by Matt Eaton
She half expected to walk into Tavon’s barn and find nothing but animals and farm equipment. Not because she doubted what she’d seen here with her own eyes, but because there was still a part of her that suspected Verus and Majestic-12 would one day cut her loose and leave her in the cold. After weeks of being immersed inside arguably the greatest secret in human history, she remained painfully aware that the men who brought her into the fold still saw her as an outsider.
Donald Menzel had told her openly he was reserving judgment on her loyalty. Which had left her wondering what they expected from her. When Hillenkoetter told President Eisenhower she was replacing Donovan as a security consultant, it was the first she’d heard of it. And security was hardly her field of expertise. Trouble was, she didn’t really know what she was supposed to be doing, other than serving as some sort of internal troubleshooter or agitator by calling them out on their own lies.
Verus was a storage house for sensitive information. It received files classified Top Secret or Above Top Secret. Information that might not make its way to the National Archive. Even so, this regularly involved sifting through a vast quantity of paperwork generated by the bureaucracies of the intelligence services. The foundation had an entire staff of people set to the task — retrieving weekly drop-offs of files from locations hidden ingeniously in plain sight in stationery storage cabinets or forgotten janitorial cupboards, moved about by people who had no idea of the sensitivity of the material in their grasp. Verus needed to remain unseen by the people whose secrets it collected, lest awareness prompt a filtering of the information flow. The information itself came directly from the office of the Director of Central Intelligence, who had been tasked with the job by President Truman — on the proviso it would not be released to the public for 40 years or more.
But Verus was also closely associated with several Top Secret operations running outside the purview of the official intelligence apparatus. There were no restrictions placed on this information — because officially it didn’t exist. This was the area in which Edna had focused most of her time and it was what had prompted her invitation to return to Tavon’s farm.
She was fairly certain Menzel didn’t know she was here. That was unlikely to do anything to improve her relationship with him once he did find out, but the chance had been too good to pass up.
A brief, handwritten invitation had been poked under the front door early one morning at Verus HQ. By sheer luck or impeccable timing, she’d been the one who had found it first. On any given weekday, the Verus foyer was busy with researchers moving documents or simply walking between the basement and the ground-floor kitchen for coffee or food. There were usually six to eight other people in the building conducting hush-hush Verus affairs and any one of them could have found the note. But the Outherians could read minds. Someone had deliberately waited for the exact moment she was walking past. After reading the note, she’d quickly pulled open the door (something frowned upon by Menzel, who preferred people use the rear entrance). Whoever had delivered it was long gone.
On face value, it was simply an invitation to spend a quiet weekend in the country. No names. The location itself was enough. Anybody else perusing the note who wasn’t hip to what had gone down there the previous year would have no reason for suspicion.
The farmhouse looked just the same as she remembered it, and the barn loomed ominously as she drove closer. In reality, it was more of a hangar than a barn. She turned off her engine and checked herself quickly in the rearview mirror. Her dark hair still had that Sofia Loren tussle to it, that bed-head allure men found so disarming. Her red lipstick was in good shape and she was showing just the right amount of cleavage.
On cue, an unfamiliar face appeared from nowhere. A young man, hair cropped short, dressed in dirty brown overalls and covered in grease like a mechanic.
He was wiping his hands clean. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
He sounded friendly enough, but she didn’t buy his act for minute. “I’m here for the weekend to stay with Mr Tavon and his family. I’m Edna Drake.”
“Oh yes,” the young man said, staring her straight in the chest, “I’ve been expecting you.”
“And you are?”
“White’s the name. John White.”
She raised an eyebrow. “As in brother of Snow?”
“Something like that,” he said. “Hey, I like your car.”
“Thank you,” she said. “A perk of the job.”
She didn’t say what job. He didn’t ask.
“I take it you have some ID on you?”
She pulled out her letter of invitation. “This good enough for you?”
“How about a driver’s license?”
“Who are you, the farm police?”
He stared back at her nonplussed, as if to say ‘try me and you’ll find out soon enough’.
She hopped out of the car and flashed her license. White smiled at her long legs without even realizing he was being so obvious, nodded his approval and waved her in through the hangar door. She was relieved to find he left her to find her own way, but wondered how he’d gotten his hands so dirty. Had it all been for show?
Inside was no mechanic’s workshop, but a hive of activity nevertheless, just like she remembered. The same feeling returned — like she was stepping into a dream. Awake and asleep at the same time. Like anything was possible, but at the same time the even the outcome was predetermined. The rules of this game were different; they remained tantalizingly elusive.
The large hatch in the heavy concrete floor was slid open, revealing all of the subterranean chambers and their Escher-like twists in utter contempt of Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity. It sent a chill down her spine to think that this time she would be descending into that world. She had no idea what that would be like.
Nor how she knew it was where they wanted her to go.
Tavon was marching across the hangar’s concrete apron, smiling. “Welcome, my dear. I’m very happy you could make it.”
He too was in overalls, but his were clean and baby blue. He held out his clean hand for her to shake. His easy cheerfulness brought her back to herself. “It’s good to see you, Lee.” He held her gaze for a long time, untroubled by the extended eye contact. “Donald sends his apologies,” she said, finally.
“You didn’t tell him you were coming, did you?”
She grinned. “Nope.”
“You are always a breath of fresh air, Edna Drake.”
“Looks like you’re busy,” she said.
“Always.” He turned and walked toward an area near the edge of the cavernous floor opening. Directly in front of him, an elevator rose through the concrete, as if by magic. It had no doors, but was massive inside; big enough to take a vehicle. She walked into the middle of the elevator car figuring this was the safest place. The car had no buttons but, as soon as they were both inside, it began to descend into the subterranean depths.
Entry points appeared fleetingly like windows as they fell through different levels, and she quickly felt dizzy as the world twisted and turned like a kaleidoscope, with each successive floor rotating 90 degrees anti-clockwise — vertical, then upside down, then vertical again, before returning to normal. On each of these floors, people walked about normally, untroubled by their strange orientation. It was most disconcerting.
“Why do you do this? Defy gravity like this?”
“It saves floor space,” he said, like it was the most normal thing in the world.
“And how did you make this elevator work? Are you controlling it with your mind?”
Tavon nodded, but he was looking distracted. “They’ve been visiting me, you know.” She didn’t know. She had no idea what he was on about. “To be fair,” he said, “I’ve been visiting them too. We speak to one another.”
“Who, Lee? Who’s visiting you? Do you mean Majestic?”
He shook his head. “Others. They live here, you see. Underground, like us. But their home is buried deep in the fo
rest. Impossible to find unless you know where to look. They visit me quite often.”
She realized he meant alien visitors. She made a mental note to ask him more about it later. Right now, there were more immediate considerations.
FOUR
Friday December 5, 1952
They stopped at a floor she was relieved to find was already the right way up.
“The lift knows, you see?” said Tavon. “It adjusts your perspective to your destination before you arrive.”
She stepped out of the elevator cart to a room in which all the other Lee Tavons were already waiting. They didn’t bother greeting her — one of the peculiar consequences of being carbon copies of one another. They were one person and yet many. Away from one another, they lived separate lives. Together like this, they were a single entity. One Lee had greeted her already, the others knew this already. What any one of them experienced was known to the others. They were all dressed in the same jumpsuit. She realized now it was like something a pilot might wear. The room was plain white. The floor curved seamlessly into the walls and again into the ceiling, like it was all one single shell.
The Tavons looked excited.
“What’s going on, guys?” She mustered a smile in the hope it would mask her unease.
“Teleport,” they told her, all at once.
So much for a quiet weekend in the country. “Does that mean what I think it means?” she asked.
“A device to transfer physical objects between two points in space-time,” they replied.
“We want to show you,” said the Lee who had greeted her.
“By starting small,” said the others.
They unfurled a black rubberized mat onto the shiny white floor. It was about one foot square. There were no wires attached to it, nor could she see any sign of electrical or mechanical power. But she could sense its presence in the room, like it was alive, or somehow subtly vibrating the space around it.
They started with a baby doll in a blue jumpsuit, its hand in the air like it was waving goodbye. One of the Tavons threw the doll in the direction of the mat.
It disappeared.
“Success!” they yelled together, pointing across the room.
She saw then the doll was lying on the floor — 30 feet away on the other side of the room. It hadn’t been thrown hard enough to cover that distance, but it was there just the same.
“You didn’t tell me that was going to happen,” she said.
“We wanted it to be a surprise,” they said, smiling in triumph like seven Houdinis.
“Are you telling me you transported the doll from one mat to the other?”
“Exactly!” they cried.
It was a remarkable feat. It might have been even more impressive if she’d known to watch for the doll’s arrival at the other end. “Can you show me again? I’ll watch more closely this time.”
“Stage two,” they said together. One of them was now holding a tabby cat, like a rabbit that had been pulled from an invisible hat. He placed the cat on the floor and waved it in the direction of the black square.
Never before in her life had she seen a cat obey instruction without food being involved. This one did as it was told and walked directly to the mat, but changed its mind at the last moment and sat down. Typical damn cat. It stared into space, as if it could see something in the air just ahead, then leapt onto the mat and vanished, only to instantly reappear beside the doll on the other side of the room.
“Success!” the Tavons yelled again.
She laughed in delight. “That’s unbelievable.”
“Nothing really,” said one.
“A window through space-time,” said another.
“A tunnel beneath reality turning two places into one.”
“Now you’ve lost me,” she admitted.
One of them grabbed her by the hand and swung her around to face him. “Human beings have long considered other dimensions of reality. Like heaven and hell. Olympus. Valhalla. But those are just ideas. There is another universe where space is in inverse proportion to our reality. Our device is a gateway through that universe. It works as a shortcut. In this world, the distance between those two places may be great, but by traversing through this other world, we move through a doorway that links two destinations into one.”
She nodded. “I think I understand you. But where is this other world and how does it connect to both places? Neither heaven nor hell, I take it.”
“Maybe it’s both,” said Tavon. “It’s connected to all places at once. Our devices at either end are merely anchoring points.”
“Now for the moment of truth,” the Tavons exclaimed. “One of us.”
The Tavon furthest from her had, by that time, picked up the tabby cat and was cradling it in his arms, stroking it gently. The cat appeared to be enjoying the attention. The Tavons exchanged knowing glances and Edna figured they were trying to decide which of them would be first.
But the elevator arrived in the room at that moment, though she hadn’t even noticed it leaving. It brought a young girl into their midst. She was no more than six or seven years old at best.
“Perfect timing, Faye,” they said. “We’re ready for you.”
She somehow knew at that moment Faye was their daughter. She watched in horror as the child stepped up to the mat. How could they be so reckless as to needlessly endanger the life of a child?
“There is no risk,” said Tavon, reading her thoughts.
“Then do the test yourselves,” said Edna, not bothering to hide her irritation. Having them inside her head felt like an invasion of privacy.
“We will, in time,” the nearest Tavon told her. “But for the purposes of scientific testing, we are progressing more gradually. It is a matter of scale. You might do, Edna, if you prefer.”
Edna did think this might be a preferable alternative and was about to say so, but the child looked up and shook her head with a sense of knowing way beyond her years. Her expression told Edna to back off, that she didn’t know what she was dealing with. As Edna opened her mouth to object, the little girl took three quick steps and launched herself at the mat, reappearing instantly on the other side of the room, still running and managing just in time to avoid stepping on the head of the doll, its maiden test flight already long forgotten.
Edna rushed across the space between the mats to take a closer look at Faye. She touched the girl’s face and ran her hands down her body to check for injury. Everything where it should be. “Are you feeling okay, sweetheart?”
Faye was untroubled. “You don’t need to treat me like a child,” she told Edna. “I’m smarter than you are.”
Edna laughed. “No doubt.” She turned to the Tavons. “Who else knows about this?”
“Nobody,” they said in unison.
“You haven’t told Lockheed?”
As three of the Lees crouched down to speak further with Faye, another stepped forward to answer Edna’s question. “Donald was most insistent we keep it from them. This is a Verus project. He hasn’t told MJ-12 about it either.”
The implications of what she’d just witnessed had her head spinning in ever-expanding circles. “This will revolutionize transport.” It would do a lot more than that, of course. It would turn their understanding of the universe upside down.
“Precisely why Donald insists we tell nobody,” said Tavon. “We would send the transport industry to the wall in one swift movement.”
“You’re right. But it wouldn’t stop there. What would religious leaders have to say about it, I wonder? Proof of god — or the devil’s work?” Emboldened by the audacity of it all, she made up her mind. “OK, my turn now.”
“Be our guest,” they said.
She stepped across the mat quickly before her rational mind had a chance to tell her what a bad idea it was.
The sensation was like swimming through a dark flooded tunnel. There was a dreamy sense to it, a pleasing sensation she wished could have lasted longer. It was gone in a fr
action of a second, replaced by the far more disconcerting sensation of being spiritually ripped from one’s own body. Then she was through to the other side. She’d felt no physical movement.
The Tavons were grinning madly. “How do you feel?” they asked her in chorus.
“OK, I think,” she said. “No different.”
“That’s good. This is as it should be. It is the space around you that is being bent, you should notice nothing.”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far. I definitely noticed something. A bunch of emotions, actually.”
One of them stepped forward and touched her forehead. “The dream state, nothing more.”
How long before we can use this in the field?” she asked.
“The next step is to test it over a greater distance,” said one.
“Tomorrow,” they decided together. “It will be ready tomorrow.”
FIVE
Friday December 5, 1952
It was night time when Edna emerged from the underground complex to bunk down for the night in the farmhouse. As Tavon led the way through the barn doors into the open air, she was gripped by the oddest sensation. It rather reminded her of going through the dimensional doorway. It was as if the barn interior was in another place entirely, in which all of life’s basic assumptions were subtly yet fundamentally altered. Stepping back into the open was a relief because she was returning to the familiar, yet at the same time she felt a certain sense of loss because of what she was leaving behind, knowing intuitively her visits here would be rare occurrences.
As she breathed in the evening chill, she realized she was exhausted. The night air was rich with the sound of crickets and birds singing their final chorus ahead of nightfall, and there was the smell of pot roast wafting from the farmhouse. A woman was waiting for them on the porch, smiling.
It wasn’t Tavon’s wife. At least, not the woman she’d met last year. The term wife had a different meaning to the Outherians.