Grant, Becky. Angkor Wat, Taj

Mahal, Library of Congress. Grand Canyon. The house and the river. Steppes of

central Asia. Cockroaches, elephants, Olduvai Gorge, New York City, Dublin,

Beijing. The first woman I ever dated, Kate-Katherine. The bones of the dog who

helped me come to grips with the world and become a man.


"That's the Earth, isn't it,

Dad?" Marty asked quietly.


"That's it."


"It's still there. Maybe we can go

back and nothing will happen."


Arthur found himself nodding. _Maybe so.


The woman who had known about Singapore

said, "They're still in the Earth. They're the last of the planet-eaters.

They can't leave because we'll get them." Arthur glanced nervously at her,

as if she were a dangerous sibyl; her face was pale and convulsed.


-


"Rock of a-a-a-ges…"


The singing had taken a slightly frantic

tone, sharper, higher, more disturbing. The column of smoke from the Ahwanee

had risen above the Royal Arches; the hotel was almost consumed, and sparks

from the blaze threatened to ignite the surrounding woods. From their vantage,

they watched park fire trucks spraying water on the flaming ruins.


_Spend your last few minutes trying to save

something, Edward thought. _Not a

bad way to go. He envied the fire fighters and park rangers. The fire took

their minds away from the inevitable. Up on Glacier Point, people had nothing

to do but think about what would happen-and sing very badly.


The rock beneath them shifted the merest

fraction. Betsy returned from the rest room, sat firmly beside Edward on the

lowest terrace, and placed her arm through his; they had not been separated for

more than a few minutes the last hour. Still, he felt alone, and looking at

her, sensed she felt alone as well.


"Do you hear it?" she asked.


"The grumbling?"


"Yes."


"I hear it."


He imagined the lumps of neutronium and

anti-neutronium, or whatever they were, meeting at the center; perhaps they had

already met, minutes or even an hour before, and the expanding front of raging

plasma had just begun to make its effects known on the Earth's mantle and thin

crust.


In high school, Edward had once tried to

draw a scale chart of the layers of a section of the Earth, with the inner and

outer cores, mantle, and crust outlined in proportion. He had quickly found

that the crust did not show up as more than the thinnest of pencil lines, even

when he extended his drawing to an eight-foot-long piece of butcher paper.

Using his calculator to figure how large the drawing would have to be, he had

learned that the floor of the school gymnasium might suffice to hold a drawing

that gave the crust a line one third the width of his little finger.


Hidden volumes and surfaces again.


Insignificance.


Geologists dealt with insignificance all

the time, but how many applied it directly to their personal lives?


"…cleft for meeee…Let me hüide

myself in theeee…"


"The air is getting hotter,"

Minelli said. The neckband of his black T-shirt was soaked and his hair hung

down in black ribbons. Inez sat farther back, on the upper terrace, sobbing

quietly to herself.


"Go to her," Edward commanded,

nodding in her direction.


Minelli gave him a helpless look, then

climbed up the steps.


"People are all that matter," he

said softly to Betsy. "Nothing else matters. Not in the beginning, not in

the end."


"Look," Betsy said, pointing to

the east. Clouds were racing across the sky, not billowing but simply forming

in streamers at very high altitude. The air smelled electric and was

oppressive, tangible, thick and hot. The sun seemed farther away, lost in a

thin milky soup.


Edward looked down from the clouds, dizzy,

and tried to orient on the valley. He searched for a familiar landmark,

something to give him a fixed perspective.


The Royal Arches, in slow motion, slipped

in huge curved flakes down the gray face of granite onto the burning hotel.

Tiny trees danced frantically and then fell on their own isolated chips of

rock, limbs raised by the passing air. The roar, even across the valley, was

deafening. The scythe-shaped flakes, dozens of yards wide, crumpled like old

plaster on the valley floor, extinguishing the Ahwanee, the fire trucks, fire

fighters, and tiny crowds of onlookers in a blossoming cloud of dust and debris.

Boulders the size of houses rolled through the forest and into the Merced

River. New slopes of talus crept across the valley floor like an amoeba's

pseudopods, alive, churning, settling, striving for stability.


Betsy said nothing. Edward glanced apprehensively

at the crack in the terrace nearby.


Minelli had given up trying to hold on to

Inez. She fled from the rim, her breasts and arms and hips bouncing as she

leaped up steps and over rails. He grinned at Edward and held out his hands

helplessly, then descended to sit beside them.


"Some folks ain't got it," he

said over the declining rumble of falling rocks. He looked admiringly at Betsy.

"Guts," he said. "True grit. Did you see those concentrics come

apart? Just like in school. Hundreds of years in a second."


"We aare chüildren in youuur

haaands…" The hymn singers were self-absorbed now, paying no attention

to all that was going on around them. Entranced.


_To each his own.


"That's how the domes are formed, that

kind of concentric jointing," Minelli explained. "Water gets into the

joints and freezes, expands, splits the rock away."


Betsy ignored him, staring fixedly into the

valley, her and still locked in Edward's.


"The falls," she said.

"Yosemite Falls."


The upper ribbon of white water had been

blocked, leaving the lower falls to drain what had already descended. To the

right of where the upper Yosemite had once been, the freestanding pillar of

Lost Arrow leaned several hundred feet of its length slowly out from the cliff

face, broke into sections in midfall, and tumbled down the brush- and

tree-covered slopes below. More rock spilled from the northeastern granite

walls above the valley, obscuring the floor with disintegrating boulders and

roils of brown and white dust.


"Why not us?" Minelli said.

"It's all on that side."


A superstitious something in Edward wanted

to shut him up. _Pretend as if we're not here. Don't let it know.


The rock beneath them quivered. The trees

beyond the hymn singers swayed and groaned and splintered, limbs whipping back

and forth. Edward heard the hideous crack of great leaves of granite shearing

away beneath the point. Three thousand feet below-he didn't need to look to

know-Camp Curry and Curry Village were being buried under millions of tons of

jagged rock. The hymn singers stopped and clutched each other to keep their

balance.


"Time to get away," Edward said

to Betsy. She lay flat on her back, staring up at the twisted, malevolent

overcast painted on the sky. The air seemed thinner; great waves of high and

low pressure raced over the land, propelled by the minute shifting of

continents.


Edward reached under her arms and dragged

her away from the lowest terrace, up the steps. The game now was to stay alive

as long as possible, to see as much as they could see-to experience the

spectacle to their last breath, which could be at any moment.


Minelli crawled after them, face wrapped in

a manic grin. "Can you believe this?" he said over and over.


The valley was alive with the echoes of

falling sheets of granite. Edward could hardly hear his own words to Betsy as

they stumbled and ran down the asphalt path, away from the rim.


A scant yard behind Minelli, the rock

split. The terrace and all that was beneath leaned away, the gap widening with

majestic slowness. Minelli scrambled frantically, his grin transformed into a

rictus of terror.


To the east, like the great wise head of a

dozing giant, Half Dome nodded a few degrees and tilted into a chasm opened in

the floor of the valley. In arc-shaped wedges, it began to come apart. Liberty

Cap and Mount Broderick, on the south side of the valley, leaned to the north,

but stayed whole, rolling and sliding like giant pebbles into the mass of Half

Dome's settling fragments, diverting, and then finally shattering and sending

fragments through miles of the valley. Somewhere in the obscurity of dust were

the remnants of the Mist Trail, Vernal Fall, Nevada Fall, and the Emerald Lake.


The silt of the valley floor liquefied

under the vibration, swallowing meadows and roads and absorbing the Merced

along its entire length. The fresh slopes of talus dropped their leading edges

into snakelike fractures and began to spread again; behind them, more leaves of

granite plummeted.


The air was stifling. The hymn singers, on

their knees, weeping and singing at once, could not be heard, only seen. The

death-sound of Yosemite was beyond comprehension, having crossed the border

into pain, a wide-spectrum roaring howl.


Edward and Betsy could not keep balance

even on their hands and knees; they rolled to the ground and held each other.

Betsy had closed her eyes, lips working against his neck; she was praying.

Edward, curiously, did not feel like praying; he was exultant now. He looked to

the east, away from the valley, beyond the tumbling trees, and saw something dark

and massive on the horizon. Not clouds, not a front of storm, but-


He was past any expression of awe or

wonder. What he was seeing could only be one thing: east of the Sierra Nevada,

along the fault line drawn between the mountains formed by ages of wrinkling

pressure, and the desert beyond, the continent was splitting, raising its

jagged edge dozens of miles into the atmosphere.


Edward did not need to do calculations to

know this meant the end. Such energy-even if all other activity ceased-would be

enough to smash all living things along the western edge of the continent,

enough to change the entire face of North America.


Acceleration in the pit of his stomach. _Going

up. His skin seemed to be boiling. _Going up. Winds blew that

threatened to lift them away. With the last of his strength, he held on to

Betsy. He could not see Minelli for a moment, and then he opened his tingling

eyes and saw against a muddy blue sky filled with stars-the atmosphere racing

away above them-saw Minelli _standing , smiling beatifically, arms

raised, near the new rim of the point. He receded through walls of dust on a

fresh-hewn leaf of granite, mouth open, shouting unheard into the overwhelming

din.


_Yosemite is gone. The Earth might be

gone. I'm still thinking. The only

sensation Edward could feel, other than the endless acceleration, was Betsy's

body against his own. He could hardly breathe.


They no longer lay on the ground, but fell.

Edward saw walls of rock, great fresh white revealed volumes on all

sides-thousands of feet wide-and spinning trees and disintegrating clumps of

dirt and even a small flying woman, yards away, face angelic, eyes closed, arms

spread.


It seemed an eternity before the light

vanished.


The granite volumes enclosed them all.


-


From ten thousand miles, the Earth seemed

as natural and peaceful and beautiful as it had over thirty years before, when

Arthur had first seen it in full-frame pictures from space. That view-a clouded

jewel, opal and lapis marbled with rich whorls of cloud-had entranced him, made

him more than ever before feel a part of some cosmic whole. It had changed his

life.


The witnesses were subdued. Nobody said a

word or made a loud sound. He had never experienced such rapt concentration in

a crowd. Marty stood by his side, having let go of his hand, a boy barely four

feet eleven inches tall, standing alone. _How much does he understand?


_Perhaps as much as I do.


Nothing compared with what they expected to

see. Not the burning of an ancestral house, or the sinking of an ocean liner;

not the bombing of a city, or the horror of mass graves in time of revolution

or war. The crime that had been committed against humanity was virtually total.

Except for them-the occupants of the arks, and the records saved for transport

in the arks-the Earth would be no more.


He could not wrap his thoughts around the

totality. He had to take separate losses and mull them over. They were highly

personal losses, things he would regret; but his single mind was not the

holographic mind of humanity.


Essential things would be destroyed that he

had never known. Connections, evidences, histories as yet uncovered,

irretrievable. All the arks could save was what humans had so far learned about

themselves. Hereafter, they would be refugees with no hope of ever returning to

a homeland, no hope of recovering the thread of the pasts they had lost.


They would be dependent on the kindness, or

whatever their motivations might be, of strangers, of nonhuman intelligences

that so far had shown little evidence of being willing to reveal themselves;

benefactors as mysterious as their destroyers.


Lives. Billions of human beings, their

existence always fragile, sharing mutual oblivion. There was no way Arthur

could encompass that. He had to deal in abstractions.


The abstractions were enough to sear him.

Backed by the realization that what he saw was real and immediate, his soul

burned. He had had months to come to grips with these facts and implications;

those months had not done to him what the vision of the Earth, whole and

bright, was doing to him now.


No explanations came from the network.

Later, when each of the witnesses had faced their private griefs, perhaps the

details of the end would be made clear, and a planetary postmortem would be

conducted.


Strange images flashed through his mind.

Television commercials from his childhood, smiling women in Peter Pan collars

with tightly coiffed hair, images of motherhood tending perfect families. Faces

of soldiers dying in Vietnam. Presidents standing one by one before the

television cameras, ending with Crockerman, a very sad image indeed.


The 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar. He

had never worked there, but he had toured the historic site often enough. The

600-inch at Mauna Kea. His dormitory room at Cal Tech. The face of the first

woman he had ever made love to, that first year in university. Professors

lecturing. His joy on discovering the properties of a Mobius strip; he had been

thirteen at the time. Equal joys on grasping the concepts of limits in

calculus, and reading the first articles on black holes in the late 1960s.


Harry. Always Harry.


The first time he had seen Francine, in a

skimpy black one-piece swimsuit, as voluptuous as a goddess from the sea, with

long wet black hair, the backs of her legs and her inner thighs rough with damp

sand, running to take a towel from her friend and collapsing on her back with a

laugh not five yards from where Arthur sat. _Not all is lost.


Marty touched his arm. "Dad, what's

that?"


The globe did not seem noticeably

different. But Marty pointed, and others among the witnesses were murmuring,

pointing.


Over the Pacific, a silver-white mass grew

like mold in a petri dish. Over the western United States and what they could

see of Australia, similar blossoms of condensing moisture expanded.


Within minutes, the Earth blanketed itself

in an impenetrable blanket of white and gray. Waves passed through the mass,

ripples as visible as those in a pond, but moving with clockwork slowness.

Above the north pole, frantic curtains of light played, guttering and re-forming

like lines of candles in a breeze. They were aurorae. Something was wreaking

havoc with Earth's interior dynamo.


Arthur pictured the explosion expanding

through the superhot, highly radioactive inner core to the outer core, where

the Earth's magnetic field was born. The dense molten material compressing even

more highly on the edge of the expanding blast. Mechanical shock waves shooting

out to the crust, shifting the ocean basins- already weakened by the chains of

thermonuclear explosions-and shifting the continents, up to ten times thicker

than the ocean basins, buckling them all, raising them a few hundred feet, or a

few miles. Oceans receding, spilling out over the continents…All now hidden

behind the masses of clouds.


The Earth's surface extremely hot,

atmosphere sloshing like water in a bowl. Most of humanity dead already,

destroyed by earthquakes, horrendous atmospheric storms or floods. Soon the

rock below would compress no more, and the Earth would-


"Jesus," Reuben said behind them.

Arthur glanced at him; the young man's face expressed both fascination and

horror.


The clouds clarified. They glimpsed through

smeared atmospherics a muddy, churning mass, lit in places with the hellish

light of magma welling up through fractures hundreds of miles wide. Continental

and ocean-floor plates drove together at their edges, fusing into solids no

more able to keep their shape and character than gases or liquids, rippling

like fabric.


Nowhere could he see any of the works of

humanity. Cities-if any still existed, which did not seem likely- would have

been far too small. Most of Europe and Asia were on the other side of the

globe, out of sight, their fate no different from what they saw happening to

eastern Asia and the western United States and Australia. Indeed, these

landmasses could no longer be distinguished; there were no oceans or land, only

belts of translucent superheated steam and cooler cloud and tortured basins of

mud, shot through with dull brown magma and, here and there, great white spots

of plasma beginning to burrow out from the interior.


"Is it going to blow up?" Marty

asked.


Arthur shook his head, unable to speak.


Despite the growing distance between the

ark and Earth, the globe visibly expanded, but again with clockwork slowness.


Arthur checked his watch. They had been

viewing for fifteen minutes; the time had passed in a flash.


Again the Earth took on the appearance of a

jewel, but this time a great bloated fire opal, orange and brown and deep ruby

red, shot through with spectral patches of brilliant green and white. The crust

melted, turning into basaltic slag adrift in slowly spinning patches on a sea

of brown and red. There were no discernible features but the colors. The Earth,

dying, became an incomprehensible abstraction, horribly beautiful.


Already, with the appearance of long

spirals of white and green, intensely bright, the final fate became obvious.

The limb of the world no longer made a smooth curve; it had visible

irregularities, broad low lumps distinct against the blackness. From these

lumps, jets of vapor hundreds of miles high lanced through the turbid remnants

of the atmosphere and cast pale gray fans into space.


Such volcanoes might have been seen in the

early ages of the Earth's coalescence, but not since. New chains of released

fire and vapor emerged across the face of the distorted globe. Slowly, a

spiraling snake of white plasma shot chunks from its interior coils outward,

the projectiles traveling at thousands of kilometers an hour but still falling

back, being reabsorbed.


No single piece of the Earth's crust had

yet been flung out with a velocity equal to or greater than eighteen thousand

miles per hour, orbital, velocity, much less escape velocity. But the trend was

obvious.


Countless island-sized bolides pocked the

face of the Earth with a churning effervescence. These bolides rose hundreds,

even thousands of miles, then fell, scattering broad trajectories of smaller

debris. At the limb, the increased altitude of these molten projectiles was

apparent. Energy rapidly built sufficient to toss them into orbit, and even to

blow them free from the bulk of the globe.


_Home. Arthur connected suddenly with all that he saw; the abstraction took

on solidity and meaning. The stars behind the glowing, swelling Earth suddenly

filled with menace; he imagined them as the glints of wolves' eyes in an

infinite night-bound forest. He paraphrased what Harry had said on his tape:


_There once was an infant lost in the

woods, crying its heart out, wondering why no one answered, drawing down the

wolves…


He was past tears now, past anything but a

deep blunt suffocating pain. _Home. Home.


Marty faced the panel with eyes wide and

mouth open; almost the same expression Arthur had seen when his son watched

Saturday morning cartoons on television, only slightly different: tighter, with

a hint of puzzlement, eyes searching.


The Earth bloated horribly. Beneath the

swelling crust and mantle, the spirals and fractures of white and green light

widened into vast canals and highways running crazy random courses through a

uniform dull red landscape. Huge bolides exited in long graceful curves, arcing

thousands of miles-entire Earth radü-out in space, and not falling back to the

surface, but tracing glowing orbits around the stricken planet.


Twenty-five minutes had passed. Arthur's

legs ached and he had drenched his clothes in sweat. The room filled with an

awful animal stench, fear and grief and silent agony.


Virtually everyone he had ever known was

dead, their bodies lost in the general apocalypse; every place he had ever

been, all of his records and the records of his family, all the children Marty

had grown up with. Everyone on the ark was cut adrift in nothingness. He could

distinctly feel the separation, the sudden loss, as if he had always known the

presence of humanity around him, a _psychic connection that was no more.


The brilliant highways and canals of the

revealed plasma energy sphere now stretched thousands of miles, vaulting the

molten, vaporized material of the Earth outward in a rough ovoid, the long axis

at right angles to the axis of rotation. The tips of the ovoid spun away huge

globules of silica and nickel and iron.


Against the dominant light of the plasma,

the twisted remains of mantle and compressed streamers of the core cast long

shadows into near-Earth space through the expanding dusty cloud of vapor and

smaller debris. The planet resembled a lantern in fog, almost unbearably

bright. Inexorably, the ovoid of plasma pushed everything outward, attenuating,

blasting, diminishing all that was left, scattering it before an irresistible

wind of elementary particles and light.


Two hours. He glanced at his watch. The

moon shined through the vapor haze, a quarter of a million miles distant and

seemingly aloof. But tidal bulges would relax, and even though the moon's shape

had been frozen by ages of cooling, Arthur thought the relaxation would at the

very least trigger violent moonquakes.


He turned his attention again to the dead

Earth. The plasma glow had dimmed slightly. Distinct ethereal pinks and oranges

and grayish blues gave it a pearly appearance, like a child's plastic ball

illuminated from within. The diameter of the plasma ovoid and the haze of

debris had expanded to well over thirty thousand miles by now. The ovoid

continued to lengthen, spreading the new belt of asteroids into the stubby

beginnings of an arc.


The transparent panel became mercifully

opaque.


As if released from puppet strings, fully

half of the witnesses collapsed on the floor. Arthur hugged Francine and

gripped Marty's shoulder, unable to speak, then walked among his fellows,

seeing what could be done to help them.


The copper-colored robot appeared at the

end of the cabin and floated forward. Behind it came dozens more survivors,

bearing trays and bowls of water, food, and medicines.


_It is the Law.


The words echoed again and again through

Arthur's thoughts as he helped revive those who had fallen.


_It is the Law.


Marty stayed by his side, kneeling with him

as he elevated a young woman's head and held a metal cup of water to her lips.


"Father," the boy said,

"where are we going now?"


_AGNUS DEI


_The child, ravaged by wolves, falls

quiet in the forest, and the long darkness is filled with an undisturbed

silence.


PERSPECTIVE


_New Mars Gazette, December 21, 2397;

editorial by Francine Gordon :


The screen for today's edition is filled

with news from the Central Ark. Four hundred more of us, most from the Eurasian

arks, have been revived from deep sleep, and prepared for their arrival on New

Mars by the Moms. (Does anybody remember who first called the robots Moms? It

was Reuben Hordes, then nineteen, revived eight years ago and now on the New

Venus Reconnaissance Mission.) Our population today hit the mark of 12,250; the

Moms say we are doing well, and I believe them.


New Mars today celebrates its first year of

autonomy. The Moms no longer exercise what my husband has called zookeeper's

authority. Already we begin to factionalize and squabble; but these are the

signs of a reborn planetism coming once again to maturity. Does that bring us

much cheer? Not the politicians, bracing for the arrival of more Marxists.


But what we really celebrate, of course, is

the four hundredth anniversary of the Ice Strike that began New Mars. This

world has already become home to most of the human race. I feel a stronger

connection to New Mars now than to Earth, blasphemous as that might seem; in

our hearts I think we must acknowledge that the ten years since most of us came

out of sleep have blurred the pain of Earth''sdeath. Not banished, just

subdued…


We cannot forget.


In four days many of us will celebrate

Christmas. On Earth, that was a time of hope, of the promise of resurrection.

Even the atheists among us must feel the power of this particular season and

holiday, especially now, for like Christ, we carry the weight of billions on

our shoulders; and more, we bear the responsibility of an entire planet's

biosphere. We are like children dragged prematurely into parenthood, and the

burden is frequently too heavy to stand.


Still, the suicide rate on New Mars has

dropped precipitously in the last three years. We are finding our feet once

again; we are desperately weak, but we are determined. We will not perish.


We will not forget our duties, nor will

those who fly outward on the Ships of the Law to seek the home of the

planet-eaters. My son is out there; what does he have to celebrate, on his

equivalent of December 21?


For those of you who have supported this

ofttimes undisciplined, wandering little journal, on this day of celebration,

my husband and I extend our heartfelt thanks. We hope that our philosophy-that

New Mars and New Venus are and will be our true homes-has provided some

comfort.


All of Earth has been reduced to one small

town. Whatever our differences, we are all extraordinarily close. We love you

all, and welcome our newly awakened Eurasian brothers and sisters.


 


Arthur put on his coldsuit and strapped a

small tank of oxygen to his belt. Even in the past year, the air had grown

richer, and not just in Mariner Valley, but on the green moss and lichen plains

of the highlands as well. Still, it was best to be safe; if he should need to

exert himself, the oxygen tank could save his life.


In the small individual air lock, he could

hear the distant, tinny sound of the celebration in the main hall of Geopolis.

He had had enough company for the evening; he needed solitude now, time to

think and reappraise.


The hatch opened and he stepped out onto a

patch of ubiquitous crisp lichen. The valley air at dusk was cold and still and

the stars steady as crystal.


The sky glowed a lovely, subdued mauve,

edging toward blue at zenith. To the southeast, the high valley walls caught

the last sunlight of the day, a thin irregular horizontal ribbon of intense

orange.


New Mars had recovered from its collision

with the icy fragment of Europa in the 390 years they had been in cold sleep,

dropping its mantle of cloud after two centuries of almost steady rain. Floods

had scoured the red and ocher terrain, and the increased temperature had released

the frozen carbon dioxide of the poles, thickening the atmosphere. At that

time, a century past, New Mars had been ideal for primitive plants. Up and down

the valley, the dust and rock had been carpeted by lichens and mosses, and the

new small seas had been seeded with phytoplankton.


Oxygen soon returned in quantity to New

Mars.


Farther north, the impacted remains of

Phobos and Deimos, rich in organic materials, supported highland farms of new

wheat strains, and the first experiments at Earthlike forests, chiefly

conifers. In a few decades, New Mars would have territories virtually

indistinguishable from Earth. She-New Mars had adopted Mother Earth's

gender-promised to be a planet of broad green prairies, high semiarid forests,

and deep, almost tropical oxygen-rich valleys.


Eight thousand were settled here, two

thirds of the human race. The remaining third still lived on the Central Ark,

some learning the theory of planetary management, some-a select few-waiting for

their chance to ride more starships and carry out the judgment of the Law.


With virtually unlimited power supplies, no

weapons, and resources sufficient for a hundred times their number already,

their life on New Mars held promise of being idyllic. As always, only their own

cussedness could change that.


He marched between the milky glass-walled

greenhouses and up a low hill to a point where he could look down Feinman Rift.

Far below, breeders tended the first range animals born out of genetic storage.

It was warmer down there, and it rained far more often, and some complained

that in a truly free society, that would be prime real estate, but the area was

strictly reserved for the breeders. To give in to the community's baser

instincts now might bring the Moms down on their backs again; it had happened

once before, on the Central Ark, when human political authority had broken down

into anarchy. Arthur did not wish to see it happen again.


_Children do so hate to be disciplined.


Nobody knew who had sent these stern,

dedicated robot guardians. Chances were they would never know. Arthur suspected

that even benefactors had to be suspicious of their charges; it was best, for

the time being, to simply stay hidden and quiet.


Arthur pinched his cheek and closed his

faceplate against the cold. Then he looked to the east, above the pink haze of

twilight, and saw the silvery point of Venus, still wrapped in a mantle of

cloud.


Reuben Hordes was in command of the first

exploratory and diagnostic mission to Venus. Twenty years ago, the now-moist

Venerean clouds had parted briefly, and a decade-long rain had fallen, driving

the planet's surface acids into chemical battle with molten rock thrown up by

three centuries of fresh vulcanism. The clouds had closed again, and the

reconnaissance expedition had been launched from the Central Ark.


Arthur did not envy Reuben his task. Venus

was a hard case; it might be centuries more before humans could live in

significant numbers on its surface.


What he was actually seeking was a clear

view of the Milky Way, so that he could look at Sagittarius. He missed Martin

deeply. To be cut off from the past was to cherish the future all the more;

Martin was much of Arthur's future, though they would never see each other

again, and hadn't communicated for a year and a half, by Arthur's time frame.


Martin had left on the seventh Ship of the

Law, with fifty human crewmates, only eight years after Earth's destruction,

before most of the survivors had been put into cold sleep. The ships had been

traveling for centuries now, accelerating and decelerating, searching,

refueling from dead ice moons.


He found Sagittarius, the Archer, between

Scorpius and Capricorn. He lifted his gloved hand and pointed: _somewhere

there . Within the arc subtended by his trembling finger lay the solar

system of Earth's killers.


How terrifying the sky was now. Arthur

wished he could share Harry's vision of united solar systems forming vast

"galactisms." Now, from what the Moms had told them, the galaxy was a

vaguely explored frontier at best, a vicious jungle at the worst.


The galaxy, too, was young.


 


The planet-eaters had not come from such a

great distance, after all. The first signs of their builders' interstellar

dissembling, their protective coloration, had become evident less than a

hundred light-years from the sun.


Martin, a quiet, solemn man who had grown

to resemble his father, floated among a crowd of younger student-pilots on the

observation deck of the kilometer-long, needle-thin Ship, of the Law. All the

Ships of the Law had been hewn from the material of the dead Earth itself. With

the galaxy's center in view, still inconceivably faraway, he thought back to

the debates he had had with the ship's Moms at the beginning of the journey.


_"What if we find the civilization

of the planet-eaters, and it's matured? What if it's beautiful and noble and

rich with culture, and it regrets its past mistakes? Do we still destroy

it?"


"_Yes, " the Moms had

replied.


"_Why? What good would that

do?"


"_Because it is the Law."


In fact, the builders of the planet-eaters

had come very early on, thousands of years ago, to realize their mistake. They

had laced the planetary systems around their parent star with dozens of false

civilizations, misleading beacons, even genetically engineered biological

decoys, complete in every detail but one-the ability to mislead a Ship of the

Law.


Three ship-years before, Martin had walked

the surface of one such decoy planet, marveling at the creativity, the sheer

expenditure of energy.


The planet had revealed sophisticated

defenses. They had barely escaped the trap.


Now they were closing…


If they failed, others would follow, more

informed, more aware of the dangers and pitfalls of this neck of the galactic

woods.


Despite his intellectual misgivings, Martin

was committed. He thought often of the age-old Law, and of the hundreds of

mature civilizations that had embraced it. In his heart, a cold, rational

hatred and hunger for vengeance echoed the demands of justice.


He knew, however strange and out of proportion

it might be, that one of his key subconscious motivations was to avenge the

death of a single, uncomplicated friend: a dog. He vividly remembered those

soul-branding hours in the ark's observation cabin.


Many of the humans aboard the Ship of the

Law had been born in the Central Ark and had never known their home world. They

were all dedicated to the search, regardless.


Silently, each day before the brief sleep

of deep space, Martin swore an oath he had made up himself:


_To those who killed Earth: beware her

children!


That is how the balance is kept.