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Page 26
“Okay, okay, I get the idea,” Charli said.
“Also, on the ground—”
“Shut up, Gordon. I get the idea.”
Charli looked at Jake on the screen. True, she’d called off their relationship, but the prospect of losing him, never seeing him again, brought her true feelings to the surface. When they’d said their goodbyes last night, Jake knew how she really felt. He knew all along.
A satisfactory outcome, from her point of view, was impossible, wasn’t it? For Cronkite to be killed and Jake spared … she couldn’t imagine that. She had suggested that if Cronkite came out of the sphere, a remotely controlled gun could target him exclusively, or if a door into the sphere opened, that automatic weapons fire could be directed into it, but that was a non-starter. Jake’s life was disposable when balanced against a world taken over by an alien dictator. That was reasonable.
Of course, from her perspective, the best that could be hoped for was that Cronkite would survive and protect Jake. She may have been the only person in the world rooting for Cronkite. No, take that back. There were those in the Cronkite religion, and some who felt that a world run by a benevolent and all-powerful dictator would be preferable to the constant wars and political squabbles that had existed for millions of years. Maybe even terrorism would cease.
Jake and Cronkite both surviving was probably the most likely scenario. Cronkite knows we’ll hit him with everything we have. He must have the technology to protect himself.
The day was crisp and clear, with whitecaps on the Potomac and on Piscataway Creek. If it hadn’t been spring, people would have called it football weather.
Jake looked around. He seemed oddly calm. “I guess today is a good day to die.” His voice was clear—as if he were in the room.
Ten o’clock came and went, with no sign of the sphere. Jake turned to the closest camera and said, “I guess he got stuck in traffic.”
On the word “traffic,” the sphere appeared behind him. There was no vapor trail this time. Perhaps it flew so fast that it just seemed to materialize.
The sphere sunk into the ground somehow, or deformed itself such that it appeared to be half-submerged. It resembled a geodesic dome house.
Jake’s mic caught the old movie-type woo-woo sound. Jake stood waiting. A hole the size of a fist appeared and slowly increased in size. Military planners hoped that Cronkite would come out, but having an open door into the craft might be enough.
Charli held her breath as the hole increased in size like the iris of an eye. It was now the size of a child. Why did it open so slowly? The plan was to attack when the entry was large enough for Jake to walk through it. Charli squinted. Was that Cronkite inside? When the door was six feet high, it happened.
All the screens flashed white, and an enormous fireball billowed from center of the park. The monitors for the ground-based cameras went black. The drone views showed a black cloud rising into a mushroom shape. There was no sound. The public was used to such videos, from air strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this one was much more dramatic.
No one in the situation room spoke, and Charli heard cheering from the hall. Guccio broke the silence. “Did Cronkite really let that happen? He had to know what we were going to do.”
The question hung in the air for a moment then Hallstrom replied “His mind doesn’t always work right. We know he has this weird concept of how important Jake is … the number one problem-solver and all that. Maybe he thought Jake was that important to the world. Charli, I’m sorry.”
Charli said nothing and looked down, holding back tears. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
Hallstrom continued, “Maybe he thought we’d really want Jake to learn from him. Or something.”
“Do you think it’s possible he—they—escaped?” Charli looked around the room. No one said anything. “Maybe when they review the video …”
Hallstrom sat down next to Charli and put an arm around her shoulder. “You know that we had to—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” She pushed his arm off her shoulder, stood up and walked out of the room. Trying to keep her mind blank, she walked to the family room, where Sophia and Boondoggle were playing, watched over by Valeria. They’d kept Sophia away from any coverage, of course. Charli looked at Valeria and shook her head.
Sophia ran to her. “Charli, Charli, mira (watch).” She put a tennis ball on the floor, covered it with her body and then giggled uncontrollably as Boondoggle dug his nose into Sophia’s sides, trying to get to the ball.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Arms, check. Legs, check. Head, ow. Shoulder, ow.
Except for the “ow” parts, Jake’s return to consciousness wasn’t that different from his usual experience of waking in the morning. His habit was to lie in bed without moving or opening his eyes until he’d spent a little time remembering what day it was and thinking about his plans for the morning.
I’m in the sphere. I didn’t die. He put the sequence of events together. The door to the sphere opened. Flares from missiles appeared in the sky. Something was streaking across the river. The sphere must have sucked him in, none too gently considering his loss of consciousness and the pain in his head. Now he was lying on a comfortable couch of some sort—like a hospital bed with the head and knee sections raised. So where was Cronkite? He might be standing over me right now. Or next to me. The alien was only four feet high.
The plan: take in as much information as possible before revealing that he had regained consciousness.
Gravity? Normal.
Smell. Most people paid little attention to their sense of smell. He liked to challenge himself to figuring out the ingredients in a dish by smell alone. He tuned into the current smells: a faint vinegar odor and a fainter animal odor. Like being in a vet’s office.
Sound. His own breathing sounds. Any others? No. If Cronkite made respiration sounds, then he wasn’t right next to him. But there were occasional activity noises. Like someone shifting in a chair, flipping a switch. Wait. Some chewing noises. Chewing?
Time to open his eyes. He slitted his left eye open without making any other movements. Interesting. Cronkite was directly above him, on what seemed like the ceiling of the sphere, only twenty feet away. From Cronkite’s perspective, Jake probably seemed to be on the ceiling.
His last view of Cronkite, in Charli’s bedroom, had been from the side. Now he was getting a top-down view. The impression of a large, furry ladybug was even stronger from this angle. He counted six darks spots of different sizes. There was no symmetry apart from two matched spots near the top.
The place was the size of a typical living room. The walls were all smooth. A bit like suede. There was, of course, no distinction between wall, floor, or ceiling: just one continuous, spherical surface. The lighting was dim, with no apparent source.
“Morning, Bozo. See anything you like?” Cronkite’s voice made him jump. A screen morphed up out of the section of the “floor” in front of Jake’s couch, looking like a sixty-inch flatscreen TV from Costco.
The concept was clear. Just as an iPad had a general-purpose visual surface that changed based on the needs of the application, the interior of the sphere changed in three dimensions based on the occupants’ current needs. That’s why Jake was reclining in a human-styled couch, and Cronkite was clinging on to what looked like a section of slimy railroad track. If you needed a viewscreen one would pop up from the floor. A stool, a couch, a rolltop desk, no problem.
The now-familiar talking head of Walter Cronkite appeared on the screen. “See how things work?” Actual-Cronkite gestured with one of his appendages, and image-on-the-screen-Cronkite did the same with a human hand.
A monitor in front of actual-Cronkite morphed up at the same time, and displayed another ladybug-with-legs alien. Was Cronkite communicating with a comrade? Jake waved his hand around. The alien on the monitor did something similar. Ah, of course. A two-way universal translator with body language included.
“Where am I?” Jake asked. Sure, it was a cliché, but it seemed like an appropriate conversation starter.
“Take a look.”
Everything in the sphere disappeared, even his body. He had a 360-degree view of the stars in all directions. Jake jumped and grabbed the invisible edges of his couch then groped a few parts of his body and waved his hand in front of his face. Disorienting.
“You can see your sun there and the huge thing on your right is Mars.”
The sun was smaller than it appeared from Earth. Mars was a huge dusky-red globe. “Where’s Earth?” Jake asked.
“Homesick? It’s right here.” A shimmery, red circle appeared off to one side of the sun. The dot within the circle looked like a dim star. “Earth is over on the other side of your sun right now. We’re taking the scenic route today.”
The star view faded out, replaced with the suede-like surfaces and objects in the sphere.
“What just happened?” Jake asked.
“You mean the star display?”
“No, I mean back on Earth.”
“You and your government tried to kill me and missed. Did you really think I was such a bozo I wouldn’t know what you planned?” Screen-Cronkite raised his eyebrows.
“Sir Cronkite, can we start over? Hi, I’m Jake Corby.”
“Save it, Bozo.”
Until the moment that Jake could find a way to kill this creature—and how hard could it be? The thing was only a few feet tall—he was going to have to engage it in dialogue, understand it, and be diplomatic. Could there be a worse person for this mission?
Cronkite continued. “When I saw the missiles on their way, I simply pulled you in with a tractor beam, and we got the hell out of Dodge. I handled it pretty well, don’t you think?”
Jake nodded then froze. What’s going on here? Cronkite wants my approval. An alien with self-esteem issues. How do I use that? Make him work for my approval? “I guess so.”
Jake addressed the screen as if this were a normal videoconference and the weird ladybug thing just happened to be in the room. Jake was seeing him from “above,” so Cronkite’s appendages were mostly out of sight. One of the delicate arms would flick out now and then, but the larger worm-like appendages couldn’t be seen from Jake’s perspective. They were probably wrapped around the gooey railroad track.
Delicate stalks protruded from the two well-defined spots on the top of the body. They moved independently. Usually, one was pointed at Jake, and the other at Cronkite’s screen. Eye stalks probably. If I could grab one of those … But they could flash back into the body with lightning speed.
“You guess so? Do you know how precisely I had to time our departure so that they wouldn’t realize we’d escaped?”
“I’m guessing the sphere did the heavy lifting.”
“The propulsion?” Screen-Cronkite frowned and tilted his head. Physical-Cronkite pulled his eye stalks in briefly.
“No. I mean that the sphere did all the work. You just told it what to do.”
Cronkite ignored him. “Back on Earth, they think they’re finally free of me. They’re celebrating the destruction of the mean old alien, as well as their suicide bomber. I can’t wait to see the look on their faces when I make my triumphant return. Want to see the coverage?”
Jake said nothing. Another screen popped up showing CNC coverage. Times Square was mobbed with dancing, cheering revelers.
“Interesting that your country vilifies suicide bombers, but when the need arises—”
“We vilify suicide bombers who kill innocent bystanders to spread terror.”
“Whatever. You wanna drive?”
“The sphere?”
“No, Bozo, the Titanic. Of course, the sphere. Do you want to try driving it, yes or no?”
“Sure. I’m guessing it isn’t difficult.” Jake yawned. Was he being too obvious? If Cronkite has to work to impress me, will condescension increase his fixation on me? Is that a good thing?
“Let’s just set down on Mars and I’ll give you the wheel.”
Jake got out of his couch, stood up, and stretched. The couch morphed back into the floor. He tried a few jumping jacks then walked around the interior of the sphere over toward Cronkite’s side. A wall popped up in front of him.
The walls of the sphere were now transparent, but he his body and the “furniture” were visible. They hovered just above the surface of Mars. The scenery was familiar due to the NASA Mars images, and, in fact, one of the rovers was visible ten feet away. The rover popped straight up then smashed back down onto the surface.
“Tractor beam,” said Cronkite.
Jake held up his index finger and twirled it around. “Whoop-de-do.” His virtual self waved its eye stalks around. I’ve had dreams much less bizarre than this.
An automobile bucket seat formed out of the floor, and Jake sat down. “Is there a joystick or something?”
“No. You’ve got the conn.”
“Don’t I need a—”
“Just think, Bozo.”
It couldn’t have been easier. He pictured the sphere moving forward, and it did. Left, right, up, down, there was no learning curve. It just worked. Beyond that, he could think “Go over to the back of that big rock,” and the craft would handle all the details.
“Having fun?”
Jake was now zipping through canyons and over mountain peaks. With only his body and the bucket seat visible, the sense went beyond just flying. It was like he was one with the environment. The forces of acceleration were there but damped down significantly. Just enough to give feedback. Had the normal laws of physics prevailed inside the sphere, he’d have been thrown around like a ping pong ball in a paint shaker.
“You know,” Jake said, “managing Earth isn’t going to be as easy as this.”
“I’ll get the hang of it. It’s not the first time I’ve done this, you know.”
Jake talked as he piloted the craft up a mountain. “What are your plans?”
“First thing, I kill off all the world leaders. That will get people’s attention.”
“Cronkite, you already have people’s attention. Killing the leaders will just eliminate the ones who can help you most.”
“Bullshit. I kill the leaders, then everyone knows exactly who is in charge.”
Jake took the sphere up a mile and thought “Fly into the surface at maximum speed.” The craft obeyed but stopped at the surface.
“Nice try, Bozo.” Cronkite shook his head as if disappointed. “Why are you always so predictable? Lesson over.”
* * *
When Mars receded, Jake asked where they were heading but got no answer. Hello? Anybody home? Cronkite appeared to be in a dormant state. The screen-Cronkite had his head down on the news desk, with drool extending from the corner of his mouth to his forearm.
Cronkite’s movements and appearance made Jake believe he could kill him if he just could get his hands on him. Maybe that was wishful thinking. Four of the appendages seemed delicate, and Jake hadn’t seen any teeth or horns. How would it feel to rip out one of those eye stalks? Pretty good, I’ll bet.
Jake tried to get around the sphere to the alien but was thwarted each time by a wall or other barrier. He tried to think them out of the way but had no luck. He removed one shoe and threw it at Cronkite with all his strength, but a gravity anomaly apparently kept it from getting past the center of the sphere. It fell back and hit him on the head.
When he ran out of ideas, he sat back in the couch and admired the view. He was sure they were still within the solar system, yet none of the planets were large enough to be distinguished from the millions of stars. The brief astronomy unit in his high-school physics class wasn’t helping much here.
Cronkite came out of his trance and said, “May I introduce … DJ1.”
To his right, a spacecraft, indeed
diamond-shaped, appeared to slide up to the sphere. This craft looked like your typical science-fiction battle cruiser in that it had multiple protrusions and indentations in the hull. The one large, flat surface however, was mirror-smooth and reflected the stars.
“What is it? Are there creatures inside?” Jake asked.
“That’s right, you have no idea what this is, do you?”
Jake said nothing.
“This is the object that caused everyone on Earth to sneeze.”
“Why? Why did it do that?” Jake asked.
“It was simply—”
DJ1 snapped around such that the mirrored surface faced them. Jake sneezed and Cronkite did a little hiss-bark thing. Simultaneously, of course.
Cronkite rotated the sphere rapidly—the star field shifted—but DJ1 stayed with them. A humming or vibration from the sphere that hadn’t been there before flowed into Jake’s body. The noise got louder and louder.
“What are you doing?” Jake gripped the edges of his couch.
“I’ve got the damn tractor beam on it, but it won’t … Goddamn, son of a bitch …”
The temperature rose. In front of him a red square flashed, and a female voice said, “Warning. Tractor beam overload. System failure imminent.” In front of Cronkite, a blue circle flashed, and unpleasant rasping sounds filled the sphere. Was Cronkite trying to destroy DJ1?
Jake yelled, “What’s going on?”
“You’re witnessing a duel. A mano-a-mano fight to the death between DJ1 and me. The most noble form of combat. I am King Arthur and he is the Black Knight. I will—”
“Cronkite, stop. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but it’s not working. We’re going to explode or …” Hold on. Maybe that would be a good thing.
Everything went black, and gravity disappeared.
Here’s my opportunity! Jake pushed off from the interior surface of the sphere, blindly. If he could grab Cronkite, he might be able to kill him or at least inflict some damage. They were probably doomed anyway, since the life support system was certainly off. One small death for a man, one giant save for mankind. But power could come back, and then it would be too late.