There was silence for a moment as the two men faced each other. Ogden finally said, “You like Gowan a lot more than you allow to be expressed.” Ramirez nodded. “I wish you well, Ramirez.”
“Thanks, Paunchy. My name is Eric by the way.”
“You’re telling the wrong person.”
“I also know there is a flaw in everybody’s thinking,” said Ramirez. “Despite your kind words, there is no way back for us.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Once they were on the road Gowan found herself in conversation with Titiana Lillishenger but was more fascinated by the antique modes of transport all around her, and the vehicles whizzing along on tyres – for heaven’s sake! – and with no central guidance control. People were permitted to speed, slow down, change lanes and tailgate apparently at their own will. She asked, “Isn’t it a nightmare living back in these times?”
“The food is better,” said the Professor, “apart from the high sugar content in most everything. You can still buy fresh meat if you prefer it off the hoof but in most diners the coffee is awful – although they give you as much as you like.”
“Can you still get fresh milk?”
“Oh yes. Plenty of that but fast food restaurants are tending towards powdered and dried cow dandruff in small packets labelled creamer.”
“It seems very exciting – and quite dangerous,” said Gowan.
“You have faced aliens and you think this is dangerous?”
“It seems so wild and uncontrolled.”
“It is regulated. The roads have the Highway Patrol, the counties have sheriffs and the cities have their own police departments. Then there is the nationwide FBI, DEA, ATF, INS and a whole other load of initials with regulatory powers.”
“Aren’t the people scared?”
“Not yet. Give it a couple of disasters and they will be scared enough not to pick up a copy of the Koran in their local library.”
“Where did you learn to drive one of these trucks?”
“My grandfather collected and restored antique automobiles. I drove plenty of them. This old Jeep is called a Grand Cherokee. It may not look like much but it has power steering, power windows, air conditioning and automatic transmission – well technically an automatic gearbox. It uses hydrocarbon fuel from fossils, a gallon of which costs about a buck and a quarter and will take you about 14 miles.”
“Is that a standard gallon?”
“No – a US gallon which is four fifths of the imperial equivalent. You will find the same thing with milk and orange juice – a pint here is only about 16 imperial ounces, not the twenty ounces you would find in England, say.”
“What do you think of Ramirez?”
“I know why you ask,” said Lillishenger. “I reserve my judgement until I have seen him in action.”
“How have you earned money here?”
“I perfected a couple of things before their time – mostly relating to communications. I have made enough contributions to enable me to buy the place we are going to. I call it Manderlay after the novel by Daphne Du Maurier. We need to acquire enough cash to pay off the mortgage and place it in the hands of a lawyer who can be trusted to pay the taxes. We may be there some time.”
“Do you really have a plan to get us back?”
“No.”
“What? But you were so hopeful.”
“There is no point in being anything else, is there child? However, we have enough brainpower and experience between us to figure a way back and to defeat the aliens.”
“I’m not sure about that. Their ship is awfully large.”
“Once we have reviewed the tapes thoroughly, we can make plans.”
“Er, we don’t actually use tapes, Professor.”
“Of course not. Not for a hundred years I would think. You call everything ‘recordings’ now, but here the language is different. Cameras, for example, still use film.”
“Recordings then.”
“Then those are what we will review.”
The Jeep cruised onto freeways and past towns where neon lit the horizon even in daylight. Lillishenger drove carefully but not slowly, making good headway when they reached traffic.
“Everything is so bright,” commented Gowan.
“Yes, electricity exists to be used freely. We must be thankful for that. If civilisations had not been greedy with energy we would never have developed alternative energy supplies. Imagine how they used to pour thousands of gallons of fuel into what was a glorious firework, just to reach the fringes of our atmosphere.”
“And sometimes they came down like fireworks,” agreed Gowan.
“Oil was always a finite source,” said the Professor, “even when they were fracking underground to locate it. We are lucky to have been born in our age.”
“I find it hard to believe that within the confines of this motor vehicle there’s enough lethal fuel to combust and roast us to death.”
“Yes, but travelling along here by spacecraft would raise eyebrows, don’t you think?”
“As smart as you may be, Professor, I cannot see a way back to our time. The Captain feels we should use this time to forewarn Earth so they can best prepare for the future.”
“That is the tremor of a big leaf,” said Lillishenger.
“What do you mean?”
“It is such a huge concept that any changes in the timeline could be large and abrupt and counter productive. We may end up fighting each other rather than finding common ground. There is a chance that religious fervour could determine the fate of the planet. Earth may be left wide open and completely unprepared for the aliens.”
“It’s pretty much like that now,” said Gowan. “They are big and unpredictable and we have no true spacecraft with which to tackle them.”
“Your ship isn’t spaceworthy?”
“It is – for brief periods of up to a year. But our propulsion is nuclear driven gravity repulsion. The ship has four concentric circles of counter-rotating anti-grav projectors underneath. We can operate close to Earth and about a quarter million miles away from it. Beyond that our propulsion drive becomes weaker. We can’t travel to Jupiter to take them on. All the probes we sent were unmanned and relayed information back to us. If we sent ships that way it would be a one-way trip; which it probably is anyway.”
A horn sounded sharply as a small car cut into the lane a few vehicles ahead of them, causing traffic to slow down. The surface of the road rumbled under their feet. The Professor said, “We turn off very soon. The roads will get progressively quieter. I doubt if many more than a quarter of a million people live in Inyo County. There isn’t much there apart from Death Valley and a few cowboy towns in the north. My place is close to a small town which generates vast amounts of power, and I have an arrangement to purchase from them industrially. The power line was already in place when I bought it as it had been an engineering shop maintaining equipment.”
“So it’s out of the way?”
“It’s just off a road that sees about two trucks an hour during the summer vacation season and far less normally. It used to me more but the town of Holmgrove is dying as many people have moved from there across the border into Kern County, where the higher elevation means the days are cooler.”
“And the boys will find us at night okay?”
“Trust me, girl. Ogden never had any trouble pinpointing me in the dark.” She paused. “I missed that character after we split up but he married both well and tragically. He looks even more cuddly now.”
“You really are quite amorous.”
“Find a man and enjoy him. That’s the best advice I can give. And I would caution that you can never mould them into quite what you want them to be so don’t try too hard. A comfortable man doesn’t wander.”
“Just looking around me, I can’t tell you how chaotic it feels to be living in the past like this.”
Lillishenger kept an eye on the racing traffic around her while she watched for the exit sign. “Try ten years of it,
” she said.
As promised, the roads grew rougher and less populated as they headed away from the civilised desert and popular highways into the depths of that part of the country where tourists like to visit in summer and pretend they are knowledgeable, thinking coyotes are cute and scorpions won’t sting and dehydration never happens to anybody.
The scenery was once again mostly flat scrub with occasional low hills in the distance. Gowan could not believe how lonely it all seemed. Why had man gone to the moon when the lunar landscape was all around them? There were no buildings now and as the sun fell quickly beyond the horizon, the darkness seemed blacker than even that of space. From space you could see the Moon and Earth; from here there was nothing except the headlights of the truck picking a way along the hard, narrow road surface. Lillishenger pointed out things which were invisible at night.
“It isn’t much further now,” she said. “We climb a small mountain which takes us into the next valley. I’ll point out my buidings as we pass them?”
“Pass them?”
“Yes. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“There is a diner barely a mile past where I live. We’ll pick up takeaways. I promised the boys. It is pretty close to real food so you should like it.”
Gowan felt the incline of the mountain as the road wound a path to its summit. They seemed to reach the top in no time at all before they were heading downhill again on a much straighter road. Still there were no buildings but eventually passed a sign indication a canyon. “There’s a small and friendly community there,” said the Professor. “But you can’t buy gasoline or a hamburger there. Everybody shops at the one market in Holmgrove. We are just going to the edge of town to the diner which opens all year but only flourishes during the tourist season.”
A little further along she said, “That is my place.” Gowan saw a large and long white concrete structure set back a few hundred yeards from the road and surrounded by a high wire fence. They left it behind and a few minutes later the Professor steered the truck into the bright lights of the diner which had a drive through. There were three police cars parked there in different colours but with the red and blue lights on top familiar from old movies.
“It’s Inyo County Sheriff – he’s about a mile out of his county but the nearest food on his side is about sixty miles. The black and whites are Highway Patrol and San Bernardino Sheriff. They meet up here regularly to swap information. We’ll go through the drive-thru.”
She steered the truck to a small window and gave an order in what was to Gowan a foreign language and which included cheeseburgers, fries, taquitos, large sodas and other sundries. She dug a hand into her uniform pocket and took out some money she had transferred there from her own clothes. As the change was given, the woman serving said, “Where are you off to, Lilly? A fancy dress party?”
“Yes,” she said. “We wanted to go as Klingons but couldn’t get head masks anywhere. These are the closest we could find.”
“Have fun,” said the woman and came back a couple of minutes later with their food in paper bags. Lillishenger stowed it on the seat between them and headed back to the road. “Darn,” she said. “I should have thought about wearing Fleet uniforms. We’ll have to resort to wearing what the locals wear or we’ll find trouble.”
As the Professor began her turn to home, Ramirez looked up from his holo screen and said, “They have turned. I am picking up their suit trackers and they are turning back the way they just came. I put them a mile from the Prof’s place.” Ramirez spoke softly and the transmitter of his uniform which tied up with the DNA from the skin where it touched came into operation. “Earth to Gowan,” he said, “and Tillybender if she’s there. We have sight of you and are about to leave. See you in a couple of minutes.”
“There’s just enough time for you to boil your head,” said Gowan and Ramirez chuckled to himself.
“All flight systems checked and ready for action,” said Ogden. “We can leave when you are ready, Captain.”
“Let’s go,” said Stiers.
The ship lifted from its resting place, noticeably humming while the anti-grav projectors were so close to the ground. Stiers had polarised their surfaces so the lights did not shine down and thus be visible from below. This restricted the height and speed of the ship whose motion was determined by the angle of the projectors. The shape rose into the air, the chameleon circuits changing the outer cells to a deep purple then black. Stiers took them to five thousand feet which Ogden had determined was the optimum height for non-interference with other air traffic. The only problems were with the airport at Ontario, California; Inyokern small airport and Holmgrove’s airport which was barely used and then not commercially.
The craft glided forward, Stiers keeping their speed down to about a tenth of maximum. Below them lights turned into a blur as they sped along crossing highways and entire towns. Ogden had plotted a direct course to the Professor’s site and they were aware they would be entering through eighty feet wide doors running along the wall of the building furthest from the road. Ramirez was watching for road traffic. He said, “Grab your socks, and hold my rocks. I don’t know why we’re creeping about like this. We’ve already been on national television and on screens around the world and been described as a secret USAF project.”
“Which the Air Force isn’t denying,” said the Captain.
“Why would they?” said Ogden. “Firstly, if we were a secret project it is unlikely the Wihite House would even know; and secondly, they may like foreign governments to believe they have a secret aircraft with amazing capabilities.”
“Can’t argue with that,” said the Captain. “However, we won’t show ourselves again unless we are forced into it.”
“I don’t mind lying low,” said Ramirez. “Just as long as we get another chance with the big, ugly bugs.”
“I’m starting the slowdown,” said Stiers. “Tell me when we are clear to descend.”
“There is no traffic,” said Ramirez. “Clear to drop to two hundred feet.”
Stiers complied and the craft dropped like a stone until it was a couple of hundred feet from the desert floor. The complex was visible now on their screens and comprised the large concrete structure, where they would hide the craft, a house which had obviously been transported from elsewhere because it was large and not built in the style of the desert – wide overhanging roofs. The remainder of the eight acres was strewn with abandoned and half-repaired machinery and partly dismantled vehicles. They could see the Jeep had arrived and was parked to one side as Gowan and Lillishenger opened the huge electric doors. Stiers took the ship lower and Gowan looked up and pointed. Stepping aside, the Professor beckoned them down and inside. Then she held up her hand and went inside to move something before coming out again and waving them home.
“The Professor is just moving something out of the way. Hang on a mo.” A pause then, “Okay now.”
The Captain dropped the remaining distance bar a foot or so and swivelled the projectors to glide inside where white painted walls looked like large tombstones. He took the ship to the vacant end of the building and the craft settled gently, a portal opening even as they touched the ground. Gowan and Lillishenger collected some paper bags from the Jeep and once inside they operated the buttons to close the huge doors. There was a metal table with six metal chairs folded against the wall. These were soon set up and they sat around looking at the fare Gowan spread before them. “Health warning,” she said. “These contain real meat apparently so be careful. There are sodas which are high in sugar and the package has a high sodium content. This lot is as bad to swallow as a…”
Ramirez, seeing Gowan lost for words, helpfully filled in. “…mouth full of jizz?” he suggested.
Gowan glared at him. “Worse, I should think.”
“It sure tastes real enough,” said Stiers, tucking into a burger and fries.
“No salad?” asked Ogden.
&n
bsp; “It’s too late to watch your weight,” said Ramirez then thought proudly of the unconscious rhyme.
“Never eat salad in hot parts of this world,” said Lillishenger, demolishing a taquito. “There is a macho attitude among chefs in this part of the country. They don’t like to wash their hands after using the toilet. With hot food it doesn’t matter as much.”
Ogden gulped. “This food is okay, is it?”
“I’ve been eating it for four years with no problems.”
Ramirez asked, “That big old station wagon parked there looks like a Dodge. How did it get so smashed up?”
“My foolish, thoughtless error,” said the Professor. “I developed a new cloaking device and fitted it to the car. Trouble is it worked so well people failed to see me and bashed into me several times on my first trip out. I was lucky to find a spot to turn it off so I could get home.”
“Still working with cloaking devices, are you, dear lady?” asked Ogden.
“Completely different,” said Lillishenger. “This one takes miniscule power and works by affecting Alpha waves in the human brain. It works very well. I’ll fit the device to your ship, which I notice has already turned white.”
“It’s white but you can still see it,” said Stiers.
“You can all sleep in the house tonight – there is plenty of room. Gowan and Ramirez can have the small bedrooms; the Captain can take the slightly larger one and Ogden and I will share my room.”
“I hardly think…” Ogden began.
“Don’t think too much,” said Lillishenger. “That has always been a problem of yours and, frankly, you could use the workout.”
Ramirez almost choked on a French fry.
“This device of yours,” said Ogden in an attempt to change to subject to a topic that did not include his amorous abilities. “Alpha waves, you say.”
“Yes. It’s so simple I just cannot understand why I did not consider it before. It works best on things that naturally are not noticed,” said Lillishenger.
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