All eyes turned to the President. Everyone understood what had just occurred: a formal trans-species communication at the highest level, the fact of it being even more profound than the almost playful technological mastery that had been demonstrated in the process.
“Mr. President, do you wish to resume activation of the Shield?”
The President turned to Jake, Angela and Dr. Winnick, then glanced around at his cabinet, his generals, the Russian ambassador, and finally Sandy Sokoff.
“Only if we can figure out what the hell we want to say.”
84
February 16/Miriam’s Condo
Miriam Kresky, wearing nothing but a man’s white dress shirt and a yellow silk bow tie, found herself unconsciously humming “Hail to the Chief” as she ground the beans for coffee. There were sixty-eight new messages on her voice mail, but she wasn’t ready to power through them quite yet.
Once the dark-roast Italian blend was dripping into a carafe, she surfed the network morning shows and cable news programs on the kitchen TV, but there was only one topic of discussion: Commander Deaver and Colonel Blake, the historic Science Horizon revelations, and the worldwide, overnight political, social, scientific, and religious fallout.
And, of course, there was avid speculation about what the President would say at the press conference scheduled in the Rose Garden at 10:00 A.M., Eastern.
Miriam zoomed through the channels.
Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC had a panel discussion called “Heroes or Traitors” and guests Oliver North, John McCain, and a Justice Department lawyer debated the ethics issues in relation to Deaver and Blake.
Larry King Live had Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist leaders discussing the religious implications of what the astronauts had revealed.
Geraldo Rivera was taking instant polls and man-in-the-street interviews, getting public reaction to the news of an “Alien City on the Moon” and whether this might validate the decades of UFO sightings around the world that the government had long denied and dismissed.
BBC World News showed clips of international leaders buttonholed for their reaction as they emerged from top-level meetings and took questions at their own hastily called press conferences.
Good Morning America featured a Vatican Statement of Reassurance from the Pope with guest Monsignor Michael Joseph Kilgerry. The brief missive declared that God had created all life throughout the universe and that the glory of His Creation was not limited to life on this world alone. The Jesuit monsignor noted that the papal statement had been translated into twenty-nine languages and posted on every Church Web site on every continent around the globe.
On a special edition of World News Tonight, Peter Jennings was interviewing several astronauts who had seen UFOs on their missions into space or during high-altitude aircraft testing and were calling for open, public congressional hearings on ET-related government activities.
And on PBS, Daniel Schorr editorialized in support of Science Horizon and then moderated a panel of journalists debating the free-press and free-speech issues raised by the government shutdown of a PBS program.
“God bless you, Mr. Schorr,” Miriam said, filling two bowl-sized ceramic coffee cups that she had bought en Provence and carrying them back to her bedroom on a wicker tray.
A certain recently bailed-out NASA scientist was still sprawled across the queen-sized bed next to an unplugged phone, two stale champagne glasses, and a dead soldier named Moët.
“Hey . . . wake up and join the party.” Miriam leaned close to his ear, pitching her voice in the low-and-sultry range.
“Mmmff,” Eklund said, without opening his eyes.
She set a steamy bowl of coffee on the nightstand nearest his nose and turned on the bedroom TV.
“Come on, you’re gonna want to see this. Emmy is lap-dancing with Mr. Pulitzer, that slut!”
85
The Rose Garden/the White House
The normally sticklike rosebushes had been tricked into leafing out by anomalously springlike weather, but few were noticing the greenery. Pushing through the print- and broadcast-media journalists assembled in the White House Rose Garden (a press corps swollen to accommodate over a hundred credentials) Jake and Angela were much more the focus of attention and celebration as they pressed toward reserved chairs near the podium. The hubbub around them was hyped up almost to the point of hysteria.
Like a sudden course shift by a school of fish, that media attention turned to Sandy Sokoff and Representative Phillip Lowe as they emerged from the Oval Office, and took places on a raised platform with an assemblage of cabinet heads, service-branch chiefs, astronauts, and National Science Academy guiding lights, including Nobelist Dr. Paula Winnick.
Things quieted down only when the White House press secretary appeared, stepping to the lectern decorated with the presidential seal and adjusting the microphone. Looking gamely out and around, he then willed everyone to a respectful silence, holding the event hostage until he got it.
“The President will make a short statement and then take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
Reaching their assigned seats as the French doors opened off the West Wing, Jake and Angela stayed standing with the other journalists and dignitaries now rising to their feet as the first notes of “Hail to the Chief,” played with nineteenth-century vigor by the Marine Corps Band.
And then he was there, striding up to the presidential podium, the smiling leader of the greatest nation on Earth, seeming to enjoy the inexplicably warm February sun and the wash of camera flashes before hurtling into his speech without preamble.
Republican and Democratic presidents alike have wrestled over the years with the duty and responsibility of protecting this nation, oftentimes at the expense of a more perfect candor with the American people. During the Second World War, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman both bore the terrible burden of their knowledge of the top-secret Manhattan Project, developing the first atomic weapons, something that could not have been shared openly with the public during wartime, for obvious reasons. Governments must be able to keep defense-related secrets. It is a legitimate and crucial element of a nation’s overall security.
A few miles away, the President’s speech was being heard on a portable boom box in a morguelike medical lab at the CIA’s compound in Langley, Virginia. On a stainless steel table in the chilly room, a cadaver identified only as Dunsinane Man was having nail samples taken from its six-fingered hands.
During the long Cold War period, every administration faced a similarly difficult national security problem as a result of the Space Race with the Soviets and discoveries made by both Russian and American satellites and confirmed by Apollo astronauts on the Moon . . .
The CIA nurse/technician placed genetic samples into tiny glass vials for testing and sealed each one with a label marked DUNSINANE.
On another metal table a few feet away, another body waited its turn. This one, however, was smaller, less than four feet in length, and encased in a Lucite chamber in which a precisely controlled environment was maintained. Through the thick plastic casing she could just make out the texture of its tough, gray skin and hairless limbs and torso: so different from the robust quasisimian quality of Dunsinane Man, but the finger-count of six digits on its hands was the same.
As most of you now know, what was discovered on the Moon were artifacts left behind or abandoned by another intelligent species, a space-faring species like ourselves, who visited the Moon thousands of years ago. However, who they were, where they were from, why they left, and where they went—these are questions that remain a mystery.
At an enclave in Maryland horse country, every nuance of the President’s speech was being weighed and dissected by Admiral James T. Ingraham and a den full of key intelligence officers, Pentagon officials, and others from the private sector.
This has been one of our nation’s most closely guarded secrets for many reasons: one
reason, frankly, was our pursuit of strategic advantage against America’s Communist adversaries during the Cold War decades. Our leaders wanted, understandably, to turn any technological discoveries made by the space program into a defense advantage for the free world. I personally believe it was a well-intentioned policy, a justified response during a difficult era in our history, but it was a policy that evolved beyond its usefulness. Unfortunately, the almost obsessive secrecy that come to surround it ultimately caused the government, our democratically elected government, to break faith with the governed: with us, the American people.
“We can work with this.”
Admiral Ingraham’s commanding voice seemed to resonate with confidence. But exactly how reassured his grim-faced guests were was hard to determine at the moment.
From somewhere in the direction of the guarded front entrance to the compound, Ingraham’s two well-trained German shepherds began to bark and then went silent in a way that made the Admiral turn away from the President’s words.
Listening intently, he heard shouting from the direction of the heavy, electronic back gate. And then hard-to-identify scuffling sounds.
“Christ,” he said, when he was certain what it meant.
Then the den was awash in armed FBI and ATF agents taking both Admiral Ingraham and his outraged guests into custody and reading them their rights.
Into the homestretch of what would thereafter be referred to as “The Rose Garden Speech,” the President looked out at the assemblage of leaders, scientists, astronauts, and journalists and then turn his gaze straight into the TV cameras.
We share a different world now, a world of uncertainties beyond even those of the Cold War. In the face of the challenge of international terrorism, the great Russian and Chinese peoples are counted among America’s friends and allies. Many of you may wonder why, then, the profound truth that we are not the only intelligent life-form in God’s universe continued to be kept a secret by your government. The simple and most basic answer is: Your leaders were afraid. They were afraid that you would be afraid. But I believe that the American people prefer to know the truth and deserve to be told the truth.
Stopped by cheers and standing applause from everyone, including the press, the President waited for the reaction to die down.
Eyeing Jake’s more reserved reaction, Angela pulled him close.
“What?”
“Nothing about Orion,” he said. “Nothing about hearings.”
Angela squeezed his arm, refusing to be unhappy.
“It’s a beginning. A huge, important beginning.”
At Bethesda, Augie’s sister Emily opened the curtains to the sunlight and watched with a professional eye as the Navy nurses deftly changed the linens underneath the former astronaut’s unconscious body.
The veteran ICU nurses were proud to be attending the Space Hero as they changed the bags on his IV, took a blood pressure reading, and listened along with Emily to the President’s speech on the hospital-room TV.
Today, this administration intends to forge a new path of peaceful, international manned exploration of space and a new era of trust between the American people and their government. But before we talk about the future, I’d like to commend Commander Jake Deaver and Colonel Augie Blake for their public statements and for their moral integrity. In particular, I want to send our heartfelt best wishes for a speedy recovery to Colonel Blake, who underwent heart surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital last night . . .
When the loud alarm on the heart monitor went off, Emily jumped up to help the attending nurses in their heroic effort to revive her brother. Despite their ministrations and those of the attending physician, Augie had suffered a severe stroke, and twenty-three minutes and eighteen seconds later, he was officially pronounced.
86
In high Earth orbit, the Orion array of mirror satellites had been computer-tweaked into perfect alignment.
With a sharp stab of white igniting it from below, the Shield was silently illuminated in the awful, perfect deafness of space, encircling the world for sixty seconds in a Fulleresque soccer ball pattern of laser light.
And then, by executive order of the President of United States, the test activation of the planetary defense system was over.
87
February 21/West Texas
It wasn’t bitter cold, but the temperature was low enough that they could see their breath. They had parked the rented Subaru Outback on a dark rural road miles from the highway, but big-rig headlights could still be seen navigating toward the diffuse glow in the distance that was Houston.
Clamping two mesh cables on the terminals of the SUV’s battery, Jake followed the shielded lines with his little halogen flashlight to a black electronic device that had been set up between two camp chairs. He checked the settings.
In one of the chairs, wrapped in a thick wool Navajo blanket, Angela sat holding a cigar box and looking up at the stars.
“You know what?”
“What?” Jake wiped his hands on his jeans.
“Sometimes I feel this odd little rush of panic. You know? And then these waves of longing for I don’t know what that just haven’t made any sense to me. But I think I just figured it out . . .”
“Is it about innocence?” Jake held the flashlight so he could see her face.
“Or maybe just simpler times.” Angela shielded her eyes with the back of her hand. “Or the illusion of simpler times. Y’know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do.”
Jake kissed her impulsively, then aimed the flash back down on the black box device. He could feel her smile without having to see it.
“You ready?”
“Good to go.”
Deaver then tripped a toggle switch, triggering six pencil-thin red lasers that shot up into the desert sky, forming a three-sided pyramid.
Out beyond the laser geometry, the belt stars of Orion and the winking yellow light of Mars seemed to swing above them in the small wind that had come up, a breeze carrying the smell of sage and mesquite.
A gibbous moon waxed huge on the horizon.
Augie had been cremated and buried with ceremonial honors at the Arlington National Cemetery. But when Jake asked as a favor that his sister allow part of his ashes to be brought back to West Texas, she had agreed that Augie would probably like that.
Angela looked at the moon, imagining the young Colonel Blake in his spacesuit at Sinus Medii with Earthrise reflected in his gold visor. She then opened the cigar box she’d been holding.
Inside, a small amount of ashes kept company with a few tiny pieces of bone that had refused to burn. Then, standing together, she and Jake each took a handful and looked out through the ruby laser projection now etching new geometries in the night air: pentagons, tetrahedrons, rhombuses.
“Well, hell.” Angela tossed the ashes into the lines of light and Deaver followed suit, transforming the gritty remains into the whirling carbon glitter of star dust, which is the beginning of all things.
“And good luck, Mr. Grotsky . . .”
“Wherever you are.”
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Although this book is a work of fiction, readers often ask how much of the story is true. And basically the answer is: “as much as possible” and “more than could be included.” Here are a few of the more intriguing facts I uncovered in my research.
1. The Brookings Report. Commissioned by President Eisenhower in 1958, it was submitted to Congress a year later. The purpose of this blue-ribbon study was to identify the potential consequences and dangers to mankind inherent in NASA’s proposed exploration of our solar system. In regard to the issue of revealing evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence to the public, the report cited a potential for unprecedented social, religious, and political chaos. Authored by Margaret Meade, among others, the report recommended that the government consider not disclosing such information.
2. The Authority of the Department of Defense. All exploration of space is officially
considered by the U.S. government to be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, regardless of the NASA charter establishing the Space Agency as civilian. The Defense Department is also the primary client of the Space Shuttle program.
3. The ET Exposure Act. In 1968, the year before the Apollo program succeeded in putting a man on the Moon, Congress passed a little-known piece of legislation called the Extraterrestrial Exposure Act. It gave the head of NASA the right to indefinitely “quarantine” anyone exposed to extraterrestrial life or alien artifacts. Only the President could overrule the NASA administrator’s judgment, and anyone quarantined had no right to a judicial hearing and no recourse beyond appealing to the President of the United States.
4. The USA and the Moon, 1969–1975. After six manned trips to the Moon, the Americans came home and never set foot there again.
5. The Face on Mars. It was first photographed by the Viking mission in 1976. The Face and “pyramidlike objects” found in the Cydonia region on Mars are aligned with planetary primes similar to the alignments of the oldest Pyramids found on the Giza Plateau in Egypt and at Teotihuacan in Mexico. Sir Arthur C. Clarke has called attention to striking symmetries in many monumental objects on the Martian surface, which suggest “manmade” rather than natural creation. NASA’s official position remains that these are all natural formations, that the symmetries suggesting the work of intelligent beings are coincidental, and that the Face and the “pyramids” are tricks of light and shadow.
6. President Carter and the Vatican. During his 1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter revealed to a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine that he had twice seen UFOs when he was in the Navy and vowed to find out what the government knew about them if he was elected to office. Once President, Carter asked his inherited CIA chief, George Herbert Walker Bush, for the intelligence files on UFO phenomena. Bush declined, referring the new President to an obscure Select House subcommittee. A report was compiled and given to Carter by a woman working for that committee who had also attempted to obtain documents from the Vatican Archives in Rome concerning UFOs and extraterrestrial encounters going back hundreds of years. The Vatican declined to make this information available.
The Orion Protocol Page 27