Spelman turned away, and said, “Dr. Issacs, would you mind stepping outside for a moment and keeping the hallway clear. Mr. Okun and I have some issues to discuss.” When the doctor had gone, the colonel reached into his breast pocket and pulled out Okun’s leather necklace with the ankh still attached. “When the DCD found you sleeping between those rocks, this was lying at your feet. They brought it directly to me.”
“Impossible!” Okun gasped. “I left the necklace inside the cave. I’m positive about that.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Then how did they find it next to me?”
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
Okun shuddered at the idea of the Tall One stealing up and examining him while he slept. Was that all he had done? The two men talked for a long time before agreeing the facts seemed to indicate that the Tall One had wanted Okun to have the ankh-like instrument. Why he would want this was another question altogether. Spelman had a theory about it. He began by asking if Okun was familiar with the Bridget Jones incident. Okun said he was. “Then you know these creatures possess implant devices our technology is unable to detect. As soon as you were brought here, we ran a number of X-rays and other tests, and while we were unable to find anything unusual, we can’t rule out the possibility that you’ve been tagged somehow.”
“Come again?”
“When the Jones girl found the object, she described a depression in the grass shaped like a man. I’ve always felt the eebies must have been on the verge of implanting the BB-sized device into the police officer when they were interrupted, probably by the girl’s arrival on the scene. We have every reason to believe your encounter with these creatures was more than one of physical proximity. Ask yourself why you were still asleep so late in the afternoon when they found you? Where did this strange thing about forgetting the previous day come from? And I don’t need to tell you how often abductees tell us about experiencing false memories or how they lost track of themselves for a day. Maybe your encounter was more involved that you can recall.”
Okun considered this possibility. “Have I developed any strange powers like she did?”
Spelman shook his head. “Except for being groggy and argumentative all week, Issacs tells me you’re normal. Keep in mind this implanted device business is only a theory, a worst-case scenario. But it’s at least possible they gave you back the necklace hoping you’d carry it to another one of their ships. If they’ve marked you in some way that allows them to track your whereabouts, you could lead them to Area 51. It might all be a ruse to hunt down their missing ship.”
“I see. So I’m probably banished for life from going back there.”
“Actually”—Spelman smiled—“that’s another thing I wanted to talk with you about. We are prepared to offer you the position of Director of Research at the facility. It would always be a risk moving you in and out. But if we took certain precautions, we feel confident you and the ship would be safe.”
“What kind of precautions?”
“You told Dr. Issacs the downed vehicle was emitting a beacon signal.”
“Right. The image of the Y. You already know about that, too?”
“Yes, you told us on Tuesday. You said the electromagnetic field generated by the power poles must have created a roof which prevented the space-based aliens from receiving the distress signal.”
“So you’re saying we could rig up some mobile unit to generate EMF waves, and I’d travel to the labs under it? Très cool. But wouldn’t it just be easier to hire somebody else?”
The two men looked at one another for a long beat. “At this point,” the colonel said, “we don’t feel anyone could replace you. You know so much. It would take many months, perhaps years, for someone to learn what you already know.”
Okun heard Dworkin’s voice ringing in his ears, The more you know, the deeper you’re buried.
Spelman stood up, preparing to leave. “You’re the only one we’re considering at the moment. It’s the job we had in mind for you when you were recruited. Take some time to think it over. We know from Agent Radecker there are many changes you’d like to make at the labs. As Director of Research, you would have the power to make them. But once you’re in the door, you’ll have to stay down there. You won’t be able to sit outside and do your watercolor painting anymore, and there won’t be any weekend trips to Las Vegas.” Before he turned to go, he added, “As much as I’d like to see you accept this assignment, I have to admit I don’t know how I’d choose. Here, hold on to this while you make up your mind.” He landed over the ankh and leather necklace.
Before Spelman was quite out the door, Okun asked one last question. “I take it Radecker’s no longer the director. He’s not here at the hospital, is he?” Okun didn’t need any more grief this morning.
Spelman suppressed a smile. “Agent Radecker has been promoted. He’s now the Chief of Intelligence at the CIA office in Barrow, Alaska. Just above the Arctic Circle.”
*
The next day, Okun remembered yesterday.
Soon afterward, he was discharged from the hospital. But not before he’d developed a grudging admiration and bickering friendship with the multitalented Dr. Issacs. No older than Okun, he was a pathology intern at Bethesda Naval Hospital in D.C. He held a B.S. from Cornell in astrophysics and claimed to be an expert in ancient mythology. Since his first days at Area 51, Okun had seen the need for medical expertise in the labs. Further autopsies needed to be performed on the recovered aliens, tissue samples needed to be analyzed, and the ship itself was largely composed of living tissue. If he accepted the position and became director, Issacs was exactly the sort of man he’d seek to hire.
When he was discharged from the hospital, Okun went home to see his mother. He arrived unannounced early one morning and walked into the house. He found Saylene reading the paper and sipping coffee. She jumped into his arms, and while they were hugging, a man walked out of the bedroom to see what was going on. His name was Peter, and he seemed to have spent the night. Okun looked at his mom and knew by her expression that things had changed around the house. She called in sick and they went out for an all-day lunch. She told him everything that had happened while he was away, how much she liked his haircut, and all about her relationship with her new man. She knew enough not to ask what he’d been up to during the same time, but it was uncomfortable how lopsided the conversation became. It didn’t help that Brackish was distracted. He glanced around the restaurant every few minutes like he was expecting someone. The two of them made a plan that Saylene would take a few days off at the end of the month and they’d take a trip together—just the two of them. But it was a journey they would never take.
Every day that Okun was home, he was sure they would be watching him. He developed a habit of glancing over his shoulders when he walked down a street. When he borrowed the car, he spent more time watching the rearview mirror than the road. He was positive the phone was tapped and the house was bugged. He walked around the neighborhood looking for a van with tinted windows and extra radio antennas. But search as he might, he could find no shred of evidence he was under surveillance.
One day he received a piece of mail. Inside there was a note: “Thought you’d find this amusing. Hope all is well. Spelman.” Enclosed was a newspaper article from an El Paso newspaper with a headline that read:
Mythical Monsters of Mexico, number of chupacabra sightings rise after youth tells story.
There was a photograph of Pedro standing in front of the cliffs where they’d discovered the hidden ship. Okun got a kick out of the article, but didn’t believe the implication of Spelman’s note. Hope all is well. As if he doesn’t know exactly how I’m spending every minute.
The attempts he made to reenter his old life proved futile. He called friends and visited a few of his old professors at Caltech, but their conversations were strained. He found himself growing more adept at steering the conversation away from himself, but as he listened to
these people talk about their lives and concerns, something kept him from nodding. For some reason, he couldn’t enjoy normal people as he once had. He told himself his distraction was due to being followed around all day. So he devised a plan to flush the spies around him out of their hiding places.
One afternoon he phoned a television station and asked to speak with a reporter. He said he had a major news story concerning extraterrestrial visitors. Of course, the journalist didn’t believe him, so he told her enough to show her he was serious. And enough to make whoever was listening in on the conversation very nervous. They made an appointment for the next morning. Okun hung up the phone and waited on the front porch for the unmarked sedans to start arriving. But no one came. The next morning, he dressed in a suit and drove to the station. When he came through the front doors, there were no federal agents waiting there to arrest him. I guess they’re not watching. He sat down in the lobby and considered what to do next.
Although he had not gone to the station intending to talk with anyone, he considered going ahead and breaking the story. He could imagine Wells’s reaction if he saw the announcement on television. He’d immediately demand that the nurse release him so he could assume the role of Earthling Dictator. He was crazy, but he had a point: didn’t the people of earth deserve to know about the visitors? Wasn’t it somehow the birthright of every human to know the truth? That’s what he’d always been taught. He, Brackish Okun, could end a quarter-century-old conspiracy simply by keeping this appointment he’d made. He could give them names, technical sketches, report numbers, and he could explain the significance of the trinket he was wearing around his neck. The government’s public relations teams and CIA disinformation specialists would have a hard time discrediting his story.
But now that it was in his power to do this, he wasn’t sure it was the wisest path. Dworkin hadn’t thought so. He remembered quite clearly Sam’s warning about society disintegrating under the strains of uncertainty and fear. He’d felt the effects himself, having trouble sleeping at night wondering if he really had been marked by the Tall One. Breaking the story would certainly cause a panic, and there was no guarantee it would produce any benefits. Politically, it would play right into the hands of those ugly, fascist men who wanted to turn America and the world into an armed camp.
In the end, the question of whether to tell what he knew came down to a decision between two very different approaches to the world. In Okun’s mind, it became a choice between Dworkin and Wells.
He stood up, walked out of the lobby, and climbed back into his car. Out of habit, he found himself glancing too often into the mirror. Every time he did this it reminded him that he was free. No one was looking over his shoulder anymore. He was surprised when this didn’t make him feel any more at ease than he had since he’d returned home. It just made him feel disconnected. He realized why he had been go distracted, so unable to nod, when he was with his old friends. It wasn’t lurking spies. It was that their hopes and dreams and daily problems, everything that was important to them, seemed trivial compared to the task of learning about the alien visitors. The whole time his mother had been describing how she met her boyfriend, Brackish’s mind was 185 miles from earth, contemplating the next period of increased radioactivity of the inner Van Allen belt. As he drove home, he told himself, I know too much to lead a normal life, and realized how true Dworkin’s words about knowing too much had been. He didn’t need any CIA spooks to bury him; the knowledge he was carrying around in his head did that on its own. By the time he pulled into the driveway, he’d decided he was going back. He would have gone back even if they weren’t offering to make him director. Like his older colleagues, he felt the work in the labs was more important than his personal destiny.
He called Spelman, and said, “I’m ready to come back, but I have a couple of conditions.”
“Go ahead, I’m listening.”
*
He spent a month at Edwards Air Force Base working with NASA engineers on the vehicle that would carry him back to the facility beneath Groom Lake. The result was a heavily modified VW van completely covered with a gray material derived from Teflon. A portable power station in the rear cargo area generated a force field of electromagnetic energy strong enough to disrupt the radio reception of the cars he passed on the drive out to the desert. The engineers who helped him build it nicknamed the vehicle the Stealth Wagon and thought the military might be able to apply the radar-deflecting material they’d designed to the construction of new aircraft.
When he motored up to the X-shaped landing strip outside of Area 51, he could see evidence of new construction. The shantytown of wooden houses which had once housed the lab’s staff had been torn down to make way for the construction of a giant sliding door, one that would allow the spaceship below to make a quick exit if the need ever presented itself. He drove the Stealth Wagon into the hangar and rode the new freight elevator down the six flights to the floor of the lab. Everything looked different. When he came into the long narrow hallway which had, for years, housed the chaos of the stacks, he found it freshly painted and brilliantly lit. A small work crew was busy organizing the files and entering their catalogue numbers on the lab’s new computer system. An elevated walkway had been installed down the center of the long room, which Okun planned to make a dust-free research area. As he walked farther along, he found a crew of hard hats excavating space for the new electrochemical research unit. He came to the huge concrete bunker that was home to the captured alien spaceship. The room was empty except for a giant crate seventy-by-seventy and twenty feet tall. Stenciled on the outside of this oversized wooden box were the words CHEMICAL EXPLOSIVES—NO SMOKING. He toured once around the box to make sure the ship within could not be seen. On his way out of the bunker, he noticed a doorway that hadn’t been there before and went inside. It was the new medical facility, complete with a glass-enclosed operating room. Although the workmanship was marvelous, something about the room gave him the creeps.
The door to the kitchen was locked. After pounding on it to make himself heard over the noise of the construction crew, the door was opened by a young man who stared at him in a slightly demented way. Dr. Issacs, his first hire.
Even before he stepped inside the familiar room, he was getting an earful from Lenel. “What kind of boss are you, anyhow? Ever since you took over it’s been so dam noisy down here we can’t get any work done.” The old man was in a body cast that went from his underarms to his kneecaps.
“You look like a mummy in a swimsuit,” Okun opined.
While Freiling and Cibatutto stepped forward to welcome Brackish back, Lenel tried to sustain his grouchy demeanor. “If I do,” he snapped, “I’ve got you to thank for it.”
“That’s right,” Freiling came to Lenel’s aid. “We’ve heard all about how Dr. Lenel saved you from falling off that cliff.”
“Saved me?” Okun asked, flabbergasted. He turned to Lenel, who was shooting him a look that said don’t you dare tell. “Oh right, saved me.” He grinned. “By the way, Dr. Lenel, I haven’t had a chance to thank you for that.”
“All part of the job,” Lenel grumbled.
*
Owing to the presence of the construction crews, the staff was prevented from working on the ship for nearly three full months. During this time, they kept themselves busy with whatever small projects could be brought into their sleeping quarters or the kitchen. To everyone’s dismay, Issacs turned out to be a neat freak and was continually chiding his coworkers to keep the place organized. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” was the stock reply he received from the trio of senior citizens. But he kept after them, and slowly they began to see his point.
When the last new rooms had been finished and the last unauthorized personnel left the labs, the men descended on the alien spaceship like a pack of starved dogs. They were eager to apply all they had learned from the undamaged craft they’d found in Mexico. For six full months, they rewelded, rewired, rethought, and r
ebuilt every inch of the ship. After a series of preliminary tests they felt it was time to invite Spelman to Area 51 for a demonstration.
He arrived on a cloudy morning in early July and brought some guests, all of them former members of the now-defunct Project Smudge: Jim “the Bishop” Ostrom, Jenkins, the new chief of Domestic Collections Department, whose men had found Okun sleeping in the desert, and Dr. Insolo from the Science and Technology Directorate. Okun recognized him from Sam’s funeral. After a quick lunch, the guests were invited into the concrete bunker to witness an experiment. They gathered on a newly built observation platform while the scientists readied their monitoring equipment. When everything was ready, Okun addressed his visitors.
“Several years ago, my predecessor, Dr. Wells, developed a technique of feeding high-voltage power into the ship’s energy system and found he could achieve low levels of performance from the instrumentation within. Partially because the design function which expels energy from this system was incomplete, excess or clogged power generated high temperature levels.” He was only at the beginning of his speech, but saw from the blank looks on the faces of his audience there was no point in continuing with the lecture. Instead, he simply said, “Watch this.”
He passed out pairs of prismatic goggles, then gave a signal to Freiling, who was standing on the operator’s platform of the energy cannon. The old man threw a switch, and the room filled with a shrill buzzing sound as the gun began bombarding the alien ship with power. A loud crack ripped through the vessel and bounced off the concrete walls. Lenel gave an OK sign from the output meter he was watching. Cibatutto directed the visitors’ attention to the mirror at the bottom of the ship, where they watched the swirling green cyclone being created by the aqua-box. And, through the special filters of the goggles, they were able to watch the energy being purged from the ship’s system. Instead of the spasmodic and undirected waves they had seen before, the energy was now channeled through the arms of the whirling ankh. Four pinpoint beams traveled around the walls of the bunker, searching for another ship to power.
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