He noticed that the girl at the booth next to them was crying while the boy she was with held her hands. She was getting dumped, apparently. The girl looked like a sorority sweetheart. The boy had Elvis sideburns, pierced eyebrows, and a tattoo on the back of his neck of some Chinese character. DeLuca suspected she’d land on her feet.
“And you use lasers to read the molecular particles,” he said.
“That’s right,” Burgess said.
“I’m interested in what lasers can do,” he said. “Just sort of generally speaking. How they can measure things and affect things.”
“Okay,” she said. “I suppose I know a little bit about that.”
“Your husband was working with lasers, too, right?” DeLuca said.
“Rather different kinds of lasers, but yes,” she said. “He was.”
“So let me just ask you,” he said. “So I can get a picture in my head. Generally speaking. Energy is energy, and it takes different forms at different wavelengths, but it’s all the same thing, right? Microwaves, infrared, X-rays, radio signals, they can all be lased, right?”
“Right,” she said.
“And at low power levels, like what you’re talking about, you can read the feedback you get from a molecular building block and tell what it is, right?”
“You can measure certain properties of the electrical field surrounding it,” she said.
“And everybody generates an electrical field, right?” he said. “That’s what sharks have in their noses to detect prey in the water. They can read the electrical field of an injured fish, or something like that, right?”
“You probably know more about sharks than I do,” she said. “All I know is what I see on the Discovery channel. But yes to your question about electrical fields.”
“And CAT scans and PET scans measure the electrical activity of various tissues and parts of the body,” he said. “Isn’t that how they work?”
“I believe it is,” she said. “If you want to drastically simplify it.”
“Drastically simple is the best I can do,” DeLuca said. “And to read something, lasers send a pulse and then they measure how that pulse is modified by the return. That’s how the scanners at the supermarket work, reading the bar code.”
“Again, to drastically simplify, I suppose the answer is yes. You can also phase the signals from one or more lasers to watch what happens at the interface.”
“That’s good,” DeLuca said. “And the lasers in your Mars probe can adjust the wavelength to send different pulses to measure different things, right?”
“Right,” she said.
“So in theory, just in theory,” he said, “could you use a laser to identify a person by his electrical field?”
“In theory, you could,” she said, “though he’d have to be isolated from surrounding fields. That’s why we’ve been doing the work we’ve been doing in caves, and at Sinkhole. Past tense. Sinkhole was a government neutrino lab deep underground, connected to the Carlsbad system. Shut down now. You need to work in places like that. Though I suppose the bigger the computers get, the more easily we’ll be able to pull discrete data from a larger field of conflicting information. It’s kind of like hearing one voice in a roaring crowd.”
“But in theory, you could do it,” he said. “Say, with a person standing all alone in the desert, as opposed to us sitting here in this restaurant?”
“In theory, yes.”
“You know, the Army is working with a tactical microwave beam for crowd control,” he said, “part of the nonlethal initiative, where they can use a dish mounted on top of a truck to zap a crowd with microwaves to get it to disperse. Apparently people feel like their skin is burning and it’s quite uncomfortable, so they run away. Have you heard of this?”
“I think I read about it in the paper,” she said. “I remember wondering, if they had such a thing to deliver energy at nonlethal doses to disperse crowds, what was stopping them from increasing the power until they were working with lethal doses?”
“I wouldn’t think anything is stopping them,” DeLuca said. “My understanding was that at the tested power level, it only affects the target’s skin. So, in theory, you could develop a laser, or tune a laser, to only affect a particular kind of body tissue. The way they use ultrasound to break up kidney stones but leave the kidneys alone.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it might be possible.”
“So in theory,” he said, “suppose the target was a cornstalk—could you focus or tune or phase a laser to destroy or denature the cell walls in a cornstalk, without hurting the rest of the plant?”
“You mean, could you use a laser to make crop circles?”
“Yes.”
“I think you could.”
“Burn the lips and udders off a cow?”
“Yes.”
“Could you hit a person with an energy beam that might affect only the rectal or vaginal tissues, to give him a warm feeling that makes him feel like he’s been probed?” he asked her. She looked him in the eye for a moment.
“I guess you could,” she said. “You could probably even project the image of the Virgin Mary onto the side of a building.”
“But why would you want to do that?” he said. “Why would you want to use technology to mislead people?”
“Maybe just because you can,” she said.
“Could a laser cause an earthquake?”
“No,” she said. “At least I don’t think so. Earthquakes are caused by the release of subterranean pressures. Lasers can’t cause subterranean pressures. Or release them. I don’t see how.
“One last question,” he said. “The lasers in your probe work at very close range. What limits the range?”
“There are a number of variables,” she said. “One is the amount of power you need to generate and sustain. And the sensitivity of the measuring instruments. The dosages of the X-rays you get at the dentist or in a hospital are vastly smaller than what they were twenty years ago. ”
“That’s interesting,” DeLuca said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“I don’t see how,” she said. “The last I knew, you were looking for a missing girl. What does any of this have to do with that?”
He couldn’t tell her what he was really thinking—he was really thinking that Cheryl Escavedo had been zapped, vaporized, erased from the planet by a powerful weapon that no one knew was up there, one that could, at any instant, zap and/or vaporize anybody Darkstar deemed a threat.
“I don’t know,” he lied. “Like I said, I just ask a lot of stupid questions and then wait for the answers to become less stupid in my head. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.”
“I think you could have been a good scientist,” she told him. “Do you mind if I take the leftover pizza home? I can always zap it in the microwave for a midnight snack. Unless you think using the microwave is too dangerous.”
“It’s all yours,” he said. “Thanks for your time.”
When he checked his messages, he learned that Ed Clark had called him back, saying only that he’d be on the air tonight and could possibly talk tomorrow. DeLuca decided that tomorrow would be too late. It was two hundred miles to Roswell, but it was only four in the afternoon—he could be there by seven, he estimated, or earlier if the roads were as straight and as bleak and empty as he expected they’d be.
They were. He made Roswell by seven-fifteen, delayed by a speeding ticket he picked up along the way. He passed a number of UFO-related tourist traps on his way into town, including a place claiming to have an exact replica of the alien body taken from the UFO crash in 1947, as well as a motel called the Ali-Inn and, of course, the International UFO Museum and Research Center. There was a fantasy bookstore and a place selling telescopes and related material to help you spot the visitors from other planets before they spotted you. He picked up a sandwich at an Albertsons and headed for the radio station, a small single-story white building in the middle of nowhere, at a cr
ossroads in the desert that was technically in the town of Dexter. The radio tower reached high into the starlit sky, its red warning light blinking a thousand feet above the ground, which explained how WROZ was able to broadcast from “sea to shining sea.” An awning protruded from the side of the building to form a carport, and beneath it, two lawn chairs. No one answered when DeLuca knocked on the front door of the radio station. When he went around the side, he found a second door that was open. He knocked again and didn’t get an answer, so he let himself in.
The hallway was lined with metal shelving overflowing with books and tapes and paperwork, with a light coming from a room at the end of the hall. There, he saw an empty office, one wall to the office a large glass window, and beyond that, the broadcast booth, where a sixtyish gentleman in a white cowboy hat was talking into a vintage microphone, earphones covering his ears, which was why he hadn’t heard when DeLuca knocked. When DeLuca waved to him, the man held up a single finger and continued talking into the microphone. The radio feed was playing over a loudspeaker, a commercial Clark was reading for an Indian art gallery in downtown Roswell. When he was finished, he plugged a tape cartridge into the player. DeLuca heard a conversation going on between Clark and a caller. The man in the cowboy hat rose from his chair and opened the door to the office. He was wearing a khaki safari jacket over a denim shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots.
“Ed Clark,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
DeLuca noticed that the man had a small pistol in a holster that snapped onto his belt, the weapon worn at the hip. He could understand why someone might want protection, working all alone in the middle of nowhere.
“I thought your show was live,” DeLuca said. “I don’t know why, but I guess I’m surprised.”
“If Garrison Keillor can do reruns, why can’t I?” Clark said.
“I’m David DeLuca,” DeLuca said. “I left you a message.”
“Ah yes,” Clark said gruffly. “Mr. DeLuca. I know who you are, and I know who you work for.”
DeLuca had worked with deluded people before, particularly in his capacity investigating crimes in eldercare homes when he was attached to the state police in Massachusetts. Sometimes you could get more useful information from them if you just played along. Antagonism, on the other hand, rarely got you anywhere.
“Well in that case, you know why I’m here,” he said.
“I think I do, but why don’t you tell me?” Clark said.
“Why don’t you tell me?” DeLuca said. “I told them if anybody was going to know about this, it would be Ed Clark. They said you’re just guessing.”
“And what’d you say to that?” Clark asked.
“I said if he’s guessing, then I wanted to know who was doing the math because the odds of being right so many times had to be astronomical.”
Ed Clark eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then took a briar pipe from one of his jacket pockets and a plastic pouch of tobacco from the other, filling the pipe with coarsely cut tobacco and tamping it in with his finger.
“This is about the robots, isn’t it?” he said. DeLuca nodded solemnly. “Let’s talk outside.”
DeLuca followed him. Under the carport, Clark struck a kitchen match against the cinderblock wall of the station and lit his pipe, exhaling several large clouds of smoke before drawing one he could savor. He gazed at the sky.
“See anything interesting up there?” DeLuca asked him.
“If I did, I wouldn’t have to tell you, now would I?” Clark said.
“I suppose not,” DeLuca said.
“Is it what I think it is?” Clark said. “One got loose, didn’t it?”
“I think you know why I can neither confirm nor deny that,” DeLuca said.
“And you’re the animal catcher,” Clark said. “Is that it?”
“I can’t confirm that either,” DeLuca said, “but if I was, and you were in a position to help me, would you?”
“Hypothetically?” Clark said.
“Hypothetically,” DeLuca said.
“And why would I help you?” Clark asked.
“I think you know why,” DeLuca said. “There’s always a quid pro quo, isn’t there? And it’s not like it’s the first time, is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” Clark said. “What can I do for you?”
DeLuca stared up into the sky.
“Just supposing I was the ‘animal catcher’?”
“Just supposing,” Clark said, drawing thoughtfully on his pipe.
“We were monitoring your show the other night,” he said. “As we always do.”
Clark nodded, saying nothing.
“We think he called you. He identified himself as ‘Bartleby.’ By now you must have developed a sixth sense about whether your callers are human or not.”
“I’m pretty good,” Clark said. “Though I suppose every now and then somebody slips past me. Mostly it’s in the diction and the word choice. Some people still think androids can’t use contractions.”
DeLuca laughed.
“I thought he sounded pretty darn smart for a human,” Clark said. “Not that aliens aren’t free to call my show. Or robots. I just like them to identify themselves. I don’t like getting jacked around.”
“Of course. No one does,” DeLuca said. “The problem is that he rerouted the matrix so that we couldn’t trace the call.”
“As you programmed him to do,” Clark said. “And now the chickens are coming home to roost.”
“Go ahead and tell me you told me so,” DeLuca said. “But when you’re done, I need your call logs from the show. Or was that a tape, too?”
“That was live,” Clark said. “I’ll get you the logs. Just answer me one question.”
“What is it?”
“How’d he get loose?”
“If we knew that, I probably wouldn’t be here,” DeLuca said. “Right now he’s fighting his homing program. We think he learned the budget was being cut, so he acted out of pure self-preservation and ran off. If he manages to recode his homing program, there’s no telling where he’ll go.”
“I’ll tell you where he’ll go,” Clark said.
“Where?” DeLuca said.
“Where else? Washington, D.C. To blend in with all the other robots. And maybe to take down the president. Or whoever is cutting his budget.”
“If you’re right,” DeLuca said, “then that’s a chance we can’t afford to take.”
Clark ambled back into the station, limping slightly, favoring his right side. When he returned, he handed DeLuca a pink phone message memo with the name Bartleby written on it and a number. DeLuca looked at it.
“That number’s from Chloride, New Mexico,” Ed Clark said, pointing with his pipe stem. “’Bout two hundred miles due west. But you gotta go around White Sands.”
“I know where Chloride is,” DeLuca said. “And I think I know where Bartleby is. Thanks for all your help.”
The old man looked at him expectantly. DeLuca wondered what he could possibly be expecting.
“Well?” the old man said at last.
“Well what?” DeLuca said.
“Aren’t you going to wipe my memory?”
“Oh, that,” DeLuca said. “Not until the mission is over. Until then, this conversation never took place. There’s a chance he’ll call back or even… pay you a visit, in which case that pea gun on your hip isn’t going to do a damn thing. If he calls again or if you see anything, I want you to be fully aware, and I want you to call me.” He gave Clark his phone number, but for his personal satellite phone and not for the encrypted one. It was just a hunch.
“What do you mean, if I see anything?” Clark said. “You don’t think he’d come here, do you?”
“Hey—this is just a hypothetical conversation, Ed,” DeLuca said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“But as long as I carry the memory of it,” Clark said, “I’m not safe, am I? Because now I’m a threat. And you guys are just going to leave me here for bait, aren�
��t you?”
“Oh, come on, Ed,” DeLuca said with an exaggerated wink as he headed for his car. “You know we don’t work that way.”
At the intersection of Routes 380 and 70, DeLuca stopped to look at the map. It was too late to head back to Albuquerque, and he was tired, and Chloride wasn’t exactly on the way but it wasn’t entirely out of the way either, so he headed west on 70. As he drove, he called Peggy Romano and had her reverse-search the phone number Ed Clark had given him. She told him it was for a Circle K convenience store on Route 52, at the edge of the Gila Wilderness. He also asked her to set up another appointment for him with General Koenig—it was time for another visit, but this time, he had enough information to make the conversation interesting. “What am I—your receptionist, now?” Romano asked him. “By the way, Ben Yutahay called. He didn’t say what it was about but I gave him your direct number, so check your voice mail.”
When he checked, Yutahay sounded hoarse.
“Hello, David,” he said. “Listen, I was wondering if you could do me a favor. My son, Marvin, was supposed to come to dinner two days ago, but he never showed up and he didn’t call and I can’t seem to reach him on his phone. He usually checks in, but not always. I know you can find out if he’s used his phone and things like that, so I was hoping you could look into it, if you have time. It’s probably nothing, but he’s all I’ve got, so I guess I get a little more worried than I probably should. Thanks.”
DeLuca called Peggy Romano back and asked her to run an electronic search for Marvin Yutahay. If he’d used his phone or a credit card or an ATM card in the last forty-eight hours, she’d know.
He drove into the darkness of the high desert, the sky above him an enormous canopy of stars, and no moon anywhere to wash them out. The night was beautiful, and yet after a few minutes, driving into utter nowhere, the landscape a big blank as far as the eye could see, he started to feel just a bit paranoid—maybe it was the coffee he’d drunk, but he caught himself wishing he had more than just his police .38 and his Army-issue Beretta. He wished he had somebody in the car with him, or somebody to talk to on the phone. He kept thinking that he was being watched, followed, tracked, measured, analyzed, and that at any moment or second, in a flash of light so sudden he’d never even see it, he could vanish without a trace, like the sailor who gets knocked overboard and sinks into the middle of the wine-dark sea.
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