by Terry James
He turned again to the letter. What might he have missed? Was there a message there at all? His excitement degenerated to depression. He had been sure the fireplace was the answer. That Karen had given clues.
"In his place, for safe keeping." She had used the phrases in a totally uncharacteristic way. It had to mean the fireplace. But he had checked it thoroughly.
Not the hearth! Karen wrote "in his place."In!” It was raised more than a foot off the floor and was of solid stone.
He pounded the top of the hearth with the heel of his fisted hand to detect looseness. Unmovable, like all the other stones. Leaning to one side, while sitting on the long rock hearth, he reached behind the fire screen, into the fire pit, feeling first the left side of the interior, then the right, achieving nothing but blackening his hands with soot.
He adjusted his position, kneeling, then crawling forward, making his shoulders narrow by reaching forward with his hands at full arms extension toward the back wall of the fire pit. He ran his palms over the stony surface, then his fingertips around each of the large stones. There--in the center of the back wall, a different feel to the fire-blackened stone. He brushed the rock with his fingers, then with a handkerchief, until something at the stone's center appeared gleaming. A strip of metal! He pulled outward on the strip. A handle! Recessed to lie flat against the fake stone. He continued to pull until the stone facade glided on rollers from between the other rocks. A box of some sort, made of very thick metal! Upon further manipulation, the phony stone cover swung outward on hinges, revealing a metal front with a heavy brass-colored handle at its center.
His pulse quickened. It was brilliant of the old man. A fireproof box behind the fire, even the handle of the fake rock blackened by the smoke of hundreds of fires. Brilliant, too, of Karen. He found it!
The knob turned easily and the box's door fell open. Jacob pulled a long, rectangular box from the fireproof safe and removed its lid, after setting it down on the desk beside the boxes he had carried with him since Naxos. Karen's lovely face floated in translucent mind-image before the agglomeration of materials on the desk, while he spread the Marchek papers and boxes, looking for a place to begin making sense of it all.
Insurance policies in a leather portfolio, bound by a leather strap and buckle; a brown envelope, filled with photographs. Very old, probably old family pictures; letters from people with whom the old man must have shared deep friendships. Nothing that looked like the diary-type notes Karen talked about that night.
After lifting the remaining materials out of the rectangular drawer, he hurriedly sifted through them, near panic in his need to find the information. Nothing but personal financial records, more photographs, a scroll-diploma from a seminary. He swore in frustration, picking the drawer up and examining it in better light for anything that might be stuck in a corner. Nothing there.
He slammed the metal container angrily against the desktop and it bounced onto the floor near his feet, ending up leaning on its side against the desk. Its bottom had loosened by the impacts, and several items spilled onto his feet from beneath the container's newly opened secret lid.
Stunned for a moment by the new development, he picked up and examined the items and the container, determining that there was a small button on the rear portion of the box that must have been bumped when it hit the floor, springing open a false bottom. The things Karen told him about! A small, brown leather-bound notebook, and two 12" x 15" brown envelopes containing, he discovered upon opening them, a videocassette and a number of old-style computer disks. He dropped the contents from the envelopes onto the desk and spread them out to get a total perspective. Four disks, one tape.
Hugo Marchek had, like most everyone else, the government-subsidized UNIVUS computer system. It was the hybrid creation by corporate technological giants which made access to important databases and to other networkers possible for users in the United States and in Europe, where the comparable system was designated UNIVER. It would be the foundation on which to build the structure of a unified world. The ultimate outgrowth of Internet and the World-Wide Web. It was an instrument with which to begin networking toward global understanding and cooperation. It was a noble conception, but, from what he had experienced, a monstrous birth.
Hugo Marchek, Karen told Jacob on one occasion, accepted the government computer in his home only because he could better keep track of the gestating beast, and to carry on with life as it had technologically evolved, though it disgusted and disturbed him. For his PAL work, he used an old conventional personal computer, whose disks Jacob held in his hand now. The UNIVUS system, which had occupied one corner of the study when Jacob was last in this room, was gone now. Taken, no doubt, by the government upon Marchek's death. Saryeva Marchek, Karen had also told Jacob, hated the UNIVUS system and expressed to her brother often that he was sinning by allowing the satanic equipment to stay in their home. The scoldings, Karen said, amused Hugo Marchek. When he died, Saryeva probably ordered the system removed.
The old-style computer was private, unless hooked by phone to any of the few databases still available to those who continued to use personal computers. Marchek's personal computer, which was in the same corner it had occupied before his death — given the eschatologist's mistrust of those he suspected were watching him, and given his innate cleverness — would no doubt be secure through some well-devised indexing technique. The old man would have created his own code for information classification and retrieval—characters, words, or perhaps entire phrases taken from the data texts. Whatever the keys, he must find them, and quickly.
But first, he had to discover what secrets he had carried with him since leaving the Aegean island. He opened one of the leather pouches and unfolded a sheaf of 8-1/2" x 14" papers, seeing that the first was a letter, rather a memorandum, on United States State Department letterhead.
To: The President
From: C. Wilson
P.E. ill due to unanticipated growth of Germ-Diagnosis: total involvement of system. Prognosis: terminal without immediate surgery.
The accompanying page, borrowed from a Naxosfile, is part of a Top Secret document composed by Herrlich Krimhler.
Jacob turned the page and, seeing it was typewritten in German, translated it silently while he read:
"The cosmos, having been prepared for the ultimate mystery that must soon be endured by those not attuned with the New Age into which humankind must enter, the Six Ways, is equally prepared to light the path for the worthy. When the uninitiated are withdrawn into the inner worlds' subconsciousness to be ministered to and made worthy before their new-birth experience back into the physical body, post-dissolution society will bloom with unprecedented prosperity. Peace, which has been an unattainable end for mankind, through 'The Plan,' will be achieved,
'The Plan' necessitates the elimination of national entities within our body, who can never be depended upon to accept anything other than the predominant role in this new beginning. The dissolution will accomplish the excision; 'The Plan' shall prevail."
Jacob read the document again, his eyes burning, tearing because of lack of sleep. The page, apparently taken from a longer communication, was for a readership comprised of a select few people close to the great man, Krimhler.
Jacob's fatigued brain drew into focus the stabbing fact that shocked him into a new level of alertness. The German had written about the disappearance! The effect the cataclysm would have on the United States! Somehow, what should have been confusion came together into a horrible realization; he was, the world was, dealing with something beyond the explainable!
Conrad Wilson could not have anticipated that Krimhler was writing about the disappearance of millions of people. The old diplomat did see the implied threat in Krimhler's declaration:
"'The Plan' necessitates the elimination of national entities within our body, who can never be depended upon to accept anything other than the predominant role in this new beginning. The dissolution will accomplish the exci
sion; 'The Plan' shall prevail."
That was the message. It must be. The message Wilson wanted to get to the President -- that Krimhler was proposing to eliminate the United States from contention for leadership in the new ruling structure. His foster father probably inferred that the now extremely powerful Unified European States would use its newfound economic strength to pressure America into taking a back seat to leaders chosen by Krimhler and those in the hierarchy at Naxos. Certainly, the words could not imply the threat of military force; the U.S. still wielded the nuclear bludgeon; Europe still depended on America to deter the Russian bear's lust for western European blood.
But... No! Again there was Krimhler's inexplicable foreknowledge! The Russian allied threat was no more. Gone. Nuclear leverage, how was it affected? And Conrad Wilson could not have foreseen the geopolitical changes that took place in that millisecond of cataclysm. Jacob had firsthand knowledge from time spent in the crawlspace in the basement of Stone Oaks of just how much relationships, power bases, abilities to dominate, had been altered.
That change was dramatic, and the words of Herrlich Krimhler — written a considerable time before events of the past 24 hours — testified that his was the real power, which not only controlled the Western world's present, but understood what had caused the sudden change and what that change would mean for the future world.
Conrad Wilson did not know the extent of Krimhler's power, but sensed that it was not good for the United States, and in his memorandum to the President recommended that the German be assassinated. The revelation would have been a shock, stretching believability to the breaking point, but for the more unbelievable shocks Jacob had been jolted by since shortly after his plane touched down at Andrews. And, before those events on the road to D.C., he would have been shocked at his own attitude of this moment — that assassination was indeed warranted because of the threat to America's security -- whatever that security might be worth now. No longer true.
The thought of a single life being snuffed out was dwarfed by the knowledge that millions of people faced oppressed existences beneath a regime which claimed for itself— without consideration, apparently, for the wishes of its subjects — the power to govern. The one thing those new masters failed to consider: People used to freedom of choice, of representative government, would not easily be made to bend a knee to those who claimed the right to make the choices for them. Even the people within military establishments had enjoyed basic rights and freedoms for too long; sudden chaos could not for long persuade them to back an oppressive master. The psychology was all wrong for this new order to work.
He pulled one of the videocassettes from the box and examined it to make sure it was not damaged by the beatings to which his circumstances had subjected it. No damage.
Had he misjudged his adversaries earlier, thinking that whatever they were, they were not omniscient? Herrlich Krimhler's foreknowledge, demonstrated by the document in which the German seemed to have anticipated the disappearance, appeared to refute that. And they were able to follow his movements to this point. Omniscient? No... just tricks played by his tired mind — fatigued by seeing the agent vanish, by the wreckages, the missing children, by seeing his country betrayed by its leaders.
Hugo Marchek's old videocassette recorder sat on top of an even older console television set near the computer. Jacob was not sure he could figure out the device, so different was it from the equipment he was accustomed to working with. He managed, after several seconds of study, to recall the way the machinery operated, a lesson once learned in a basic telecommunications class, then forgotten. The tape, smuggled out of Naxos and dragged with him since, slipped easily into the receptacle-slot. He pressed the rectangular button marked 'PLAY.'
Why he was taking the materials apart and digesting them in such random manner he didn't know. Maybe to spare himself the labor of thinking about a more orderly procedure. Maybe his intuitive side, or his imagined intuitive side, was guiding him through the unraveling process in the best way possible.
The video on the console's 27-inch screen flickered, then straightened. The image of Herrlich Krimhler's face, close-up, with a serious expression; he turned up the volume, hearing that Krimhler spoke in English.
"To each of you who are to lead the way while we move into the New Age of peace — strength to do what is essential, no matter what your feelings and preferences, is the attribute which makes you worthy, which made your selection to key positions necessary." Krimhler spoke fluently — authoritatively.
"Human beings yearn for strong leadership and appropriate rules by which to conduct their lives. Never before in the history of the world has adherence to these principles been so important, as they will become during the first phase of INterface. The citizen must cooperate, must obey without questioning the authority of those of you entrusted with initiating them into, and cultivating them for, the paradise that awaits the loving, obedient citizen. The citizen's only responsibility during INterphase will be that of obedience. And do not think this will be without its difficulties.
"For too long, the old order of things has nurtured the false doctrine that individuality and unbridled self-interest was freedom. If freedom, it was the virulent, malignant freedom to prevent peace by keeping the peoples of the earth apart. The freedom to invent and use weapons with which to annihilate all forms of life.”
"But the great Cosmic Mind has seen fit, after eons of natural evolution, to intervene into human affairs, allowing man to partake, on a conscious level, of the wonders that are the Universal Mind-Body. This will require the removal of some and the training of all others into the oneness of love and perfect order. This is to be your part in the new world of INterface.”
‘ThePlan’ is perfection. INterphase consists of Six Ways to Law... Six Ways to Order... Six Ways to Peace. These must be enforced with iron-willed resolve. There can be no leniency for those unwilling to cooperate. There must be reward for those who show exceptional willingness to point out the rebellious ones who pose dangers to society. All children born during INterphase must be educated to INterface society standards, from six months through year 18."
The children! All born during INterphase! The children! All disappeared! Was there something to the similarity between the children's disappearance and Krimhler's message, recorded for the ruling elite of INterface well before the occurrence? Did he know there would be no children... small children, as he seemed to know there would be a cataclysm of some sort, which he termed in the document from Naxos the "ultimate mystery that must be endured" — "the dissolution" — "the excision?"
Krimhler's dark, unblinking eyes glistened, his smooth features, youthful beneath thick, black hair, seemed to glow— not reflecting the studio's light, but from inner illumination. The baritone voice seemed older than its owner's years, and echoed the prescient assertiveness shown in the eyes.
"You, as the most vital members of the coming society, especially during INterphase, must prepare yourselves with self-motivated re-education, while at the same time seeing to it that those for whom you are responsible yield cooperatively to their own re-education. The Cosmic Mind has, through its universal wisdom, seen to it that you have the technological power to carry out ‘The Plan.’ The great Cosmic Force has shown the way to the higher order intended for man. Mankind has, through the eons of the ages, through the grand evolutional design, been allowed to create a means for his own salvation. Receive now that message from the Cosmos, which has chosen you to be inheritors of its wisdom — to be the administrators of its perfect justice and order. Understand the technology it has given — strive to use it to best advantage."
Krimhler's image dissolved and a colorful graphic took its place. The voice of an unseen instructor lectured while the graphics changed with the changing text.
"INterface society during INterphase must be carefully controlled, almost, some might say, to the point of totalitarianism."
The voice sounded without gender, mechanized. Synthes
ized speech, probably produced by computer vocoder of some type.
"All must lose the old ways of nationalism; all must become indoctrinated citizens of INterface, the global community."
The graphic on the screen, a globe set in a background of black, at first portrayed the many nations of the world as the representative earth rotated slowly; colored lights lit them individually. The continents of North America, South America, Australia, a huge chunk of Europe, scattered sections of Africa and Asia, as well as, Japan, and many other islands, became the same brilliant color of gold; the national boundary delineations vanished. Inspirational, militaristic music played beneath the computer voice.
"When the great leap into peace comes, you will be prepared to control the masses, to guide each into becoming what the Ascended Masters intend for them to become... Individual cells within the Universal Mind-Body, each networking with another to finally attain total harmony."
The sphere within the sea of black changed to gold, and in the next instant, a crystal clear pyramid came into focus within the golden globe.
"Peace will be achieved.”
The fulfillment of man's aspirations accomplished.
Six Ways to Law!
Six Ways to Order!
Six Ways to Peace!
The words as the voice spoke, popped onto the screen as they were being spoken, bright golden letters generated on the jet-black field surrounding the pyramid symbol. Then the graphic changed again, to a chart which outlined what was obviously a chain of command. The voice lectured on each position within the structure, instructing about purposes and job functions — the computer-generated images changing, giving specific information relating to each governing position - from Continental Head at the top of the chart, to the four Quadrant Commanders on each continent, to the 666 Sector Coordinators and, finally, down to the thousands of Controllers and Block Governors represented at the bottom of the chart.