Impact wf-3

by Douglas Preston

  "This past week." Corso suddenly felt apprehensive; maybe Derkweiler and Freeman had had a run-in over the data.

  "Every week we have half a terabyte of radar and visual data coming in here, piling up, unlooked at. The gamma ray data is the least important."

  "I understand that, but here's the thing." Corso felt flustered. "Dr. Freeman, before he, ah, left NPF, was working on an analysis of the gamma ray data. I inherited his work in the area and in going over it, I noted some anomalous results . . ."

  Derkweiler clasped his hands and leaned forward on the desk. "Corso, do you know what our mission is here?"

  "Mission? You mean. . .?" Corso found himself flushing like a school-boy who'd forgotten his lesson. This was ridiculous, a senior technician being treated this way. Freeman had complained to him repeatedly about Derkweiler.

  "I mean--" Derkweiler spread his arms with a big smile and looked around his office. "Here we are in beautiful suburban Pasadena, California, at the lovely National Propulsion Facility. Are we on vacation? No, we are not on vacation. So what are we doing here, Corso? What's the mission?"

  "Of the Mars Mapping Orbiter or NPF in general?" Corso tried to keep his face neutral.

  "Of the MMO! We're not raising organic fryers here, Corso!" Derkweiler chuckled at his bon mot.

  "To observe the surface of Mars, looking for subsurface water, analyzing minerals, mapping terrain--"

  "Excellent. In preparation for future landing missions. Perhaps you haven't heard yet that we're in a new space race--this time with the Chinese?"

  Corso was surprised to see it put in such stark, cold-war terms. "The Chinese aren't anywhere near the starting line."

  "Not at the starting line?" Derkweiler almost hopped out of his seat. "Their Hu Jintao satellite is a few weeks from Mars orbit!"

  "We've had orbiters around Mars for decades, we've landed probes, we've been exploring the surface with rovers--"

  Derkweiler waved him silent. "I'm talking about the long-range picture. The Chinese have leapfrogged the Moon and are going straight to Mars. Don't underestimate what they can do--especially with the U.S. dithering around with its space program."

  Corso nodded agreeably.

  "And here you are messing around with gamma rays. What do stray gamma rays have to do with the Mars mission?"

  "There's a gamma ray detector on the MMO," Corso said. "Analysis of that data is part of my job description."

  "That detector was stuck on at the last minute," Derkweiler said, "by Dr. Freeman, over my objections, for no discernable reason. Gamma rays were Dr. Freeman's little hobby horse. Look--I don't fault you. You're trying to straighten out the mess Freeman left behind and you haven't learned the priorities. May I therefore suggest that you stick to the mission--the SHARAD mapping data?"

  Struggling to maintain his best ass-kissing smile, Corso picked up the gamma ray plots and slid them back into the manila envelope. He would get along with Derkweiler come hell or high water. "I'll get to work on that right away," he said crisply.

  "Excellent. Your first presentation as senior staff is in a week--I want you to do well. First impressions and all. You understand?"

  "I do. Thank you."

  "Don't thank me. It's my job to be a pain in the ass." Another chuckle.

  "Right."

  As Corso turned to go, Derkweiler said, "One other thing."

  He turned.

  "You'll probably be interested in this." He tossed over a stapled sheaf of papers that landed on the desk in front of Corso. "That's the final police report on Dr. Freeman's murder. It was a robbery--looks like Dr. Freeman came home at the wrong time. Bunch of stuff stolen, a Rolex, jewelry, computers . . . I thought you might like to see it. I know you were close to him."

  "Thank you." Corso took it.

  He walked back to his office, slipped behind his desk, and shoved Freeman's old gamma ray plots into a drawer and slammed it. Freeman had been right, Derkweiler was the boss from hell. Still, the gamma ray anomalies that he'd seen on Freeman's hard drive--and that he'd followed up on at work--were startling. More than startling. Freeman was right: it could be a major discovery, potentially explosive. The more he thought about the implications, the more frightened he became. He just had to keep his head down, work up the data, and present it in a cool, objective manner. Derkweiler might not like it, but what counted was the opinion of the mission director, Charles Chaudry, who was everything Derkweiler was not.

  He took up the report on Freeman's death and flipped through it. It was written in cop-speak, using phrases like "the perpetrator committed aggression on the victim with a piano-wire garrote" and "the perpetrator searched the premises and effected rapid egress from the scene of the homicide on foot." As he read, he felt his sorrow and horror at Freeman's murder mingling with a feeling of relief at the random nature of the crime. And they'd caught the guy--a drug addict looking for money. The usual sad and senseless story. He closed the report with a shiver of mortality. He had been shocked that only about twenty people had come to Freeman's funeral, and that he was the only one from NPF. It had been one of the saddest experiences of his life.

  Shucking off these morbid thoughts, Corso turned his attention to his workstation and pulled up the SHARAD data, the shallow-ground-penetrating radar which the MMO was using to map the subsurface features of Mars. He worked on it uninterrupted until the close of day, processing the data and fine-tuning the resulting imagery. He still had the hard drive back at his apartment and he could continue to work on the gamma ray data at home. Despite two security audits, still no one realized the hard drive was missing; Freeman had somehow bypassed all security checks and procedures. If the missing drive ever were noted, Corso had a plan to get rid of it immediately. But until then, it was exceedingly useful to have it at home, where he could work on it uninterrupted until late in the night.

  This discovery, he reflected, was going to make his career.

  9

  Wyman Ford entered his suite in the Royal Orchid and stood gratefully in the blast of air-conditioning coming from a vent in the ceiling in the middle of the room. Through the giant picture window covering one end of the room, he could see the longtail boats coming and going on the Chao Phraya River. At noon, the sun was at its zenith and a brown pall lay over the burning city, the color washed out of everything. Even by Bangkok standards it was a scorcher.

  The last time he had been in Bangkok was four years ago, with his wife, just before she was murdered. They had stayed at the Mandarin Oriental, in a wildly extravagant suite, with strategically placed mirrors--he stamped down hard on the memory, forcing his thoughts into another channel. His eye roved the cityscape below and settled on the spires of the Temple of the Dawn, which in the dead, polluted air looked like a cluster of gilded toothpicks rising from a sea of brown.

  With a long sigh, he went to the hotel safe, unlocked it, and withdrew his laptop and an unusual USB card reader. When the computer had booted up, he took the original business card, the one he had retrieved from Boonmee, and inserted it into the reader. A window opened on his computer screen, and he downloaded the contents of the microchip embedded in the thick paper of the card. He packaged it as an audio file and e-mailed it to Washington.

  Fifteen minutes later his account chimed and he downloaded the return e-mail.

  Call to cell phone number: 855-0369-67985

  Location of receiving phone: Sisophon, Cambodia

  Registered owner of receiving phone: Prum Forgang

  Transcription of conversation (translated from Thai):

  A: Hello?

  B: This is Boonmee Adirake. Much health and prosperity to you, Prum Forgang.

  A: I am honored to receive your call, Boonmee Adirake.

  B: I have an American looking to buy ten thousand carats of honey stones.

  A: You know very well I can't get that much.

  B: Let me explain. This man was carrying a colored topaz, not even in a lead box. He knows nothing. He has rich backers
and it's a one-time deal. He's an idiot. We could sell him anything.

  A: What do you suggest?

  B: An assortment of raw, low-grade honey stones, mixed in with enhanced topaz or heat-treated citrine.

  A: That I can do.

  B: I need them within twenty-four hours. The man is in a hurry.

  A: Good for you that he is in a hurry. And?

  B: I will get the highest possible price and you will get forty percent of it.

  A: Forty percent? My dear friend! Why this lack of fairness? I'm the one supplying the goods at my own expense. Make it fifty.

  B: Forty-five. I found the customer.

  A: Forty-five is a most awkward number. I'm hurt you would nickel and dime me like some cheap hustler and not an old and trusted associate.

  B: You're the one arguing over five percent.

  A: I have four children to think about, Adirake, and a wife who is like a bird with her beak open all the time. No, I will not do it for forty-five. I insist on fifty.

  B: By the testicles of Yaksha! All right, I will make it fifty--this time. Forty for the next deal.

  A: Accepted. You will of course look carefully into the background of this American before you deal with him. And you will get a suitable down payment.

  B: You can be sure I will.

  A: Excellent. I'll assemble the shipment and send it off by my courier this evening. You'll have it tomorrow morning.

  Ford closed the computer and leaned back in the chair, thinking. Sisophon was a chaotic, medium-sized city on the main road from Thailand to Siem Reap, Cambodia, a haven for smuggling, forgery, and counterfeiting. He flicked open his cell, dredged up a number from memory, and punched it in. He wasn't sure if the number would still be working--or if the man at the other end would even be alive.

  A cheerful voice answered immediately, speaking English in a lilting accent that was a cross between upper-crust British and Chinese. "Hello, Khon speaking!"

  Ford felt a flood of relief to hear the man's voice again. He was alive and, by the sound of it, very well indeed. "Khon? It's Wyman Ford."

  "Ford? You old dog! Where the hell have you been and what the damn brings you back to the Royaume du Cambodge?" Khon loved to swear in English but never quite managed to pull it off.

  "I've got an assignment for you."

  A groan came over the crackling lines. "Oh no."

  "Oh yes," said Ford, "and it's a good one."

  10

  The Marea glided into the passage between Marsh Island and Louds Island, the water green and calm, reflecting the dark trees of both shores. Abbey Straw steered into an isolated cove, pulled the throttle back into neutral, and reversed it briefly, bringing the boat to a halt.

  "First mate, drop anchor!"

  Jackie bounded forward, pulled the pin on the anchor, and played the chain out of the locker. "We're all alone," she called back. "No boats around."

  "Perfect." Abbey glanced at her watch. "Six hours of daylight to look for the meteorite."

  "I'm famished."

  "We'll pack lunch."

  They climbed in the dingy and rowed the hundred yards to the pebbly beach. Pulling the rowboat above the high-tide mark, they stood on the deserted beach, looking around. They were at the wild end of the island, the beach strewn with the detritus of winter, broken lobster traps, buoys, driftwood, and rope. The tide was ebbing, exposing seaweed-covered rocks in the cove, which humped out of the water like the hairy heads of sea monsters. A smell of salt mingled with evergreens hung in the damp, cold air. Where the beach ended a dense forest of black spruce rose up. Louds was all but deserted this time of year, the island's few seasonal summer camps shuttered. Nobody would bother them.

  "Man, it's thick," said Jackie, contemplating the wall of forest. "How're we gonna find a meteorite in there?"

  "By the crater and smashed trees. Believe me, a hundred-pound rock going a hundred thousand miles an hour is going to leave a mess." Abbey got out her chart and spread it on the sand, weighing down the corners with stones. The line she had drawn sliced across the island at an angle, intersecting the beach they'd landed at. She laid her compass on the map and adjusted the bearing, stood up, and took a heading.

  "We go this way," she said, pointing.

  "You bet."

  Abbey led the way into the deep spruce forest. She remembered a poem she'd had to memorize in school and recite one evening in front of the school and her parents. She'd choked up and forgotten it completely--stood there on stage for one long, agonizing minute before rushing off in tears--but now it sprang into her head unbidden.

  This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic.

  That was sort of the story of her life: bad timing.

  She ventured deeper into the woods, following the compass bearing. A dim, greenish light penetrated through the tall trees, and the wind sighed through the distant treetops. It was like walking up the aisle of a vast green cathedral, the trees like massive columns, the ground springy and carpeted in moss. Abbey inhaled the rich piney scent, recalling the many times she had camped on the island as a little girl with her mother and father, in the meadow on the north end. They lay in their sleeping bags under the night sky, counting the shooting stars. Back then the island was completely abandoned, the old farmhouses sagging and falling into ruin. Now retired people had started buying them up for cottages and the island was changing. Soon, she thought, all the wildness, the atmosphere of desertion and desuetude would be gone, replaced by cute summer cottages, lace curtains, and gangster grandmas shooing kids off their property.

  The forest grew thicker, and they had to crawl on hands and knees underneath a series of fallen tree trunks.

  "I don't see any craters," said Jackie.

  "We've hardly begun."

  They soon broke into a clearing, a stone wall enclosing a huddle of tombstones. The old island cemetery.

  "Lunchtime!" cried Jackie, climbing over the wall, shucking her pack and flopping herself down. With her back against a tombstone, she began rolling a joint.

  Abbey walked around the old cemetery, reading the tombstones. The funny old Maine names were like the muster roll to a lost world: Zebediah Loud, Hiram Carter, Ora May Poland, Nehemiah Swett. Her thoughts drifted back to her mother's funeral. Abbey remembered escaping the crowd around the open grave and climbing a hill, reading the tombstones as a way to keep herself together. At the top she looked back down on the huddled mass of people around the black hole, the leafless trees, the icy grass, the bright green Astroturf laid around the grave.

  It still didn't seem possible, her mother gone. She could never forget that day in the clinic when she asked the doctor: How did it happen? He looked at her so sorrowfully, a good man defeated by science. "We really don't know," he said, "but for some reason, five or ten years ago, a cell split the wrong way and that started it . . ."

  A cell split the wrong way. Strange how such a tiny thing could have such a gigantic effect.

  "Yo Mama!" Jackie called, her voice rising from the forest of stones. "Will you quit genuflecting to your ancestors and get back here and share this blunt with me?"

  Abbey walked back to where Jackie was sitting against a tombstone. "My ancestors? Speak for yourself, white girl."

  "Don't give me that shit, you're as much a Mainer as I am. No offense."

  She sat down cross-legged, took the joint, inhaled, handed it back. As the burning sensation spread from her lungs to her head, she unwrapped her sandwich and bit into it. They ate in silence and then Abbey lay back in the grass, tucked her hands behind her head, and looked up into the sky. "Did you notice?" she asked. "At least half the people buried here are younger than we are."

  "You always get so morbid."

  "I'll be less morbid after I find the meteorite."

  They both laughed, lying in the grass, faces to the sky.

  11r />
  Randall Worth came around Thrumcap Island in his twenty-four-foot PC-6, the Old Salt, diesel engine hammering away, laying a bourbon-colored cloud of exhaust on the water. The FM radio was tuned to TOS and it blasted static with just enough definition for Worth to guess which tune might be playing.

  Worth lobstered alone, without a stern man, because no one would work for him. So much the better, he didn't have to split his profits. A while ago some bastard had cut half his string because he was caught taking shorts. Fuck 'em, fuck 'em all.

  He threw over the last trap and brought the boat into a tight idle, wheel hard to starboard. The line zinged out, the float popping into the water, followed by the buoy. For a moment Worth let the boat drift while he pounded down the last half of a Coors Light and threw the can overboard. He wiped his mouth and eyed the engine panel. The engine was running cold, the injectors were shot, there was fuel coming out the wet exhaust and spreading rainbows over the water. Every few minutes the bilge pumps would kick in, vomiting oily water over the side. He spat again, the gobbet lying on the deck like a shucked oyster. He kicked the raw water hose and washed the lougey out the scuppers.

  He hoped his piece-of-shit boat would last the season. Then he'd buy insurance and sink it. All he had to do was stick a bad fuse into the bilge pump, moor his boat, and wait two days.

  As Thrumcap Island passed to starboard the distant outline of Crow Island came into view, the huge white dome of the old Earth Station rising up like a bubble. The Crow Island ferry was just coming out of the harbor, churning away as it rounded the point and headed for Friendship. As he glanced back toward the mainland he was surprised to see a boat anchored in a quiet corner of Marsh Island Passage. He squinted.

  The Marea. Abbey Straw's boat.

  He immediately throttled down, staring. A feeling of rage crawled up his spine and spread through his brain like water into a sponge. Fucking jungle bunny, he couldn't forget what she'd said about that deeper, deeper shit. Right in front of that cunt Jackie Spann, somebody should whack her upside the head. There they were, on Louds Island, looking for the treasure of Dixie Bull. The rumor going around town was that Abbey had gotten her hands on a map.