The Forge of God

by Greg Bear

31

  It took Reuben Bordes 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, turning 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 have 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 m 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.

  His legs stopped tingling. With some effort, Reuben stood, wobbling back and forth uncertainly. He checked himself over and found no injuries, no blood or evidence of abrasions, and only a few tender bruises. When his hand went toward his pocket, he thought better of it—or rather, something else urged caution—and slowly withdrew his arm. Hand held idly out, shivering and puzzled, Reuben looked around the alley for more of the spiders. They were gone.

  The mouse lay still beside the dumpster. Reuben was allowed to kneel and examine the tiny carcass.

  It had been neatly dissected, its purple, brown, and pink shiny organs laid out to one side, incisions made here and there, as if samples had been taken.

  "I have to go home," Reuben said to nobody or nothing in particular.

  He wa
s allowed to finish his walk home.

  32

  Arthur was delayed three days unexpectedly in Las Vegas to speak informally with three congressmen from the House Judiciary Committee. His first evening back home, back with his family and the river and the forest, he sat on the living room throw rug, legs curled into a lotus. Francine and Marty sat on the couch behind him. Marty had laid the fire in the grate all by himself, fighting the carefully placed tinder with a long match.

  "Here's what's happening, really, as much as I know," he said, raising himself on his arms and sweeping his locked legs around to face them. And he told them.

  The heater came on at midnight and blew warm air over Arthur and Francine as they lay in bed in each other's arms. Francine's head rested on his shoulder. He could feel her eye movements as she stared into darkness. They had just made love and it had been very good, and against all his intellectual persuasions, he felt good, at home, at rest. Not a word had been said between them for fifteen minutes.

  She lifted her head. "Marty—"

  The phone rang.

  "Oh, Christ." She rolled out of his way. He reached across her to pick up the phone.

  "Arthur, Chris Riley here. I'm sorry I woke you up—"

  "We're awake," Arthur said.

  "Yes. This is a bit of an emergency, I think. There are some guys in Hawaii who'd like to talk with you. They heard I knew your home number. You can call them now or I—"

  "I'd like to be incommunicado, Chris, at least for a couple of days."

  "I think this could be very important, Arthur."

  "All right, what is it."

  "From the little they've told me, they might have found the—you know, what the press is talking about, the weapon the aliens might use against us."

  "Who are they?"

  "One is Jeremy Kemp. He's a conceited son of a bitch and hell to deal with, but he's an excellent geologist. The other two are oceanographers. Ever hear of Walt Samshow?"

  "I think so. Wrote a textbook I read in college. He's pretty old, isn't he?"

  "He and another fellow named Sand are with Kemp in Hawaii. They say they saw something pretty unusual."

  "All right. Give me a phone number." He switched on the light over the nightstand.

  "Samshow and Sand are on board a ship in Pearl Harbor." Riley enunciated the number and name of the ship for him. "Ask for Walt or David."

  "Thanks, Chris," Arthur said, hanging up.

  "No rest?" Francine asked.

  "Some people think they might have found the smoking gun."

  "Jesus," Francine said softly.

  "I'd better call them now." He got out of bed and went into the den to use the extension there. Francine followed a few minutes later, wrapped in her robe.

  When he had finished with the call, he turned and saw Marty standing beside her, rubbing his eyes.

  "I'm going to San Francisco this weekend," he said. "But I've still got a couple of days with you guys."

  "Show me how to use the telescope, Dad?" Marty asked sleepily. "I want to see what's going on."

  Arthur picked the boy up and carried him back to his bedroom.

  "Were you and Mom making love?" Marty asked as Arthur lay him down in the bed and pulled the covers over him.

  "You got it, Big Ears," Arthur said.

  "That means you love Mom. And she loves you."

  "Mm-hm."

  "And you'll go away but you'll come back again?"

  "As soon as I can."

  "If we're all going to die, I want you both here, with me, all of us together," Marty said.

  Arthur held his son's hand for a long moment, eyes moist, throat gnarled with love and a deep, inexpressible anguish. "We'll start with the telescope tomorrow, and you can look tomorrow night," he finally said in a harsh whisper.

  "So I can see them come," Marty said.

  Arthur could not lie. He hugged his son firmly and stood by the bed until Marty's eyes were closed and he was breathing evenly.

  "It's one o'clock," Francine said as he slipped under the covers beside her.

  They made love again, and it was even better.

  November 22

  "Gauge! Bad dog! Dammit, Gauge, that's a frozen chicken. You can't eat that. All you can do is ruin it." Franchie stomped her foot in fury and Gauge slunk from the kitchen, berry-colored tongue lolling, ashamed but pleased with himself.

  "Wash it off," Arthur suggested, sliding past Gauge to stand in the kitchen door, grinning.

  Franchie held the thoroughly toothed but whole bird in two hands, shaking her head. "He's mangled it. Every bite will have his mark."

  "Bites within bites," Arthur said. "How recursive."

  "Oh, shut up. Two days home and this."

  "Blame it on me, go ahead," Arthur said. "I need a little domestic guilt."

  Francine put the bird back on the countertop and opened the sliding glass door. "Martin! Where are you? Come chastise your dog for me."

  "He's outside with the telescope." Arthur examined the chicken sadly. "If we don't eat it, that's one bird's life wasted," he said.

  "Dog germs," Francine argued.

  "Hell, Gauge licks us all the time. He's just a puppy. He's still a virgin."

  Dinner—the same bird, skinned and carefully trimmed —was served at seven. Marty seemed dubious about his portion of leg and thigh, but Arthur warned him his mother would not take kindly to their being overfastidious.

  "You made me cook it," she said.

  "Anything interesting?" Arthur asked his son, pointing up.

  "It's all twinkly out there," Marty said.

  "Clear night tonight?" Arthur asked.

  "It's slushy and cold," Francine said.

  "Lots of stars, but I mean . . . you know. Twinkly like faraway firecrackers."

  Arthur stopped chewing. "Stars?"

  "You told me only supernovas would get bright and go out," Marty said seriously. "Is that what they are?"

  "I don't think so. Let's go look."

  Francine dropped her wing in disgust. "Go ahead. Abandon dinner. Arthur—"

  "Just for a minute," he said. Marty followed. After hanging back by the service porch door for a minute in protest, Francine joined them in the backyard.

  "Up there," Marty said, pointing. "It's not doing anything now," he protested.

  "It's awful cold out here." Francine looked at Arthur with an unexpressed question on her face. Arthur examined the sky intently.

  "There," Marty said.

  For the merest instant, a new star joined the panoply. A few seconds later, Arthur spotted another, much brighter, a couple of degrees away. The sparkles were all within a few degrees of the plane of the ecliptic. "Oh, Christ," he muttered. "What now?"

  "Is this something important?" Francine asked.

  "Daddy" Marty said nervously, glancing at his parents, alarmed by the tone of their voices.

  "I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe it's a meteor shower." But the sparkles were not meteors. He was sure of that much. There was one person he could call who might know—Chris Riley. Always Riley, a still point in the moving world.

  In the darkened den, he dialed Riley's home phone. On the first attempt, it was busy. A few moments later, Riley answered, breathless.

  "Chris, hello. This is Gordon, Arthur Gordon."

  "My man. Just the man." Riley paused to catch his breath. "I hear you set up a meeting with Kemp and Samshow. I'd like to be there, but it's getting real busy here. I've been running out to the telescope and back. I should get a phone out there."

  "What's happening?"

  "Have you seen it? All through the plane of the ecliptic—asteroids. They're blowing up like firecrackers! Since dusk, apparently. I just got confirmation from Mount Laguna and somebody left a message a few minutes ago from Pic du Midi in France. The asteroid belt looks like a battlefield."

  "Damn," Arthur said. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Marty and Francine standing in the doorway, Marty with his arms wrapped tight arou
nd his mother's waist.

  "When is this task force going to come clean?" Riley asked. "Lots of people are really angry, Arthur. The President shoots his mouth off, and nobody else is talking."

  "We can't be sure this is connected."

  "Arthur! For God's sake! Asteroids are blowing up! How the hell could it not be connected?"

  "You're right," Arthur said. "I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow. How many sparkles so far?"

  "Since I've been watching, at least a hundred. Got to run now."

  Arthur said good-bye and hung up. Marty was owl-eyed, Francine only slightly more restrained. "It's all right," he said.

  "Is it starting?" she asked. Marty began to whimper. Arthur had not heard his son whimper in recent memory —months, a year.

  "No. I don't think so. This is far away, in the asteroids."

  "Are they sure it's not shooting stars?" Marty asked, a very adult rationalization.

  "No. Asteroids. They're out beyond Mars, most of them between Mars and Jupiter."

  "Why out there?" Francine asked.

  Arthur could only shake his head.

  33

  November 23

  Minelli had spent the night lying in a lounger by the broad picture windows. He was there now, head lolling, snoring softly. Edward tightened the knot on the bathrobe he had borrowed from Stella and walked past the lounger to stand by the glass. Beyond a concrete patio and a dried-up L-shaped ornamental fishpond, frost whitened several acres of winter-yellow grass.

  Coming here had been a good idea. Shoshone was peaceful, isolated without being cut off. For a few days at least, they could rest, until the crowds of reporters found them again. The few townspeople aware of their return were making sure nobody knew where they were. They spent most of the day indoors, and only Bernice answered the phone.

  He heard Minelli stir behind him.

  "You missed the show," Minelli said.

  "Show?"

  "All night long. Like a parade of lightning bugs."

  Edward raised an eyebrow.

  "No joking, and I'm not crazy. Out over the mountains, all night long. Clear as a bell. The sky twinkled."