by Greg Bear
“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, Octobers, 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
16
Octobers, 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?” Crocker-man 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,” Crocker-man 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 liter
ally 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.”