by Greg Bear
“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 hi 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?
Wha
t 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.
31
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, turfiing 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 hav
e 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.