Then a new creature stepped into her peripheral vision and approached the table. It was much taller than the others, but she felt that it was different in other ways as well. It seemed to be a leader of some sort. It leaned in and brought its face closer until she could see her distorted reflection in the bulging eyes. They reminded her of insect eyes although the face around them was nearly human in shape. She closed her own eyes, hoping that if she ignored this tall creature, it would back away. But it continued hovering over the table, studying her.
Without using an audible voice, the leader began pronouncing a series of words or ideas, as if it were reading down a list. She knew she was being asked about each item, but did not understand her role in the exchange. The only one of these “words” she could recall later was the letter Y, and only because it had been asked of her repeatedly. Several times, the tall creature probed her thoughts for the meaning of this symbol. She tried to cooperate, thinking they might spare her life if she could give them the information they wanted. It was clear to her it didn’t mean the letter Y in the alphabet. It occurred to her that it might be a place, a landmark in a city perhaps. She thought of the Space Needle in Seattle and the arch in St. Louis, but the creature seemed dissatisfied with these answers.
It stood up, and, as it moved away from her, she must have lost consciousness.
*
“My husband woke me up at two in the morning saying he’d had a dream someone was trying to break into the house. He went downstairs to look around and noticed the security alarm had been disarmed. It never worked properly after that, and we ended up having to have it replaced. I asked him for a glass of water because my throat felt dried out. When I sat up to take it, he noticed there were leaves and dirt all over my back and in my hair. We decided that I must have been sleepwalking and that I was the one who had turned off the alarm. We went down and checked the side of the house, because the leaves in bed matched the japonicas growing out there, but nothing looked unusual, no signs of struggle or anything like that. I told him about having this sensation that I’d gone somewhere, but at that point it was still buried at the back of my mind.
“We talked about it the next morning over breakfast, and I mentioned to him again about this sense of mine that I’d been carried off somewhere. He wanted to call the police, but I wouldn’t let him. When he left for the office, I went up to the bathroom and took a shower. Then it all came back to me in a crash when I opened the medicine chest and saw my toothbrush hanging in the rack next to his. I never put it there. I was always very meticulous about standing it in the little ceramic cup. That little detail caused an avalanche. I remembered the whole thing at once. I didn’t stand there remembering it piece by piece. It all came back to me in a single moment. I looked on my stomach and found a thin red mark, like a scratch, where I remembered them cutting me open. Later our doctor told me it was a scar. He said it was so thin that I must have had it since I was a child. But I know I didn’t.
“We called the police, and that was a mistake. I felt utterly violated, like I’d been raped, and when I told everything to the police it was clear they didn’t believe me! Then the FBI showed up and the CIA and the Army. I was going through a severe nervous breakdown, and they behaved as if I were making the whole thing up to get some attention. That’s probably been the hardest part of this whole thing, being isolated and made to feel like I did something wrong. Dr. Wells was the first person who tried to understand what I was going through. He put me in touch with Dave Natchez and the survivors group, so I had some support, someone who believed me. Well, my husband believed me; without him I probably wouldn’t have survived. Does that answer your questions?”
Okun felt a little overwhelmed by everything she’d told him. “Yeah, I think so.”
“So how is Dr. Wells?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood. “Still crazy, I hope.”
“Unfortunately, Dr. Wells passed away.”
“How awful. I’m sorry to hear that. Were you close?” Not knowing how to answer the question, Okun merely shrugged. She went on. “I wish I’d written back sooner. I got a letter from him about six months ago, and I just haven’t made time to answer it. Oh, I feel terrible.”
“Six months ago?”
“Yes, I know. I have no excuse. I could have found the time.”
“Could I see the letter?”
“Certainly.” It bore a postmark six months earlier. The envelope was printed stationery from somewhere called Sunnyglen Villa in San Mateo, a town at the base of the San Francisco peninsula. The letter was only a couple of sentences long and revealed nothing.
“Do you have a phone I can borrow?”
*
He called Sunnyglen Villa and asked to speak with Dr. Immanuel Wells. The soft-spoken woman on the other end said Mr. Wells was ill and couldn’t take any phone calls. She offered to take a message, asking if he was “with an agency.” Okun said he was an old family friend and said he’d call back later. He stared down at the envelope, wondering what sort of mental institution would give itself a name like Sunnyglen.
It was the middle of the afternoon. If he was going to get back to Las Vegas before the van picked them up, he’d have to leave soon. After he thanked Mrs. Gluck for sharing her story, Brinelle walked him out to his car.
“Hey, what’s your hurry? Why don’t you stay for dinner?”
“Gotta get back to work.”
“You’re gonna drive to San Mateo right now, aren’t you?”
Okun laughed. “I wish. No, seriously, I have to get back to Pasadena.”
“I see. Paranormal investigator all day, jet propulsion engineer all night. Don’t you hate it when people lie to you, Bob?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact I do.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” she said brightly. “Let’s go visit Dr. Wells together. We can crash at my friend’s place in Palo Alto.”
Okun couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not.
10
DISAPPEARING ACT
Yes, Okun hated it when people lied to him. He talked about the lies Radecker had told him as he drove toward San Francisco. And the more he talked, the angrier he got. “He told me my job was to make the spaceship fly. Fine. But when I tell him I need a second ship to make it happen, he tries to hide the information from me! What is that about? When I tell him I want to talk to Wells, he tells me the guy is dead! Screw you, Radecker!”
Later, he would claim that this tremendous sense of anger was what motivated him to drive north that afternoon instead of east like he was supposed to. But even in the middle of his yelling fit, Okun realized there was more to it than rage. He was curious. He wanted to meet this Wells character, see what he was all about. And there was something else, a need to assert himself—to take control of his research and stop putting himself at the mercy of Radecker.
Brinelle had talked Brackish into going to San Mateo, but not into taking her along. As groovy as the idea sounded, it wasn’t worth the risk. He didn’t want to read a newspaper article about her unfortunate collision with a postal truck. So he drove up the coast by himself, bought a map, and followed the address to an industrial area near the freeway.
Sunnyglen Villa turned out to be a slightly run-down Victorian mansion sandwiched between a bus yard on one side and a warehouse on the other. The property was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with razor ribbon at the top. There were bars over all the windows, even on the top floor. When a security guard stepped onto the front porch and lit a cigarette, Okun put the car in gear and slunk away. It was a strange place for a mental institution. It looked more like a prison, and Okun had a feeling they weren’t too keen on visitors.
He cruised around for a while until he found a suitable motel and checked in. It had been an unusually emotional day for him, and that night he did something he only did when he was feeling blue. He wrote lugubrious poems in the journal he reserved for the keeping of scientific notes.
The next morning he walked into a
barbershop and told the man, “I’ve got a job interview today with an insurance company. Make me look like a square.”
“Crew cut?” the barber asked.
Okun nodded—a pained nod. “A crew cut sounds perfect.”
When he came out, his ears felt like twin jumbo radar dishes, and he felt the breeze on the back of his neck for the first time in years. His next stop was a department store, where he spent most of the money he had left on a business suit and a briefcase. He changed in the store’s parking lot, getting help from a nice old lady who knew how to tie a tie. He was ready.
When he drove up, the front gate was open. He parked his car and walked up to the front door and tried the handle. It buzzed and clicked open. The inside of the place looked very different from the exterior. The entry had been converted into a waiting room like a doctor’s office, with a few chairs and old magazines. A video camera in the corner slowly swept the room. There was a counter with a sliding glass partition behind which sat a willowy woman with a soft voice.
“Hi there. Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Dr. Immanuel Wells.”
“And your name, sir?”
“Radecker. Agent Lawrence Radecker, from Central Intelligence.”
When the woman asked to see some identification, Okun glanced around to make sure no one was listening then whispered through the partition. “I’m on a special assignment, so I’m not carrying any ID. My instructions are to have you call headquarters, and they’ll confirm. I was told you had the number.”
“Oh, sure. Have it right here.” She looked at him with big doe eyes. “If you’d like to have a seat, Agent Radecker, I’ll call right away.” She smiled and slid the glass door closed.
Okun tried to act casual. He picked up a magazine, but soon tossed it aside and began to pace. CIA guys can pace if they want to, he told himself, nothing suspicious about that. He glanced out the windows every few seconds to make sure no one was closing the front gate. He was already plotting a quick retreat if she asked him for the word of the day. Every morning, Radecker had a two-second conversation with someone calling from CIA headquarters. They would tell him the identification password for the next twenty-four hours, he would repeat it and hang up. The code words, of course, followed no pattern. Monday would be ZEBRA, Tuesday would be UNIQUE, and so on. He knew he’d never, guess, so if she asked him, he was prepared to tell her he had it written down in the car.
“Thanks so much for waiting. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to Dr. Wells.”
At the back of her tidy little office space was a thick glass door she unlocked with a key. They stepped through it into the home’s dark central hallway and walked to the living room, where three men and one woman were gathered around a television watching a soap opera. All four of them were ancient, well into their eighties or nineties, and barely glanced up when the receptionist said good morning. The paint was peeling in places, and there was a slight reek of cleaning products in the air.
“Have you met Dr. Wells before?”
“Not face-to-face.”
“But you know he doesn’t talk anymore.” She could see by his expression he didn’t. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with him. To tell you the truth,” she said, opening a screen door, “it was a relief when he stopped. That man used to talk so darn much I had to wear earplugs.”
They stepped outside onto the roomy back porch. A couple of deck chairs faced the backyard, which was a green riot of fruit trees, bushes, and weeds. A dilapidated gazebo was being strangled by heavy vines of wisteria. The lady walked up to a frail-looking man in a wheelchair and spoke as loud as her mousy voice would allow. “Dr. Wells, this is Agent Radecker. He’s with the CIA, and he wants to ask you some questions.” The old man didn’t stir. She shrugged and smiled. “Well, good luck.”
*
Okun pulled up a chair. He’d been expecting to meet a deranged and violent lunatic, but this guy, except for the wheelchair, looked like a member of the PGA’s senior golf tour. He was clean-shaven, well groomed, and handsome in a balding, bulldoggish way. He wore pressed white slacks and a powder blue sweater that matched his piercing blue eyes.
“Dr. Wells? Dr. Wells? You can hear me, right? Look, if you can understand me, give me a sign. Make a movement or blink twice or something.”
Without turning his head, the old man raised his right hand, then slowly lifted his middle finger.
“OK, that’s a sign. Listen,” he whispered, “I’m not really from the CIA. I just said that to get in here. And my name’s not Radecker. I work at Area 51, and I went AWOL so I could come and talk to you. I’m probably gonna be in VDJ, very deep Jell-o, when I get back, so help me out, man.”
Wells turned and regarded his visitor, waiting for him to say more.
“Hey, can you write? If I ask you a question, can you write out the answers? I brought a pen.”
“What’s Area 51?” the old man asked in a raspy voice. “I’ve never heard of that.”
So he could talk. Okun started nodding. “Are you testing me or don’t you remember? You used to work there. You know, Groom Lake, underground labs, the crashed ship?”
“Go on, I still don’t know what you’re saying.”
Derrr. It suddenly occurred to Okun what was happening. The old man was waiting to hear some proof that he wasn’t some amateur UFO investigator. “OK, I got it. Dworkin. Lenel. Vegas every Friday. There’s a long table in the kitchen with two picnic benches. The tiles on the bathroom floor are mostly white, but some of them are purple, and the handles on the middle sink don’t match. Hey, what’s the matter?” He noticed tears welling up in the old man’s eyes. “Oh no, please don’t do that.” It was the second day in a row he’d made somebody cry.
“I knew you’d come. I’ve been waiting and waiting. Why did you make me wait so long?”
“I just found out where you were yesterday.”
“Didn’t Dworkin send you?” He turned suddenly paranoid. “Who sent you here?”
“Nobody sent me. Relax. Yesterday I talked to Mrs. Gluck, and she showed me a letter you wrote her. Dworkin and those guys all think you’re dead. That’s what we were told.”
“So you came to break me out? You can’t do it alone; we’ll need help. We’ll go immediately into San Francisco. There are two television stations within a few blocks of one another. I’ve already written the press release, but it’s in my room. Everything has been planned. I’ll need one person to accompany me into the—”
“Whoa. Hold your horses there, Kemo sabe. You’re losing me.”
Wells started over and explained his plan. It was urgent, he said, that they alert the world of the impending alien invasion which, he said, could begin any minute. This was the same plan, presented to the members of Project Smudge five years earlier, which had led to his forced retirement and imprisonment. He pointed to the strings of barbed wire hidden in the foliage. He began explaining, in too much detail, the sequence of events leading to his ouster from Smudge, and expressed his deep loathing for the men who had opposed him.
Without stopping, he segued back to his moment-by-moment plan for breaking the story to the news media. Every movement had been scripted in his mind, every enemy reaction anticipated. It was a chess game pitting himself—and a few assistants—against the worldwide conspiracy to keep the matter quiet. As he spoke, Okun realized that Wells was, indeed, crazy. He wasn’t the incoherent lunatic he had expected to meet, but he was obsessive-compulsive to the nth degree.
“It may already be too late, but we’ve got to try. Every man, woman, and child must devote himself to the salvation of the planet. Once they hear, once they understand that we face annihilation, they will make the necessary sacrifices. Everyone working together. It will require the transformation of the world into a single, tightly organized war machine. Politics, economy, society, all must change if we hope to survive.” He said everyone who knew and didn’t tell was a war criminal worse than Hitler, the worst filth on the planet
, and in the future he would call for their public executions. Okun himself was one of the conspirators, but wisely didn’t point that out to the old doctor.
Obviously, once you were on this man’s enemy list, there was no getting off it. So Okun, who’d spent the last couple of days acting, assumed yet another role. “I’m going to help you. I’ll come back with reinforcements later, but right now let me ask you a couple of questions. The first thing is the addendum to your report. I read the part you wrote after the Roswell thing, but the part you attached later was missing. What was in it, your ideas about an invasion?”
“Don’t belittle me, young man. These are not merely ideas. At the time of the encounter I believed I had been given a glimpse of the EBE’s home planet. Later I came to believe I had been shown the planet which had once belonged to the host animals, the ones they had gutted and used like a suit of clothing. Have you seen the photographs of the larger bodies?”
“Yeah, they’re horrible-looking.”
“Before the planet I saw was ruined, it had been a jungle, a lavish hothouse of dense plant life. Endless, stretching to infinity. Even below the surface, it teemed with vegetation. Think of the differences in anatomy between the two creatures. Which one would be better adapted to this planet? The tentacles would allow the larger being to climb and reach and grasp. The other one was all wrong. Its body was too delicate for an environment like that. I’m sure the little fiend didn’t show me his planet. I think he was explaining why he had come to ours. It’s because they’d slowly ruined that place he showed me, consumed everything on the surface until they were reduced to tearing shreds of moss off the walls of caves. I think they’re coming here to eat.”
“Groady.”
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 44