by K. B. Kofoed
He trotted down the rise, avoiding the sagebrush. He heard the threatening rattle of a snake somewhere in the rocks not far away but never saw it. Finally, a bit out of breath, he arrived at the gate of the outer courtyard. Two three-man teams were stringing cable along the fence.
The General had been watching Jim arrive. “Nice walk, Mr. Wilson?”
“Can’t stand the sight of blood, Sir.”
The General pointed to the Levites. “They’re ready.”
A glint of dazzling gold caught his eye. The Levites were carefully taking the coverings off the ark. When the sealskin covering was heaved to the ground, everyone stood back to admire it. Jim studied its lines closely, savoring its elegant beauty. “Aaron really did a great job,” he remarked.
The General nodded. “Let’s go,” he shouted, looking at the column of smoke that rose from the altar.
On cue the Levites grabbed the gold covered poles attached to the ark and lifted it to their shoulders. In a slow march they took the ark into the sanctuary, chanting the prayers that Seth had taught them. Watching them, Jim almost envied the Levites the knowledge of what it felt like to lift the ark.
When he turned around Gene was standing next to him. “I’ve been in the communications trailer,” he said. “They have three AWAC planes in the air. Believe that? They’re taking a circular radar picture of the area. They say they’re going to be up for the duration of the test.”
Jim looked at Gene. “No matter how long it takes?”
“They’ll just rotate planes from the airfield. Take turns circling at a twenty mile radius.”
Gene was clearly excited. Scanning the horizon he leaned closer to whisper in Jim’s ear. “I get the feeling that there’s large scale backup out there.”
“Meaning?” said Jim.
“I mean I think the General is taking orders.”
“Sure, we all are,” said Jim. “What’s new?”
“What we see is the tip of the iceberg. The General is acting like he’s the man, the prime mover on Thunderbolt. I’m not so sure.”
Jim nodded but didn’t ask Gene to elaborate. He was more focused on the four men carrying the ark into the Tabernacle while two soldiers secured the huge tent flaps in a wide open position, presumably so cameras could see what was going on inside.
The soldiers had finished tying up the ropes when the Levites reached the sanctuary. The veil of the inner sanctum was drawn back as well, allowing the Levites to smoothly walk in, make a half turn, put the ark in its place and then leave as quickly as possible after closing the curtains, hiding the ark from view. It was almost comical to watch their hasty retreat from the Tabernacle. It reminded Jim of a walking race he’d once seen on television. The object was to walk as fast as possible without running. The Levites were, of course, trying to keep their decorum and solemnity while beating it out of the place. Some military onlookers even laughed out loud.
Outside, near the altar, the Levite group stopped and looked back at the Tabernacle. Jim thought it odd that they found that particular place safe and wondered how many of them had actually studied the Old Testament like he had. Were they aware that the ark roasted a whole courtyard full of people?
Gene was among those smiling at the frightened Levites.
“Do you blame them?” asked Jim.
“Not for a minute,” answered Gene. “Too bad they couldn’t fit them with ejection seats or bungee cords to yank them out of there. If it was me, I’d have a robot handle the ark.”
“A little redheaded robot in decorated golden robes?”
“Yeah, that’s it. A Levot,” said Gene. “Good idea, Jim. Maybe playing a recording of a Hebrew chant.”
Suddenly a gust of wind hit them hard enough to cause Gene to lose his balance and nearly fall over. “Sheesh,” he said.
“So it begins,” said Jim, wiping grit from his eye.
Gene fell silent. Jim didn’t bother to point out that in spite of the wind in their faces the smoke from the sacrifice still rose dead straight, like a column, into the sky as it had during the previous test. “If I were you, Gene, I’d work on suspending disbelief for a while and consider that maybe, just maybe, the three books of Moses are fact.”
Gene seemed surprised at Jim’s remark, but he took it seriously. “To be honest, Jim, I already have. It’s acknowledging that I’ve done it that hands me a problem.”
“Afraid to admit the truth?”
“Science requires empirical proof to assert something as fact,” Gene explained.
“I’m aware of that,” said Jim, “but suspending one’s disbelief is no threat to truth. It simply opens the door to possibilities. It’s another level of inquiry.”
Gene frowned. “Uh-huh,” he said. “I don’t know. I’ve never liked that argument. It’s too often used to support paranormal bullshit. Too much pseudo-science out there these days.”
Jim noticed that John Wilcox and his father had joined the Levites near the altar and were watching the Tabernacle. The General seemed to be talking to someone on his headset. Suddenly he motioned to the group. In unison, they all started running toward the entrance to the courtyard. It was the first time Jim had seen the General run.
#
When he arrived next to Jim and Gene at the entrance to the outer courtyard the General was out of breath. “Too many cigars,” he said, panting.
“What’s up, General?” asked Gene.
“The techies are already reporting some kind of activity.”
“Anything specific?” asked Gene.
“Well, why don’t you haul your ass over there and find out, Henson?” said the General in a nasty voice. “They could use you since Bush is gone.”
Gene complied without argument.
The General looked at his son. “John, I’d like you in there too. We need as many informed eyes watching this thing as possible.”
“Jim, you wanna come along?” asked John as he turned to follow Gene.
The General held him back. “I’d like you to stay here with me for a bit, Jim.”
“Why don’t we all go see what’s happening?” said Jim.
“We’ll stay right here.”
John Wilcox shook his head and walked toward the trailer, and the General’s eyes returned to the Tabernacle. “Are your antennas up, Jim?”
“Antennas?”
“Heads up, Wilson.”
By now the General’s special attention was getting to Jim. He knew, of course, that the General wanted his intuition, but why the General was so convinced that he would be of any real use in all of this confused him. “Shouldn’t you be paying more attention to the ark than to me?” Jim said bravely.
It was as though the General hadn’t heard Jim. He stood stiffly with his hands clasped behind the small of his back. Jim didn’t press the issue. Whatever the General’s motives may have been, it was obvious that they were in his bag of secrets. Probably just his military ‘need to know’ training, Jim supposed.
“AWACs are checking in,” voiced the General, touching a forefinger to his headset. “The weather’s nominal. Clear skies. No activity in full spectral sweeps of the target area.”
The breeze had picked up again. Now it hit the plume from the altar fire and fanned the flames below the burning sacrifice. Sparks and ash swirled into the air as the fire crackled angrily.
“It started with the wind before, too,” noted Jim. “Interesting.”
“Just the wind,” said the General. “No action in the tent so far. Or are you telling me something?” He raised an eyebrow as he glanced at Jim.
“I’ve a gut feeling something’s about to happen.”
“Good,” said the General.
Jim smiled. He was beginning to realize that he could say “frog” and the man would start hopping around. He wondered if John’s assessment of his Dad as the loony might be off the mark. Maybe he just didn’t understand his father. The gut feeling he’d mentioned to the General was real, but he attributed it more to expect
ations based on the previous day’s events than on anything tangible. Still, there was that vertical column of smoke from the altar. Why wasn’t it bent in the wind?
“Any more reports?” Jim asked.
“Not at the moment. I’m picking up a fair amount of static,” replied Wilcox. “Getting louder.” He took off his headset. He checked the wires for loose connections.
Jim might have been the first to see the glow. His eyes were fixed squarely on the interior of the Tabernacle when it started. At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. But General saw it too. He put on his headphones again and tried to raise the instrument shack. “I’m getting static, Earl,” he said. “Can you fix the phones?”
“Earl? Mr. Megabyte?” asked Jim.
The General nodded. “I brought him in from the Los Alamos lab to replace Bush. I don’t like the hippie bastard, but he knows his shit.”
The glow in the Tabernacle was now apparent to everyone. The General stopped talking and gawked like a schoolboy. Shouts and machine sounds came from everywhere at once.
The way the ark came to life reminded Jim of a streetlight gradually coming on. He could only guess at its brilliance. The curtains were made of linen with colored designs stitched on them, so what he and everyone else saw as they gazed into the open Tabernacle was just a glow behind curtains.
Jim looked over at the tents where he’d walked. Soldiers were lined up, some with weapons, staring in rapture at the Tabernacle. Two of them fell to their knees holding their hats over their hearts. One had his head bowed and hands clasped in prayer. The other soldiers looked at them with puzzled expressions.
A few moments passed and nothing further happened, other than an odd ringing in Jim’s ears. He remembered the simulations at the university and wondered if this was what the computers predicted. “I’d really like to see what this looks like on the computer screens, General.”
The General no longer seemed bent on keeping Jim in tow. He nodded. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Come back when you’re of a mind to.”
Jim nodded and left the General’s side and ran toward the tech van and the General turned back to watch the phenomenon in the sanctuary. “I need you to get me some answers, Wilson,” he called after Jim.
Jim froze. “Sir?”
The General pointing at the Tabernacle. “I want answers!”
“I keep telling you, General, I don’t have a clue.”
“I think you’re the only one who does.”
“I’m just curious. Always have been. And I’d really like to see what’s on those screens.”
“Computers,” said the General. He snorted and spit. Then drew a cigar from his jacket and began unwrapping it.
#
Mr. Megabyte had a T-shirt with his nickname emblazoned on the back. When he turned around Jim noticed that the front said NAUGHTY BITS.
“Wilson, you old nutcake, how’re they hangin’?” said Earl.
“I see you can afford to have your own T-shirts printed up, Earl,” said Jim. “All this wealth has you moving up in society. I’m impressed.” He held out his hand and Mr. Megabyte grabbed it and squeezed hard. When the bones in Jim’s hand were just about to snap, the man eased up. “How’d you talk the General into letting you in here?”
“Sexual favors, indentured servitude, payola. The usuals,” Jim replied with a straight face. “You?”
Earl smiled. “Nobody else available, I guess.”
Jim looked at the computer screens behind Earl. None of them bore any resemblance to the computer simulations he remembered seeing at the university.
“What’s on the screens at the moment?”
“Jehovah, is my guess,” answered Earl in a matter-of-fact tone. “What’s yours?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Jim.
Gene and John were seated together at a console. John looked up and nodded to Jim. “Out from under my pappy’s wing, I see.”
Jim shook his head. “I’d be home by now, if it was up to me.”
“Uh huh,” said John, looking back at the screen. “Money talks, bullshit walks.”
Gene gave John a dirty look. “Lawyers,” he said. “Cynical to the bone. We really don’t know what we’re seeing here, Jim,” he added. “If this thing is getting energy, where’s the source?”
Jim looked puzzled. “Where did the energy come from in the computer simulations?”
“We presumed it to be coming from the sun,” said Henson. “The Tabernacle was always aligned to face the East, the rising sun.”
“How do you know that’s not what’s happening here?” asked Jim.
“We don’t, but the patterns of energy aren’t the same.”
“What are the AWAC planes seeing?”
“Same as before. A solid ground reflection, and one little white pixel on their screens,” said Earl.
“That's the ark, right?”
Gene smiled. “You’re catching on.”
“Make that ten pixels,” said Earl, pointing to a screen. “It’s growing.”
Jim suddenly felt the necessity to leave the trailer. One glance at the Tabernacle told him the reason the radar target had grown. Looking out the window he could see that a huge pillar of cloud had formed over the sanctuary.
He stood staring at the cloud in disbelief, then opened the door and left.
The General noticed Jim leave the communications trailer and walked toward him. He pointed to the cloud. “The AWACs are reporting a big blip on their radar,” he shouted. “It must be the cloud.”
Jim barely heard the General. His mind was miles away. The first time he saw the ark in action he, like everyone there, had been caught up in the technology, looking for explanations and quantifiable facts. Now it seemed the ark was functioning as it had four thousand years ago. Suddenly it hit him that there was no reason to expect that the ark could be tamed or that it would serve them in any capacity, weapon or otherwise. Something or someone else was in control.
“You’re being tightlipped, Wilson,” said the General when he reached Jim’s side. “We’re paying for your perspective. So try to be a bit more communicative.”
“If I have something to offer, you’ll hear it, General,” said Jim.
“I think you already have a lot to offer, but I think you’re not talking. Why is that?”
“I don’t know what you want to hear.”
“What I want to hear? The truth as you see it. What I think doesn’t matter.”
Jim was surprised by the General’s statement. “You want the truth?”
“Of course,” said the General.
Jim looked at the cloud rising into the sky. “How do you propose to explain what’s happening here, Sir?”
“I can’t,” said General Wilcox.
“After all you’ve seen, you have no idea what is happening?” Jim looked the General in the eye.
“Should I?” said the General. “It’s not my job to explain all this. I have people like you and Gene for that.”
“And what are THEY telling you?”
“Precious little, I’m sorry to say.”
“I think that’s all you’re going to get,” said Jim, “because I think you’re dealing with the same forces that Moses dealt with -- the same entity that gave us the law in the Book of Leviticus. God himself.”
“You believe that?”
“Believe is a strong word. For want of a better answer ... yes.”
The General looked at Jim in silence. Then his gaze returned to the cloud. “It’s sunlight, I think, that powers it.”
“But the first time we set it in the afternoon and it worked into the night,” Jim argued.
“The sun still could have been the source. Its radiation passes through the Earth.”
Jim shook his head. “I don’t think so. The magnetic field deflects the solar wind, and it’s not gamma radiation that resonates in the ark. Otherwise we’d be seeing high radiation readings.”
“Okay. Some other kind of
radiation, then,” said General Wilcox.
Jim put a hand on the General’s shoulder and looked at him earnestly. “With all due respect, I think you’re trying too hard, Sir.”
Gene Henson emerged from the communications trailer and joined Jim and the General. “The AWACs crews want instructions, Sir,” he said. “Maybe you should spend some time in the trailer.”
“That’s why I’m wearing this freakin’ headset, Henson,” snarled the General. “Get back there and tell them to keep relaying the signals.”
When Gene obediently trotted back toward the trailer the General seemed to calm down a bit. “Listen, Wilson, I’ll be straight with you,” he said. “I want you to try to communicate with the ark.”
“No way,” said Jim. “Me? Why me?”
“Because ... I think you were chosen,” said General Wilcox.
“By whom? You?”
“Not at all,” said the General. “You were chosen by that.” He pointed at the Tabernacle. “I’m sure of it and have been for a long time.”
“So that’s it!” exclaimed Jim. “You think I’ve got some kind of special insight because I heard a voice once?”
“Not just once,” said General Wilcox. “Four times that I know of. That’s not the reason though. At least not all of it.”
Jim took a step back from the General. “Let’s hear it.”
The General smiled. “The answer’s simple, Jim. You’re here.”
“I’m sorry, General, but that doesn’t make sense. You invited me here and, as I understand it, Gene practically begged you to include me.”
“I guess, Jim, it depends on your view. I may not have thought this before but I do now. After all, you started this whole thing. And in spite of the incalculable odds against your being involved in a project that you knew nothing about, a.k.a. Thunderbolt, you became central to it as well.”
The General smiled warmly, an expression that Jim thought didn’t suit him. “Also, even though you are almost totally unqualified to have anything to do with Thunderbolt, and the fact that I thought you were if anything a detriment to it, here you are. Maybe the fates, nature, God, call it what you will, placed you right in the middle of this.”