The Grays

by Strieber, Whitley

  “But we—we’re the same species? On two different planets?”

  “So it would seem,” Simpson said. “The most bizarre part is that the DNA trail is quite clear. We are not their colony, Crew’s people are our colony.”

  “But in the past, uh, weren’t we pretty damn primitive? How could we possibly have colonized another planet? We couldn’t do that now, couldn’t begin to.”

  “The past is a greater mystery than we allow ourselves to believe,” Crew said.

  Rob’s mind raced. “All of those ruins that nobody can understand, things like the pyramids and the fortress at Sacsayhuaman in the Andes and that impossibly huge stone platform at Baalbek in Lebanon—all of those ancient engineering impossibilities . . . does this explain them?”

  “The remains of our lost civilization, or so we believe.”

  “The legends of the fall . . . Atlantis, that sort of thing, the war in space narrated in the Vedas—”

  “Distorted memories of a world that was lost in a ferocious war that plunged Earth back into savagery and caused you to lose contact with us altogether. The Book of Ezekiel in the bible is a confused account of a failed mission on our part to rescue you, when we built the Great Pyramid at Giza. We had to come physically, and that is extremely slow. The journey took thousands of years on a multigenerational starship.”

  “The Great Pyramid is dated. We know who built it.”

  “You know that Khefu put his mark on it. We returned in force about thirty-five hundred years ago. For a time, we ruled Egypt. The Pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti were from our world. We attempted to reestablish essential lost technology, which is the technology that enables the movement of souls across space. A journey that takes eons in the physical can be accomplished in a few moments by a being in a state of energy. The Great Pyramid is a device that enables this. The Egyptian religion of the journey of the soul to the Milky Way is not imagination, but mythology based on lost science.”

  “And did it . . . work?”

  He nodded. “It still does. At present, I can use it to return home, but nobody else can come here.” He gestured toward the blackened console. “That new device had a lot of capability. Among the things it could do was transmit the entire record of somebody’s DNA at faster than light speed. A clone could then be grown using stem cells and DNA matching. Using pyramids on both planets, the soul could cross from one body to the other. But that’s all impossible now, because of what Michael Wilkes did.”

  “Mike? But why?”

  “Before we can answer that question,” Simpson said, “you need to understand a little more about why the grays are here.”

  “They’re exploiting us somehow, I’ve always assumed. Feeding, perhaps, in some way that doesn’t seem to hurt people but that they regard as absolutely essential to themselves.”

  “They’re here because they’re in terrible trouble,” Crew said.

  Simpson joined in. “They have one hell of a problem. Genetic. Only in the past few years were we even able to understand it. But when you do a really good genetic study on them, you find all kinds of breaks, inserted genes, genes that must be from other species, artificial genes—they’re a genetic garbage can, is what the grays are. They’re not actually alive anymore. The grays have replaced so much of themselves that they’ve become, in effect, biological machines. If you can believe this, the few original genes we have detected are at least a billion years old.”

  “A billion?”

  “Or more. Maybe much more. What we’re looking at with the grays is a species so ancient that it has used up its gene pool. As a species, in their entirety, the grays are dying of old age.”

  Crew continued, “Every gray we have ever recovered from crashes, a total of fifty-eight bodies over the last sixty years, has been suffering from this degenerative genetic disease, where the membranous nucleous of their cells hardens, until the genetic material that’s stored there can no longer be used by the cell. Then the grays replace the affected organ with an artificial substitute. Over time, the individual becomes a sort of machine. They have even created a prosthesis for their brain.”

  “So, why are they dying? If they’ve become artificial versions of themselves, they’re immortal.”

  “The more artificial they are, the less alive they are. Knowledge and intellect transfer to the artificial brain, but not feelings. They’ve gained a sort of immortality, but at the price of losing their heart. And every gray is like this, and they all remember their lost hearts, and all they care about is getting them back. What they have now is not life, but the memory of life.”

  Rob had seen the Bob autopsy. He had been a living entity, but with things like a manufactured skin and metal bones, and a mind that was housed not in a brain as such, but in silicon filaments that filled his head in intricate patterns that looked something like Mandelbrot Sets. You could see, though, in the structures of the skull, that it had once contained a natural brain.

  “So how does coming here help them?”

  “The grays are trying to save mankind.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, it’s not altruism. They’re getting access to our rich young gene pool. In return, they’re going to save us from the environmental catastrophe that’s going to ruin us. Together, both species survive. Apart, both die.”

  “Then why—I’ve always had the impression from Wilkes that they’re evil.”

  “He and his friends are at the center of the linkage of corporations, governments, and individuals who currently control the world. He sees any threat to that structure as an act of war, and what the grays are doing is such a threat, big time.”

  “But what actually . . . are they doing?”

  “That’s the incredible part. The miracle. They know what needs to be done for their survival. They need access to our genes. And they know what needs to be done for our survival. We need to understand how to fix our planet and how to start colonizing other worlds. But what they don’t know is how to communicate the information we need to do these things.”

  Rob looked from Crew’s mild face to Simpson’s careful, acute eyes. “Who does?”

  “They have found a way to give a super-intelligent human being access to their collective mind. This, we believe, is why they were on the ground tonight. They’ve begun this process.”

  Rob felt his face flush, felt sweat breaking out under his arms. “And this person is . . .”

  “It’s a child. Bred over dozens of generations for extreme brilliance. The smartest person humanity can produce. When they bridge him to their collective, he’ll be even smarter than they are. He will trump their genius and, they hope, figure out how to save us all.”

  “A messiah?”

  “You could say that, I suppose.”

  “But this is all predicated on the collapse of our environment being a real thing. If it isn’t, then they need us but we don’t need them.”

  “It’s real.”

  “It’s not global warming, is it, because—”

  “Global warming is one aspect of a very complex phenomenon. A sixty-two-million-year extinction cycle. The last time it struck, it killed off the dinosaurs.”

  “Which was sixty-five million years ago. So what is it, late for the bus?”

  “It started right on time, three million years ago, when what is now Central America rose up out of the ocean. This destabilized ocean currents and led to what we have now, a devastatingly lethal oscillation between ice ages and warm periods. The number of species has been declining since before there was a single human being on Earth, and the climax has now been reached. We’re finished, basically—at least, as far as nature is concerned.”

  “But why? And why sixty-two million years? I don’t get it, who’s behind it?”

  “Ah, the silent presence. Nobody knows. The grays don’t know. But they hope that their brilliant child will understand. They hope he will understand the universe, the work of God, as it were, because, u
nless he does, we are all going to suffer extinction, both species, for different reasons. Twelve billion vital, living minds, all hungry for life, for love, for children and all right about one thing: every single one of us, whether human or not, is exactly as important as he feels.

  “The grays are going to arrive on Earth in force in 2012, around the time the planet comes apart at the seams. They’ve been racing against time for thousands of years, and now it’s down to a clock that’s ticking fast, and either they get that kid to figure this all out and fix the world, or both species crash and burn.”

  “This is beginning to sound—well, to be blunt, horrible. Truly horrible.”

  “You can understand the reason for the secrecy. For the grays’ terrible threats.”

  “Keeping us from panicking and shooting ourselves in the foot.”

  “And them.”

  “So what has Mike got against all of this? And how can he stop them?”

  “He and his buddies see this as an invasion, pure and simple. The grays are gonna show up in force and cream us and take our planet.”

  “Why do they believe that?”

  “They don’t know. Can’t know. They fear it.” Crew looked at Rob. “Do you fear it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Good answer. Truthful. Neither are we. But Eamon Glass—you know, he was the first empath—he felt that the grays did indeed need us, and if they need us, they aren’t coming here to take the planet.”

  “But how can Mike and friends possibly stop them?”

  “First, they kill this child. That throws the grays off their timetable, because there won’t be time to breed another one before mankind goes extinct. They lose the tool they’ve been breeding across a hundred generations, that’s endgame for them.”

  “But the other consequence—the environment falls apart and we go extinct. Where’s the win?”

  “Mike and his group—they call themselves the Trust—intend to save about a million. Who they regard as the best people.”

  “One million? Out of six billion?”

  “There’ll be a few survivals on the outside, but the million people the Trust save are going to be the core of a new humanity, as defined by the Trust, of course. Their million survivors represent every race they consider valuable, every DNA group, all chosen to ensure an adequate long-term gene pool. It’s scientifically sound, certain to continue the species, and a nightmare of racism.”

  “But why would doing this stop the grays?”

  “For the same reason that they’re not coming to my world,” Crew responded. “Too little genetic material to help them. They need to create a new genetic foundation for billions of their own people. That’ll take a huge number of human donors. A million would be useless to them, so they’d go away and, presumably, die somewhere off in space.”

  “The Trust isn’t stupid,” Rob said, “and Mike’s had unlimited access to Bob and Adam for years. He knows the grays as well as anybody.”

  “And he would rather see the human species essentially brought to an end than live with the grays on what we believe will be at least equal terms. After all, this person who’s brighter than them, and thus able to control them, is going to be a human. They’re doing that for a reason, to give us a basis for confidence.”

  “But if Mike’s concluded that life with the grays wouldn’t be worth living, I think we have to respect that.”

  “Evil is a funny thing. It comes out of fear. Mike and his people think of themselves as the saviors of mankind. But they’re genocidal monsters.”

  Rob found the scale of the thing so large he could hardly think about it intellectually, let alone morally. He shook his head.

  “Here’s your question,” Crew said gently. “The one we need to ask you. In your mind, which is worse? Die, as a species, or take our chances with the grays?”

  “Think carefully before you answer,” Simpson added.

  The only possible answer was immediately obvious to him. “I don’t have a right to make a decision like that. None of us do.”

  “You pass,” Simpson said. “Any other answer, and you would have failed the test, as a result of which, you would now know too much.”

  “I came close, then,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” Simpson said. “I’ve always respected you. You have a good, strong conscience. You realize that this decision has to be made by every individual human being. This child, when he grows up, is going to give us the chance to do that.”

  Rob thought of a question so crucial that he almost didn’t want to ask it. He did ask, though, he had to. “Are you saying that they might give us a choice? I mean, if we don’t like the idea of sharing our genes with them?”

  “We won’t,” Simpson said. “We’ll say yes.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “The grays will be here, billions of them, asking for life. We will say yes, it’s human nature, because we are fundamentally good. And this child, grown up by then, will help us do it right.”

  “You know, I have another question. Why are we like we are? Why are we so much less intelligent?”

  “We have less knowledge. We lost it during that ancient war, the basic knowledge of how the world really works, knowledge the grays have preserved intact. This is why we can no longer account for those engineering marvels you mentioned—Baalbek and such. We’ve literally forgotten how we did that.”

  Crew gave Rob a long look. “We’re trying to sell you on something I sense you’re still dubious about. That’s how you see this whole conversation.”

  “You’re not reading me right,” Rob responded. “I don’t see any alternative. We have six billion lives to save. It’s a completely unimaginable responsibility, and this poor damn kid, boy, there is one hell of a lot on his shoulders. You know how I feel? I feel like I would give my life, without hesitation, to protect him.”

  “That might happen,” Simpson said. “Because Mike will go after him if he finds out about him, and Mike is good.”

  “Then we’ve got to put him under arrest. Roll up these friends of his.”

  “We cannot even consider that,” Simpson said. “They’re more powerful than we are. Anyway, it would show our hand and we don’t want that. We’ve been lucky in one respect, that Mike doesn’t understand this child thing at all. He has no idea that the grays are even trying to save mankind. He’s sitting back, confidently waiting for the extinction to ruin their plans. And they’ve played that like the experts that they are, warning him constantly about the environmental crisis, in order to make him think they’re helpless to prevent it.”

  “What happens to this kid? Does he suffer?”

  “Does he suffer? Being that intelligent? That alone? I don’t think it’s an answerable question.”

  “So we protect him. Can do. But why did they do this glowboy thing? Point him out like that?”

  “It looks like some triad being bad. Not all that unusual. It’s actually a signal to us, and it’s full of information. It tells us that the child is right in the area of Wilton, Kentucky, and that they’re going to begin the process now. It’s up to us to do our part, find the child in our own way, and put down the kind of protection the grays can’t.”

  “Which is?”

  “Up close and on the ground, supported by good threat intelligence. Their ability to determine things like what’s going on in a human social group is very limited. They’ll be there to react if somebody jumps out of the damn bushes, but we’re the only ones who are going to be able to see a threat developing.”

  Pete Simpson leaned forward. “Which gets us to your new mission. We need you to move your operations to Alfred AFB, Rob. Right now. Your orders are to identify and protect that child. We know that he’s somewhere in Wilton. Possibly even on Oak Road, where the glowboy touched down. But don’t be too sure of that. The grays are very, very careful, remember. Assume he could be anywhere in the region.”

  The three men fell silent then, each sinking into
his own thoughts, all feeling the same sense of being swept up by a current that was easily powerful enough to drown them.

  Through the last darkness at the end of the night, a black triangular object had been coming, flying just feet above the treetops, taking its time, moving in absolute silence. Fifteen minutes ago, it had arrived over the house. It hovered overhead now, enormous, darker than the night itself, a triangle three hundred feet long, two hundred feet across at its base . . . and six inches above the roof.

  Inside the triangle, in a low-ceilinged cockpit, a woman in a USAF flight suit sat adjusting a sensitive device. Every word being said below was being recorded and transmitted with digital clarity.

  Literally as they spoke, Mike Wilkes listened. He sat in the facility in Indianapolis feeding Lauren questions based on what he was hearing.

  His mind raced. This child—dear heaven, it was the single most toxic thing on Earth, the most dangerous creature ever to live. He would lay Wilton, Kentucky, to waste.

  Or no. He had to be certain that he’d gotten the right child. Absolutely certain. He needed to be careful, here.

  He watched Lauren sitting in the easy chair she’d insisted on bringing into Adam’s hellhole, watched and considered how to form his next question, which would be the most important one that, in his whole career of dealing with the grays, he had ever asked.

  NINE

  OVER THE THREE YEARS SHE’D been working here, Lauren had done what she could to make Adam’s cell more endurable. Rather than the steel table and hard chairs that seemed to have been enough for her dad, she’d made a very unwilling Wilkes get her a Barcalounger and had a daybed installed. On the walls, she had a copy of one of Renoir’s Aline and Pierre paintings, of Aline holding little Pierre in a way that she hoped one day to hold her own babies . . . off in the future when her life was no longer at risk and she was no longer tangled in an ever-growing web of secrets, and she could finally settle down to a husband and a family. There were also views of forests and mountains, intimate little waterfalls and another one that she especially liked, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, that seemed to contain, in some way, the same fiery and mysterious energy she found in Adam.