Fade Out

by Patrick Tilley

  Allbright felt strangely calm. The purposeful waste of life was something he abhorred, but death itself was something that had never frightened him. There was only one thing Allbright feared, and that was old age. In dying now, in the full flower of life, he would leave his family a strong, proud, exemplary image, instead of withering away into a toothless, witless, incontinent vegetable. It was a calculated conceit that he had carried within him since adolescence. And the two bombs in the belly of Firebreak Two would confer a kind of instant immortality. No shattered, bloody carcass to piece together, no ashes to scatter. A smooth, painless transition from life to legend.

  The Yellowstone was nearer now. And, high above him, Westland would be banking away to start his wide circle around the edge of the fire zone, waiting for Crow Ridge to erupt like a supernova.

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  One of the cadets near Connors pointed up at the sky and shouted, ‘Look! He’s turned off!’

  Some of the other cadets paused in their scramble to get aboard the trailer of the diesel.

  ‘Looks as if he’s starting to circle!’ The shout came from somebody on the trailer.

  Connors and Wedderkind dropped back out of the cab and stared at the white contrail that had been approaching in a straight line from the south, and had now veered east. Connors pulled out a pair of binoculars from under the dash and rapidly focussed on the contrail. Just ahead of it, he could see the characteristic thin white arrow shape of a B-52.

  Firebreak One, piloted by Colonel Westland.

  ‘Maybe the attack isn’t going to be at five,’ said Connors. He looked at Wedderkind. ‘They must be circling to give us a final warning.’ Connors called out to Harris. ‘Looks as if we’ve got a few more minutes! Get these people heading east. Ten miles should get you well clear of the blast, but get under cover. After the explosion, assemble everybody at Cohagen. Keep an eye on that contrail!’

  ‘Is there time to grab those four other diesels from the base camp?’

  ‘Have you got four drivers?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay, hop aboard.’

  Wedderkind was already in the cab alongside Larsen.

  ‘Did you hear all that?’ asked Connors.

  Larsen nodded. ‘South side?’

  ‘Yes, let’s go.’

  Larsen bounced the diesel back towards the highway at seventy-five, then slowed as he reached the base camp. Connors looked out of the window and waved to Harris as the four cadets jumped off and ran towards the parked trucks.

  ‘They’re clear.’

  Larsen accelerated down the road and went straight through a flimsy pole and wire gate on to the range south of the Ridge. Cameron, the other senior cadet, was out with the flare party some seven miles west of the highway and, according to the last report, now quite close to the southern flank of Crow Ridge.

  Allbright checked his three remaining instruments as the river swept underneath him. Altitude five hundred feet, speed ten miles a minute. Three point five minutes from impact. He brought Firebreak Two down until it was only thirty feet off the ground. Flying something this big this low was the ultimate trip. Pilot and plane fused into one. A great white falcon speeding in for the kill.

  Dead ahead was the long, pine-green hump of Crow Ridge with the triangular shape of Crusoe rising above the trees like a sheepherder’s rockpile, pointing the way. On the plain in front of the Ridge were yellow blobs… black dots… trucks… people…

  Cameron straightened up as Connors jumped out of the truck. ‘Hi – have you come to help?’

  Somebody shouted. ‘Jesus, look at that!’

  Connors turned and found himself presented with a chilling head-on view of a second B-52 as it lifted in dreamlike slow motion to clear a fold in the ground about a half a mile away then came back down on to the deck. It was flying so low no one had seen it barrelling up the slope from Miles City. But they could all see it now. And from where he stood it seemed as if the unseen pilot was aiming the huge bomber straight at him. Connors’ heart felt as if it had been slammed by a giant fist, and there was a blinding flash inside his head as his brain connected with Allbright’s. He heard himself bellow at the top of his voice. ‘Ruuuu-nnn! He’s going to hit the Ridge!’

  For a split second nobody moved. Then, suddenly, everybody except Connors started running.

  Larsen’s diesel roared past with people clinging on to the cab and trailer. Connors looked around desperately for somewhere to hide. There was a whispering rustle of air, then a great, rolling, thunderous wave of sound as the B-52 shot over his head.

  Allbright braced both hands against the control column and aimed straight for the base of Crusoe. The black triangular shape rushed towards him, getting bigger and bigger, filling the windshield, then suddenly –

  Silence… a deep, velvet silence…

  Connors relaxed and let the stillness fill his mind. He seemed to be floating in the star-studded depths of space. There was a soft coolness flowing over him, through him. He felt no bodily sensations, just an intense overwhelming joy of being. Of belonging. The darkness faded. Connors felt something pressing against his chest. He opened one eye and saw his hand lying in the grass. He turned it over, felt the earth, reached out for some sage and crushed it between his fingers. He rolled over on to his back and inhaled the sweet scent. The sky above him was an incredibly deep blue.

  He heard the sound of an approaching diesel and sat up. Around him, people were starting to get to their feet. Larsen stopped nearby. Wedderkind ran around the front fender of the truck.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Wedderkind. ‘I didn’t see.’

  ‘He must have missed…’ Connors got to his feet. ‘Anyone see what happened?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said one of the cadets. ‘But you’re not going to believe it.’

  ‘Try me,’ said Connors.

  ‘I was hanging on to the back of the trailer,’ said the cadet. ‘And I fell off. As I rolled over on the ground, I saw the – ’ He broke off.

  ‘Go on,’ said Connors.

  The cadet took a deep breath. ‘Well – just as the B-52 flew into Crusoe, it – disappeared.’

  Wedderkind looked quickly up at the Ridge. ‘You mean Crusoe?’

  ‘Christ, no – the B-52…’

  THE WHITE HOUSE/WASHINGTON DC

  Clayson took the call from Colonel Westland in Nebraska. ‘Okay, thank you, stay by the phone, we may want to call you back.’ He put the phone down and looked at the President. Fraser, Wills, and McKenna were sitting with him at the table. The time by the wall clock was 9:18 P.M. ‘The bombs didn’t detonate. There was no explosion of any kind. No wreckage, and nobody’s seen the aircraft.’

  ‘Are they sure he went in?’ asked Fraser.

  ‘Yes, that’s confirmed,’ said Clayson. ‘The people in Westland’s plane had a pair of binoculars on him all the way to the Ridge. They made a low level search of the area for a whole hour. There’s no sign of him.’

  ‘Then what’s the explanation?’ asked the President.

  ‘Sir, there is no explanation,’ said Clayson. ‘Westland says that Mitch’s plane flew into Crusoe and – vanished.’

  ‘Is that what I’m supposed to tell the nation tonight?’

  Clayson didn’t say anything.

  Wills took the cigar from his mouth. ‘Has anyone thought of getting this crew’s eyes tested?’

  ‘How much gasoline was Mitch carrying?’ asked Fraser.

  ‘Just enough for the one-way trip,’ said Clayson. ‘We’ve already considered that possibility.’

  Fraser looked across at McKenna. ‘Do you believe this?’

  ‘Well…’ McKenna put his hands together. ‘Crusoe’s pulled about every trick in the book. I would say anything was possible.’

  ‘Yes, but this thing was tested. It’s harder than anything we’ve got. I can go along with the idea of the bombs not exploding but, h
ell – if Mitch hit it, that B-52 should have burst into a million pieces!’

  ‘I know,’ said McKenna. ‘It’s there but yet it’s not there. I can’t explain it any better than that.’

  ‘So how do we destroy it?’ asked Fraser.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said McKenna. ‘But perhaps that may no longer be our most urgent problem.’

  ‘Has anything come through from the Russians?’ asked the President.

  ‘No,’ said Fraser. ‘And they haven’t replied to our last two messages.’

  ‘Keep trying,’ said the President. He picked up the phone by his elbow and punched a three-digit number. ‘Hello – Jerry?… Do we still have some of the long-wave frequencies… Good… I’ll make that broadcast at ten o’clock… No, I don’t have a draft yet.’ The President hung up and looked at Fraser. ‘He wanted to know if he could have an advance copy to release to the press…’

  ‘What about Camp David?’ asked Fraser. ‘We ought to get there in case Crusoe lowers the boom on us six hours from now.’

  ‘We’ll go right after the broadcast… Make sure everybody’s ready.’

  At five minutes to ten, the President walked into the Oval Room, sat down at his desk, and shuffled through the pages of his speech. Jerry Silvermann fussed around him and made sure the technicians had got everything linked up. They did a quick mike test. Jerry gave him the thumbs up from the doorway of Marion’s office.

  ‘There’ll be the announcement, then we’ll cue you in with the light.’ Jerry retired, closing the door.

  In Marion’s office, the man from NBC cleared his throat as the hands of the clock hit ten. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the President will now broadcast to you direct from the Oval Room of the White House… The President of the United States.’

  The light by the microphone in front of the President glowed green. He moistened his lips. ‘Fellow Americans – ’

  The room was plunged into darkness.

  The President sat back in his chair and listened to the confused babble of voices coming from Marion’s office. Jerry Silvermann opened the door. He was holding a butane lighter with the flame turned up. ‘Stay right where you are, sir. We’re trying to get hold of some lights.’

  After what seemed a long time, Fraser came in carrying an acetylene lamp. He put it on the President’s desk.

  ‘Washington’s blacked out.’

  ‘Does that mean the cutoff zone has –?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fraser. ‘That means it now covers the whole of America.’

  CROW RIDGE/MONTANA

  Connors and Wedderkind climbed up to the crest of the Ridge and looked down at the remains of Rockville. All that was left on the Ridge were the command hut, the monitor hut stuffed full of useless TV equipment, about a dozen of the trailers, the four bulldozers shattered by Friday, the wrecked but defrosted centre section of the research lab – and Crusoe.

  That second B-52 circled around for a long time,’ said Connors. ‘For one awful moment, I thought they were coming in for a second try.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Eight o’clock… I guess Washington must have got the bad news.’ He looked at Wedderkind. ‘Who do you think was flying that first aeroplane? Allbright?’

  ‘I’m sure it was. I had a feeling he was going to do something like that.’

  ‘So did I,’ said Connors. ‘But in a way, it was more than that. It’s curious. When I caught sight of the plane, I got this sudden picture of him sitting in the cockpit, yelling at us to get out of the way, then I had this weird impression of flying through deep space. There were stars all around me. I had no body. I thought, I’m dead… no pain, no fear, no regret. Just this fantastic feeling of liberation. It was incredible. Then… I opened my eyes and found myself lying face down in the grass.’ Connors shook his head, mystified.

  ‘There’s probably a simple answer.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Connors. ‘But why didn’t the B-52 explode when it hit Crusoe? That really baffles me. I mean – I checked Crusoe when we came back up. He’s a solid chunk of rock-hard crystal.’

  ‘I think we’re going to have to accept that he is more than a simple three-dimensional object,’ said Wedderkind. ‘It looks as if Crusoe can alter the relationship of time and space in a way we don’t yet understand.’

  ‘No… still, if Allbright had blown up, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.’

  ‘That was our second piece of luck today.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Connors. ‘Do you realize that we landed at Jordan just fifteen minutes before the cutoff zone expanded? If we had stopped for another cup of coffee with the General in the officers’ mess at Glasgow, we could have ended up at the bottom of the world’s largest completed earth-fill dam.’

  ‘Yes… thirty hours…’ mused Wedderkind. ‘The progression’s diminishing.’

  ‘Yes, by three. The next jump will be in ten hours.’

  ‘Not necessarily. The divisor could also be increasing,’ said Wedderkind.

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Well, it might double each time. Ninety divided by three equals thirty, divided by six – ’

  ‘Equals five? You mean that by eight o’clock – hell, do you mean that Washington and the rest of the US is already blacked out?’ asked Connors.

  ‘It’s a mathematical possibility, but no more than that.’

  ‘Maybe… but you have a habit of being right.’ Connors made a rapid mental calculation. ‘Arnold, that means that at eight twenty-five there won’t be any electricity anywhere.’

  ‘Not any current electricity, no…’

  ‘Jesus Christ…’ Connors thought back to one of the academic conversations he’d overheard in the canteen. Some of the research group had been discussing what could happen if the world was suddenly deprived of electric power. What was it Page had said – 80 per cent of the world’s population might not survive the next six months? Page’s morbid delight in bad news may have led him to exaggerate. There was a chance that the bulk of the well-drilled Red Chinese would – and two-thirds of India wouldn’t notice the difference. Maybe he meant 80 per cent of the Western world…

  One of the diesels climbed noisily up on to the Ridge with a load of supplies. Connors watched it cross the plateau towards Rockville. They had decided to break up the base camp and relocate everything on the Ridge. It had the virtue of being several miles off the highway, heavily fenced in, and isolated. The fence would have to be repaired, but it would be a good place to shelter if things got tough. Harris and Cameron had gone out to round up the flare parties Connors had sent racing for cover, and Wedderkind had suggested they should try to get the rest of the research group back from Glasgow AFB.

  Connors didn’t really have a clear idea of what he was going to do next, but he thought it would be better for everyone if he sounded decisive. They would have to make some kind of coherent plan to assist the people in the immediate area. They couldn’t go scudding around forever in their converted trucks pretending that the rest of the world didn’t exist. They would need more fuel, and an assured supply of starting cartridges for the diesels. They would have to start sharing the problems. And the first was how to stay alive this winter…

  As if reading his thoughts, Wedderkind said, ‘We’re lucky. We have a coherent, organized unit with a high proportion of technological and scientific skills.’

  And we’re also armed to the teeth…

  ‘I think some of them want to try and get to their families,’said Connors.

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ said Wedderkind. ‘But if we split up none of us will make it. The worst will be over by the end of the winter.’

  ‘Is it going to be as bad as I think it is?’ asked Connors.

  ‘It could be,’ said Wedderkind. ‘Especially in and around the cities. It depends on how much people are prepared to help each other.’

  Connors gazed at the rolling wheatfields west of the dry riverbed. The fallow strips had now been sown with winter wheat. When it ripened, a lot of it would have to be cut by h
and. Next year, the grains would be like gold dust.

  He wondered if he would ever see Washington again. And Charly. He tried to imagine what it would be like there now. Even if her parents could get their money out of the bank, it wouldn’t get them very far.

  ‘What do you think Crusoe’s going to grow into, Arnold?’

  ‘Bob, there’s no way to answer that. The possibilities are enormous. Think of the acorn that grows into an oak – or the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly. Crusoe could be the seed of a city, or a whole civilization.’

  ‘Okay, let’s try another question. Is this going to be the end of the world?’

  ‘Maybe as we know it,’ said Wedderkind. ‘But on the other hand, you could say it was the beginning of a new one. And with such possibilities! There are huge areas of technology left to us. We have steam, diesels, gas turbines, water, air, the sun. Admittedly you won’t be able to turn on your quadraphonic hi-fi, but people will learn to make music. People don’t seem to realize that most of the world’s greatest music, art, literature, architecture were all completed before the age of electricity. Did they need electricity to build Versailles? St Peter’s? The pyramids? Did they need a microphone to sing Handel’s Messiah! Would Beethoven have achieved more with a hearing aid? Did Michelangelo need floodlights to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling?’

  ‘No,’ said Connors. ‘But don’t try and kid me, Arnold. We’re not about to enter some Golden Age. It’s going to be goddamned awful.’

  ‘For a while, perhaps. But there was nothing any of us could have done to stop this happening. You must accept it as part of the plan.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear there is one – even if it is too big for me to understand. What is it you think we have to do?’