PSI/Net

by Rob MacGregor

  Camila waited for the proverbial other shoe to drop.

  "Then three nights ago, they came back and took me out of the White House and onto their ship."

  Howell leaned forward. "How. . . how did they do that, sir?"

  In Howell's eyes, she saw the reflection of her own greatest fears, that the president had lost it, flipped out, gone berserk.

  "I was levitated up from my bed, but this time I was caught in a bright beam of light that lifted me right through the ceiling and into their craft."

  Camila felt baffled and disturbed by the casual way he said this; he might have been describing the clothes he'd worn to dinner the night before.

  If there had been a vessel hovering above the White House, it would've been blasted out of the sky before the aliens had a chance to penetrate the president's bedroom, she thought. Certainly, he must have considered that, as well as the matter of how he'd moved through the ceiling. But she kept her counsel and listened.

  Dustin smiled at her. "Camila, you look like you're in shock. I know this is upsetting and you probably are thinking that I've lost my marbles, but you need to hear this. So please bear with me."

  "Yes, sir. I'm just surprised. Very surprised."

  Dustin folded his hands and continued. "Keep in mind that we are dealing with entities far more advanced than we are. They have ways of disassembling and reassembling matter that we don't comprehend at this time. They can apparently not only block radar but create a shield of invisibility around their crafts."

  Camila fought back tears.

  "So I found myself inside a small circular room about ten feet in diameter," he continued. "There was no furniture whatsoever. Nothing and no one. I wandered around this room feeling the smooth curving walls and looking for a door. But there were no seams anywhere. I panicked. I pounded on the walls. I shouted, but no one answered.

  "Then a door that I hadn't detected slid open. I couldn't see anything but light in the doorway. Several seconds passed and a figure appeared—a woman. She was tall with shoulder-length hair and looked human except for her eyes, which were too large and very dark." He paused and held up his hand. "Her fingers were extremely long. Out to here. She wore a light, filamentous robe that changed colors in the light. She walked up to me and the robe fell away. She was naked and very much a woman, but she also frightened me."

  Camila glanced at Howell, who seemed transfixed by the story. Waters stared at the table. She couldn't even guess what he was thinking.

  "The floor opened behind me and a piece of furniture rose up. It looked like a huge egg shell with an opening on the side. She took my hand and my fears started to evaporate. She led me into the egg and I knew I couldn't resist her. The egg bed was soft, so soft that I seemed to sink down through the floor with the woman embracing me."

  Dustin stopped, glanced at Camila, then the others. "I know you might be thinking that I was just experiencing some sort of science fiction wet dream, that I was asleep the entire time. That's what Annie and Todd have suggested. But it was real. I was as awake during that experience as I am right now."

  "Did the woman talk to you?" Howell asked.

  Dustin nodded. "Yes, she did. Again, it was telepathic. She told me that she would carry my child, who would travel among the stars and live on another world."

  "What?" Camila interrupted. "What child?"

  No one said anything, but they all looked at her as though the answer were obvious. Dustin believed he'd had sex with the alien. "Why did she want you as a father?" Howell asked.

  "She told me the child would carry genetic material that would help seed a new world that was an experiment of the galactic community."

  "But they didn't take you there?" Howell asked.

  "No, not yet. But let me get back to this world. There was a reason I spoke up last night. An important one. We are reaching a point in our development as a race—and of course I mean the human race—in which we will either exterminate ourselves or move into the galactic community and into a new way of understanding who we are."

  "Who are we?" Howell asked.

  Camila wished that Howell would shut up. His questions just allowed the president to expand on his fantasies, and that was what she was convinced they were.

  "Harvey, we are extraordinary beings who are more—much more—than we seem. We transcend the physical. We transcend time. We are a part of something larger and parts of us exist in many worlds—both physical and nonphysical."

  "That's interesting," Howell said. "But how would that apply to, say, national security?"

  "You haven't been listening to me, Harvey. This is an unprecedented opportunity to move beyond nationalistic concerns and into a galactic mainframe. We're talking about dropping all disputes between nations because very soon they will be meaningless. We can pursue higher ambitions."

  Howell nodded and grew quiet.

  "Any questions, Camila?" Dustin asked.

  She wanted to know if he'd seen anyone else in that craft besides the woman. But she thought better of it. "I don't think so."

  Waters cleared his throat and spoke up for the first time since Dustin had begun telling his story. "As I said before, Mr. President, we've got to face some basic facts. There is no physical evidence of these events and without it going public would be a mistake."

  "On the other hand, going public with a full explanation might result in further contact being established," Dustin said.

  "I've been thinking about this," Waters said. "Do we really want them here?"

  "That's a reasonable concern, Todd," Dustin responded. "Eventually, I hope that I will be able to address the nation on this entire matter in a forthright manner. But for now, I think you are right on the mark. We need to take a reasonable approach that won't frighten people. We should maintain that my statement was a metaphor."

  "That's good," Howell said. "Metaphors carry their own weight."

  Camila felt relieved. "I think that's the best way to go, Mr. President. There'll be controversy for a few days, maybe even a week or two, but we can overcome it. We'll just keep telling them that the president is busy governing the nation."

  Dustin nodded. "I hope I'm making the right decision."

  "Of course you are, sir," Waters told him.

  Dustin stood and they all came to their feet. He turned to Camila. "Alert the press that I'm going for a jog. I'll swing by the front gate for photos, but I won't answer any questions."

  He smiled, then turned and left.

  She looked from Howell to Waters as the door closed. "I admire him," she said. "He's incredibly resilient."

  "But do you think he's well?" Howell asked.

  Camila recalled something that Steve Watkins, her assistant, had said last night in the aftermath of the president's speech. "I understand that most people who claim to have been abducted by aliens test normal on psychological profile. In other words, they're not deranged."

  Waters supplicated the sky, but said nothing.

  "He never told us how long he was up there with his lady friend, or who was controlling the ship," Howell said.

  Waters smiled and placed a hand lightly on Howell's back. "He told me. But I'm keeping it to myself."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gordon Maxwell pushed through the swinging doors of the old bar in the corner of the Strater Hotel in downtown Durango. The Strater maintained its nineteenth-century flavor with the barmaids dressed in brightly colored long, frilly dresses and bartenders with bowlers, vests, and handlebar mustaches. Maxwell found a corner table, a momentary refuge from his mounting worries.

  He glanced at his watch. Ten to three. Steve Ritter would come down from his room in exactly ten minutes. No sooner. No later. He always required one mug of beer in the bar before he would invite Maxwell up to his room to begin the session. If Maxwell didn't follow the routine, Ritter simply refused to work.

  If he wasn't so damn good, Maxwell wouldn't bother with him. About two years ago, Ritter had started refusing to work over
the phone and he wouldn't fly or drive to Denver. He'd become a recluse, rarely going out except for his weekly trip to Silverton and back on the old steam-powered train. So Maxwell had been forced to deal with him in Durango.

  Fortunately, Maxwell enjoyed driving his new Corvette and visiting the historic town, especially since he'd started seeing Marlys Simms, a barmaid at the Strater. He watched Marlys as she moved about in the purple, low-cut, ankle-length dress and her auburn wig with its abundant, flowing curls.

  A decade younger than him, she had maintained herself well, and carried a youthful air about her. Separated from her husband, she'd made it clear she wasn't looking for a new one, which was fine with him. Pursuing Marlys gave him something to do between sessions with Ritter, and it helped him deal with the male menopause thing. He'd even created fantasies about reversing the process.

  The muffled ring of his cell phone caught his attention and he reached into his leather briefcase. He fumbled for the phone and answered on the third ring. "You want to talk to him? Take down this number," a raspy voice said.

  He jotted down the area code and phone number. "Got it. I'll call in twenty minutes."

  At least George Wiley had returned to his cautious approach in communicating with him. As the hunt for Wiley intensified, Maxwell had gotten more and more concerned. If the FBI ever found out that Wiley employed remote viewers to protect him, Maxwell's rising star would crash hard, especially if Wiley was linked to the plan to nuke Washington as he suspected. It was one thing to provide protection for the recalcitrant general, who'd become a folk hero in the West. But Maxwell certainly wouldn't stick with him if he planned to single-handedly destroy the country.

  "A beer there, guy?" Marlys asked.

  He looked up and smiled as he slipped his phone back into the briefcase. "I'll wait for Ritter. How ya doing?”

  "I'm fine, but your friend. . ." She shook her head and pointed toward the ceiling. "He gets weirder and weirder all the time."

  Marlys knew that Maxwell called himself a futurist and that he visited Ritter to obtain psychic impressions. Other than once asking about Ritter's accuracy, she expressed no interest in finding out about what he predicted. She had enough to deal with in the present, she said.

  "What did he do now?"

  "After eating all of his meals in his room for the past two months, he started coming down for lunch last week. But instead of getting his own table, he would sit right down with strangers and start telling them about their lives as if he'd known them forever. He scared people, so the manager told him to stop it or we wouldn't serve him anymore."

  "Was he accurate?" He smiled, thinking that he was asking Marlys the same thing she'd asked him about Ritter.

  She considered his question. "I heard one of the waitresses say that he picked up on everyone's secrets, things they thought no one else knew, and that's what he told them."

  Maxwell was convinced that virtually anyone who made the effort and practiced could learn to remote view to some degree. But Ritter possessed something extra. A natural psychic, born with the talent, he could not only work remote targets, like other trained remote viewers, but he could read people as if he'd known them all their lives, as if he knew their futures.

  Marlys looked up. "Oops, here he comes now. I'll go get the beers."

  Maxwell glanced at his watch. Exactly three o'clock. He heard the annoying clatter of Ritter's steel taps scraping against the tile floor. Ritter, thin and angular with bulging eyes and the gaunt face of an ascetic, approached the table. As usual, he wore black corduroy pants and a black shirt. He extended a hand with spidery fingers and greeted Maxwell.

  "I saw you on CNN, Max. Very impressive." He sat down next to him and leaned toward him. Too close. Too intense. "Glad to see you had the guts to stand up there and tell the bastards that their old world wasn't going to last. They listened to you, too. They listened good."

  "Thanks, Steve."

  Maxwell leaned back and wondered what the comments prefaced. Ritter rarely offered a compliment without following it up with some sort of criticism.

  "You better thank me. After all, I nudged the governor into inviting you to speak. Harmon finds your work very interesting, but without me he would never had made the effort. Never."

  He hated the way Ritter repeated himself, like a goddamn verbal hiccup.

  "You did your part. But why did Dustin spill his gut last night? We've been working on him for weeks without him saying anything. Why then? Why on the day of my speech. I should be on the front page of the papers today, not buried inside."

  Ritter grinned. "Because I pushed him, too. I pushed hard."

  "You what? I hope you're joking."

  "Nope. I did it because your head is getting too fucking big. You don't understand the consequences, colonel. The consequences."

  He felt like strangling the bastard. "What are you talking about?"

  "I took a peek into your future, something you don't like to do because you're so goddamned afraid of getting old and impotent. If you would've gotten all the publicity you wanted, you would've paid a big price. You would've been linked to Wiley in no time, and you wouldn't like the results. You both would've gotten nailed. Yeah, nailed."

  Maxwell considered what he'd just heard. Maybe Ritter was right. Or maybe he just didn't want to see him gaining wide recognition and becoming independent of Wiley. Ritter, in his own way, admired Wiley, sympathized with him and his cause, and liked working for him.

  Ritter watched Maxwell for several seconds as if he were studying a strange bug through a magnifying glass. "You know, you work closely with General Wiley, but I don't get any sense that you really favor Wiley's goals. Why is that, Max? Why?"

  "We're not part of his army, Steve. You know that. We work on a project-by-project basis."

  Ritter grinned. "Ah, like merrr-cen-arrr-ies."

  "My interests are different than Wiley's. I'm a scientist. I'm interested in man's relationship with his future, how he can predict it and how he can alter it, and George Wiley has given me a great opportunity to test that hypothesis."

  "And a chance to make a lot of money. A whole lot of loot."

  "That helps," Maxwell responded. "And I pay you and the others well."

  Two mugs of beer arrived and when Marlys moved away, Ritter rephrased his question. "Just by the act of working for Wiley you, Maxwell, are involved in helping create Wiley's version of the future."

  "I think it's pretty well understood now that the experimenter always affects the data by simply carrying out the experiment. But Wiley is helping me, too. He's allowing us to explore the far reaches of remote viewing and the results, as you well know, have been phenomenal."

  Ritter smiled and flashed his uneven row of teeth. "I'm glad you noticed, Max. Glad you noticed. When me and the boys put our heads together, we can go far. Real far."

  Maxwell glanced at his watch, remembering that he'd promised Wiley he'd call him. "Let's drink up. I've got a call to make before we start."

  "What is it tonight, another Wiley job?"

  "Not exactly." He wished Ritter wouldn't use Wiley's name in public. "I don't want to tell you any more about it."

  Ritter gazed off. "You don't have to." He laughed. "You're going to send me to Wiley, right into him." He nodded, telling himself that he was right. "That's an interesting twist, Max. I like it, like it a lot. You're such a control freak."

  "You're not always right, Steve. I'm going to call him, that's all."

  Ritter sipped his beer and watched Maxwell over the rim of the mug. "So you have something else to worry about now, something besides your boring preoccupation with getting old."

  Maxwell ignored the comment. He finished his beer, put a ten-dollar bill on the table, then slung the strap on his leather briefcase over his shoulder. He crossed his arms and waited.

  Ritter got the hint, finished his beer. They trudged through the bar toward the hotel lobby. Maxwell waved to Marlys and signaled her that he would see her later
. They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and walked down the hall to the room. Ritter unlocked the door and they moved into the room.

  Maxwell wouldn't care to stay in the room more than a night or two, but he'd given up asking Ritter why he didn't move into an apartment or a house. Other than a few books and his clothes strewn about, the room lacked any personal touches. Maxwell didn't like to think of his own past very much—his failed marriage, his son who never spoke to him—but Ritter appeared to have no past. No pictures, no memorabilia, the guy could pack up and leave in ten minutes. Except he preferred to stay here, as if it were a permanent residence.

  He'd come to realize that all his viewers had developed quirks, odd patterns of behavior that might be related to their work, or to the Z-Factor, the hypnotic drug that had enhanced their abilities, or to both. He didn't know anything about the side effects when he'd first begun discreetly administering the drug. But he conceded that the remote viewers had changed. They'd gotten better, amazingly better. Meanwhile, they'd all slipped into a realm that made them borderline sociopaths.

  Even the three outsiders. He'd known about Calloway's obsessiveness, his instability, and Eduardo Perez's burrowing paranoia, and now he'd found out about Doc’s crippling fear of crowds. The three remained unwilling to work with him, so they'd have to pay. He couldn't allow any loose cannons to remain at large. Especially not since they were all so closely linked together and that link seemed to be intensifying along with their abilities.

  But right now he faced a more pressing matter. He sat on the edge of Ritter's bed and called the number that Wiley had given him. The general answered on the second ring. "What is it, Max?"

  He told Wiley about Calloway and what had happened at the Brown Palace Hotel. When he finished, the silence stretched out so long that Maxwell asked if Wiley was still there.

  "I'm here. What you say is interesting. But it's pure fiction, Max. If anyone associated with Freedom Nation were involved in such a deadly matter, I'd definitely be aware of it. This Calloway fellow sounds out of control. He's picking up on his own fantasies."