Majestic

by Whitley Strieber

  Over the next hour the storm raged and the cries slowly died away. The more he heard them the more Bob became convinced that they weren't human noises. No human being could make a sound like that, not even a man burned and in agony.

  It had to be an animal, he thought. Some poor, hurt animal.

  He was surprised by dawn. It didn't seem like he'd been asleep, and here it was pushing six. He stirred himself, sat up from the couch and stretched his neck. He still had his boots on and his legs were stiff. When he straightened them his knees cracked and he felt better. Ellie and the kids slept huddled together, their faces as soft as dew. Compared to them he was like a big old mesquite tree, all bark and thorns. He went into the kitchen and opened the breadbox, cut off a slab of bread and spread it with grape jelly. He pumped up some water and drank it in deep, grateful draughts. He would have liked coffee, but he was in a hurry to see what had happened last night.

  He felt guilty. A plane had crashed and he hadn't gone out to help the poor bastards. A howling animal had scared him away. By the thin light of morning he was just plain ashamed of himself.

  I know this because he admitted it to Joe Rose, the man who interrogated him while he was being held in the brig at Roswell Army Air Force Base.

  He was even more ashamed when he went into the barn and found Sadie standing there still in her saddle and bridle. She gave him a sad, accusing look. How could any man who worked with animals ever leave a horse saddled half the night?

  He would have unsaddled her immediately, but he couldn't do that. He had to use her right now.

  As he mounted her he mumbled that he was sorry. Then he headed up to the pastures to see what he could see. She trotted right along; she was a faithful animal.

  He went first to his sheep. In spite of himself he pressed Sadie to a canter. It was his expectation that he was going to find that a plane had crashed into his flock.

  The morning was as quiet as the night had been noisy, and he didn't like that. Were they all dead? Was it that bad?

  Sadie cantered smartly. Her ears were cocked forward as if she, also, was listening for the sheep.

  Then he saw them bunched up in the shallow draw. There was no crashed plane, in fact no sign of damage at all. He couldn't see any carcasses. The sheep were grazing, some of them milling.

  He made a little sound of relief in his throat. They were all right, and putting them here had been a good idea.

  They'd stayed away from the fences.

  Sadie suddenly reared up. She whinnied then came down hard, stomping at what Bob thought was a sizable snake. He knew better than to interfere with a horse killing a rattlesnake, and let her have her way until he realized that the thing she was trampling into the muddy ground was no reptile.

  He backed her off and peered down. Her chest was heaving,

  and she was extremely skittish.

  What he saw down in the mud appeared to him like a thick belt of black webbing. He didn't know what to make of it.

  After looking a moment longer to be certain that it wasn't a rattler, he dismounted his horse.

  She pawed and snorted. He held the reins tightly; it was a long walk back to the house.

  He bent down and with his free hand drew the black strap out

  of the mud.

  Where were you when the hand of man first touched a thing of angels? I know where I was: unborn in 1947.1

  was produced later, in the last, disillusioned years of the baby boom. I wasn't exactly an unwanted child, but I suspect that my dad, at least, would have preferred a new Pontiac.

  It looked like burned plastic, but it was floppy. Sadie's eyes rolled and she stomped. She tossed her head, nearly pulling the reins out of his grasp. Holding her tightly, he remounted with the stuff in his free hand.

  She began craning her head around. What the hell was the horse so fired up about? It was obviously some burned scrap from the plane.

  One thing about the webbing that fascinated Bob was its weightlessness. He squeezed it. You'd think you could just tear something this flimsy to pieces. He pulled at it. The stuff was tough.

  Finally he tied it on behind him—and nearly got dehorsed for the second time in as many days. The instant it touched her skin Sadie reacted as if he'd hit her with a hot branding iron. She screamed and bolted forward, straight into the outer edges of the flock.

  Her fear infected the sheep at once, and they started running. He'd have a damned stampede on his hands if he didn't watch out. He reined Sadie back hard and clicked his tongue at her. But it was to no avail. The horse was in a first-class panic.

  What the hell. He pulled the piece of junk off her back and threw it as far as he could.

  She calmed down then. But now the sheep were desperately rearranging themselves to avoid the thing. He sat open-mouthed watching this display of animal craziness.

  Rather than get himself into trouble with Sadie, he resolved to wait until the ground dried a little and bring out his old Jeep to get the damned thing.

  After inspecting his animals he rode up to the head of the little draw and looked around. There was nothing in the immediate area, but in a distant pasture there seemed to be an awful lot of rubble. Little bits of stuff shining in the morning sun, thousands upon thousands of them.

  It was a good thirty-minute ride over there, which meant he wouldn't make it back for breakfast until nine. He wanted some decent food in his belly before he approached that mess. He could have used some whiskey, too, but he didn't hold with drink during the morning. Coffee, though. Ellie's coffee.

  At the meal he said nothing about the wreck. He ate a couple of eggs and some Spam, and drank two big mugs of coffee. The kids drank milk and ate Post Toasties. As usual Ellie had coffee and a cigarette. She sang while she was cooking, "It was a long time ago, long time ago. ..." He didn't know the song.

  "You see the plane, Dad," Billy asked.

  "A lot of little pieces."

  "Can we go?"

  Ellie turned from the stove. "No."

  "Well," Bob said.

  "Bob, there might be—"

  He thought of that sound. "Your ma says no," Bob said. "Momma, please." Mary's voice was intense. "We all oughta go. Not just Dad."

  "If there's a man hurt he might need help." Billy was, as always, a matter-of-fact kid.

  Bob looked into his coffee. He should have gone out there last night. Somebody might have died because of him.

  "Go on, kids," Ellie said. "But you stay away from dead men. You don't want nightmares."

  Bob drove to the sheep, his kids sitting silently beside him. Ellie stayed behind.

  The sheep still wouldn't come within fifty feet of the black plastic. Bob got out and went to it, the mud sucking at his boots as he walked through the mire created a while ago by all the stomping hoofs. He picked up the plastic. You closed your eyes, you could feel its texture, but it definitely had very little weight.No weight. And yet when he tossed it into the back of the Jeep, it fell normally. It ought to float in air, like a feather or like smoke.

  "What is it, Dad?" Mary touched it gingerly. "I'm not real sure. A piece of the plane." They got in the truck and he drove carefully out of the draw. They bounced and rattled along the sandy borders of a wash, then turned and headed up toward the pasture he'd seen from horseback. Soon he could see the wreckage again, still lying scattered along a low rise, glittering in the sun.

  He drove up to the edge of it, then stopped the engine. They all climbed out. It looked just like somebody had taken the tinfoil from a thousand cigarette packs, torn it up and scattered it over tens of acres. The rubble was spread in a long sort of fan, as if whatever had created it had come sliding into the ground out of the southeast. He picked up a piece of the foil. It was strange stuff. Tough. You couldn't even think about tearing it. And it was light, too. Like the webbed belt it had no weight at all.

  "This isn't pieces of a plane," Billy said. He held some of the stuff in his cupped hands. When he let it go, it fell like a handful
of dry leaves.

  "Look," Mary said. She bunched up a piece of the foil until it was no bigger than a pill. Then she let it go.

  Instantly it bounced back into its former shape.

  "Damn," Bob said. He did it. The same thing happened. Again he tried tearing it. Nothing.

  Billy put some of it on a stone and beat it with another stone. It didn't even scratch.

  How anything as tough as this stuff could ever have gotten torn up like this just beat all, as far as Bob was concerned. Must have been a whale of an explosion. The stuff was stronger than metal and yet thinner than cellophane. And blown all to hell.

  Then he saw a gleam of violet coming from under a largish sheet of the foil. He lifted the sheet, tossing the two-foot square over his shoulder. The way it fluttered in the air reminded him of the flickering wing of a butterfly.

  What he saw on the ground confused him even further than he was already confused. There lay a T-shaped object a couple of inches long, made of what looked for all the world like balsa wood, with violet glyphs covering it. He looked at it for a long time. He did not touch it. Others were I-shaped.

  There were also pieces of what appeared to be waxed paper, and on these had been painted rows of little figures that Bob surmised were numbers.

  Mary picked up a piece that hadn't been written on and held it up to the sun. "Look, Daddy."

  Bob saw the faint outlines of yellow flowers. He took the sheet in his own hand. It was as if there was a subtle design, or maybe even real flowers pressed between the layers. They were beautiful, like yellow primroses. Evening Primroses.

  You couldn't do anything to the paper, either. It didn't burn or tear. It was as tough as the foil.

  Bob surveyed the field of rubble. The sun shone down, but no birds sang. A creepy sensation overcame him, and he wished he hadn't brought his kids.

  The only sound was their own rustling breath. His big, familiar pasture seemed strange and dangerous and full of mystery. He did not like this, did not like it at all.

  Where were the birds? There had always been plenty of birds around here. What devilment had gone on last night?

  "Were there bobcats crying out in the storm?" Billy asked. Bob did not answer. He could imagine the devil screaming like that. Then, with a toss of his head, he dismissed the thought.

  "Somebody gotta clean this place up," he said. "Who's gonna do it?"

  "It'd take ten loads in the Jeep."

  "I'd say more like a hundred, son. We'd be at it for a month."

  He surveyed the mess, and felt hopeless. There was so darned much of that tinfoil and other junk he could hardly believe his eyes.

  Who the hell would do it? He couldn't haul all this crap out in his Jeep, not in a month of work. And what about the gasoline? A man had to think about the cost. At a dime a gallon, ten dollars' worth of gas at least.

  He walked around, turning over pieces of the rubble with his toe, trying to see if he could find some insignia, something more than the little violet squiggles. But there was nothing, not a number, not a name.

  "Hell." This wasn't what he wanted to see. He couldn't expect the AAF to deal with this mess unless it was theirs. But this didn't look like any sort of military stuff he'd ever heard of.

  Maybe it was secret. Secret stuff. Them and their damned secrets, they'd really made a mess of one man's pasture.

  He reached down and picked up one of the pieces with the violet writing on it. The thing was balsa wood, but it was so hard he couldn't dent it with his fingernail. It looked like balsa, he could see the grain. It was at least as light as balsa. But how could it be so damn hard?

  The letters were inlaid into the gray surface. What did they say? He couldn't make out a bit of it. Was it Jap?

  Maybe that was it: the Air Force was testing some kind of Jap secret weapon they'd captured from old Tojo.

  "Banzai," he muttered. Then he tossed the little piece of wood aside.

  He strode forward, moving steadily up a long rise. Now he could see signs of fire. Some of the pieces of foil were melted, others showed signs of scorching.

  He listened to the silence. It made him want even more urgently to get his kids out of here. What kind of thing was it that terrified dumb sheep and horses and made birds fly away? Whatever bothered the animals about this stuff probably ought to bother him, too.

  Then he realized that there weren't even any insects buzzing around here.

  The place was totally silent, and he knew that even the little things, the insignificant things, had been frightened away.

  He whirled around, sure that somebody was coming up behind him. But there was only the kids standing in the sun, their skin golden, their faces solemn.

  "Come on, y'all. Lets get some of this stuff picked up and put in the back."

  Each of them dumped an armload of the wreckage into the Jeep. Then they got in. Bob pulled the choke, then hit the starter. She ground and gasped and finally chugged to life. He put her in gear and she went lurching off, tires spinning and whining in the wet, sandy dirt.

  "Move," he growled, whipping the wheel around and gunning the motor to get out of an especially bad area.

  Then he was on dry stone and doing twenty. She rattled like a can of marbles, but she got them home three times as fast as horses, and for that he was grateful.

  Ellie had heard them come rattling down the hill, and was waiting at the kitchen door. He stopped the truck and turned it off, then got out.

  His wife looked small and fragile, just pretending all that strength of hers.

  He gathered her in his arms.

  "Is it bad?" she asked.

  "There's somethin' funny."

  "Are all the men dead?"

  "There weren't any men, Mom," Billy said.

  "There was wax paper, like, with yellow flowers pressed in it."

  "It's all about like this." Bob showed her the back of the Jeep.

  She was a practical woman, and because it didn't make sense she didn't comment. She gave them all beans and potatoes for lunch. Bob ate in silence. Afterward he said, "Don't you kids go back up there without me."

  "Should you tell the sheriff?"

  "As soon as I get to town I'll do it."

  She was silent after that, going about her work. How slim she was, this woman who had been swayed by his love. He listened to her movements, the shuffle of her slippered feet, the occasional sigh.

  That afternoon he got a frozen-up windmill gear and had to spend a couple of hours working on it. Before he knew it the sun was heading toward the horizon and it was time to knock off. He thought no more about the field of rubble and the sheriff. Maybe it was some kind of test glider. That would explain the seeming lack of victims. After he finished work he sat at the table drinking coffee and smoking.

  In the back of his mind he'd been thinking that the Army Air Force might show up on its own, but as evening fell he had to conclude that they were not coming today.

  Late that night he was awakened by light outside brighter than the moon. He pulled on his boots and went out. A blue searchlight was darting down from a huge, dark object that hung soundlessly in the sky, blackening out the stars.

  The searchlight went on and off in the dark, darting down now and again. It moved toward the pasture where the wreckage lay.

  Perhaps the fourth being was rescued on that night. I think not, though, because it was heard again. Bob expected the Air Force to show up the next morning, but they didn't. He waited a few days. Still nothing.

  Finally, on July 7, he got in his Jeep and went rattling off toward Maricopa. He told the sheriff's deputy to tell the Air Force to get out to his place and claim its own.

  When the sheriff called the Army Air Field in Roswell, they had no idea what he was talking about, but they went out anyway, to see what had so upset one of the region's stolid ranching men.

  Chapter Three

  The Chronicle of Wilfred Stone

  It would soon be the responsibility of my friend Joe Rose t
o get Ungar under control. He would do it with the same ferocious subtlety that appeared when we were fishing for trout, and that he had used on former Gestapo agents when he interrogated them.

  Now I dislike fishing, but in those days I was young and full of murder, and loved the game of it and the kill. I inherited the sport of fly-fishing from my father, and many of the other gentlemen in CIG had done the same.

  Back in July of 1947 I was—God, let me see—I was thirty-four years old. I'd just had my birthday. I was born on Friday, June 13, 1913. I walk under ladders and seek out black cats.

  Thirty-four. I was healthy from my years in the Office of Special Services. Now I am bent and flabby and cancerous from my years in MAJIC. The wages of sin.

  But what delicious secrets I know. I am so terribly afraid . . . and that, too, is delicious.

  Don't let me pretend to be a hero. I am no hero. Spies are not glamorous. We gather and protect secrets, which are power. We control your lives and you don't know it.

  When the history of this era is written, it must certainly be called the Age of Secrets. I will state the matter simply: Everything important is classified.

  Everything.

  Public knowledge has degenerated to a form of entertainment. I should know. The control of the public mind has been my lifelong profession and horrible fascination.

  Official secrets are the snare of modern life. If you don't know them, you're helpless. If you do, you're trapped.

  July 6, 1947: The previous week I had been roped into a peculiar sort of a project. The Board of National Estimates had asked the Central Intelligence Group what it would mean if the rash of "flying disks" being reported nationwide resulted in contact with spacemen. We did not yet know of what had happened in Roswell, but there had been so many other sightings reported in the last few months that our interest was piqued—at least officially.

  Because I'd made no secret of the fact that I was unhappy on the French desk, I was given this bit of silliness to amuse myself.