GENESIS (Projekt Saucer)

by W. A. Harbinson

‘Well, for the past year things have been going haywire there: computers malfunctioning, data cards disappearing, the printouts from our worldwide network of radar stations coming in either erratically or not at all. Even worse: we have quite a few spy satellites whose sole purpose for being is to photograph the Semipalitinsk laboratory in Russia, where we believe they’re creating some extraordinary pulse beam weapons. So, what happens? Our damned satellites start malfunctioning. A couple get knocked out of the sky – we don’t even know where they went – and the rest take their turn in malfunctioning in inexplicable ways. We don’t know what’s happening. We just can’t pin it down. We’ve checked the whole complex from top to bottom, but we can’t find a fault.

  ‘Okay, so I’m in trouble. I’m supposed to be in charge of the data input. Eyes are aimed suspiciously in my direction and my nerves start twitching. I should know what’s causing the problems – it’s my field; my speciality – but I’m sitting there in the Operations Center, just chewing my fingernails. I haven’t a goddamned clue, I can’t find a single reason, and now I’m being checked out by the FBI and my credibility rating is zero.’

  ‘This all started a year ago?’

  ‘That’s right, Epstein: a year ago.’

  ‘Have you taken on any new staff since then?’

  ‘Not one. They’re all old hands with top security clearances.’

  ‘Okay, continue.’

  ‘Right. Now listen to this. For the past three months or so this has all been getting on top of me: my nerves playing up, too many sleepless nights, sweating and trying to work out my problems and then just sweating even more. Then I get a phone call. It’s from a guy named James Whitmore. He says that he works for ACASS, that they’ve heard I’m having a bad time, and that they want me to work for them in Europe and will pay me a lot. I tell him to put it in writing. He says he can’t do that. He says that I’m to meet him in a certain hotel for a drink and a talk. I tell him I’m not interested. He becomes very insistent. I get angry and tell him to shove off, but that just makes him chuckle. Things won’t get better, he says. Things will only get worse at NORAD. He says that he’ll get me sooner or later, then he chuckles again and hangs up.’

  Gehrard sipped some more beer, then sighed and looked over the low, flower-strewn wall at the sun’s dying rays.

  ‘I started worrying about that call,’ he said. ‘It seemed an odd way of approaching a scientist. I also wondered how ACASS, a Europeanbased commercial company, could know about the problems we were having in our top-secret establishments. So, I called ACASS. I rang their personnel manager. He said that he hadn’t heard about me, that he hadn’t planned to offer me a job, and that they didn’t have a Whitmore on their staff and that I’d just had my leg pulled.’

  Gerhard picked up his glass of beer, studied it distractedly, then placed it back on the table and started drumming his fingers.

  ‘I couldn’t forget that guy,’ he said. ‘I wondered who he might be. If he knew about my problems, he either worked right there with me or had a friend planted in NORAD, passing back information. I told this to the FBI. They ran a check, but came up with nothing. They thought it might be a practical joke – a silly and dangerous practical joke – and they told me to keep my eyes on my own staff and then report my suspicions. I just couldn’t accept that. None of my staff are that dumb. I thought recalled what the guy had said – that he would get me sooner or later – and I couldn’t shake that statement from my head and my nightmares increased.’

  ‘Do you mean nightmares literally?’

  ‘I mean a nightmare is a nightmare is a nightmare – and that’s what I was having.’ Gehardt sat forward in his chair, his face ghostly in the yellow light, the lanterns glowing brighter in the deepening darkness, the restaurant filling up. ‘What happened next was really strange,’ he said. ‘First, my wife’s at home on her own one day when she hears an unexpected knock on the door. She opens it to find these three guys on the porch, all dressed in dark suits, businesslike, all extremely polite. These guys then start taking turns at asking my wife various questions: Is she the wife of Professor Gerhardt? Is Professor Gerhardt at home? When would be the best time to come and see him? And so on and so forth – all very polite, but insistent. My wife is unnerved. She asks the men who they are. They say they’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but that’s all they can tell her. Then my wife gets angry and demands to know what they’re after. At that, they just nod their heads, back away to a waiting limousine, climb in and then drive off down the street… My wife tells me all about this and I start wondering what’s going on. I have a friend in the FBI, he’s a hundred percent loyal, so I call him and ask him to check it out and he tells me he will. He calls me back the next day. He says the CIA are worried about the foul-ups in NORAD, but neither they nor the FBI sent men around to my house. This turns out to be true. We have a visit from the FBI. They spend a couple of hours grilling my wife, trying to find out if she knows more than she’s telling, if she actually knows who those men were. Naturally she insists that she told the truth and that she hasn’t a clue who the men were, so finally, reluctantly, they leave her in peace. Though she was – and remains – badly rattled.’

  Darkness had fallen. The stars were glittering like diamonds. The restaurant was nearly full, the clientele elegantly dressed, and the lanterns glowed red, green and yellow on blond hair and bronzed shoulders.

  ‘That was the first thing,’ Gerhardt said. ‘It wasn’t to be the last… Three days later I get another phone call. It’s from Mr Whitmore again. He asks me if I’m willing to reconsider his previous offer. I don’t mention my call to ACASS. I’m too confused to think about it. I ask him if he knows about the men who dropped in on my wife. The bastard just chuckles. I demand to know who he is. He replies that he’ll get me pretty soon, then he chuckles again and hangs up… The next night it’s even worse. I’m on my way home from work. The car abruptly cuts out, its headlights go out, and I’m stranded in the middle of the desert wondering what the hell’s happened. Then I see three men. They’re walking along the road toward me. It’s so dark I can’t make out what they look like, but they’ve definitely advancing in my direction. I look beyond them and see nothing. I’m trying to work out where they came from. They come closer and they’re wearing coveralls, but I can’t see their faces. Then I’m really frightened. I suddenly panic. I try to start the car and nothing happens and I just can’t believe it. I look at the men again. They’re very close to the car. I look behind me and see another car coming out of the distance. Then I hear a strange noise. I turn back to the front. The three men have disappeared and then the other car passes and my own car starts up again… I didn’t touch the ignition. I didn’t do a damned thing. The car just started and I put my foot on the gas and drove home like crazy.’

  Gerhardt sat back in his chair. The shadows fell across his face. Epstein and Stanford glanced at one another, neither saying a word. The darkness was now complete. The stars glittered in lonely splendour. The restaurant was noisier, a steel band played calypso, and the lanterns glowed red, green and yellow on the flushed, happy faces.

  ‘I was frightened,’ Gerhardt said. ‘I still can’t forget that night. Shortly after, the nightmares began – one nightmare each week. That’s how they came. They were as regular as clockwork. Every Wednesday, the same night every week, I would have the same nightmare. The car broke down on a Wednesday. Every Wednesday I’d relive that. The dream would always end just as the three men were about to reach me and my wife would have to shake me awake to cut short my screaming.’

  Gerhardt glanced uneasily around him, his face bathed in the yellow light, a white Moorish arch behind his head, the sea beyond that.

  ‘That’s why I came here alone,’ he said. ‘I just had to get away. I was hoping that if I came here I’d relax and the nightmares would stop.’

  ‘But they didn’t,’ Epstein said.

  ‘No,’ Gerhardt said. ‘Instead, I start having them every
night… and then something else happened.’

  ‘Three days ago.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘That was Wednesday.’

  ‘Right. It happened at midnight every Wednesday and it scared the shit out of me.’

  Stanford glanced over the low wall, looking down on the swimming pool, to see the water reflecting the string of lanterns that were strung up around it. The bar down there was now closed. There was only one person left in the pool. It was a girl in a red bikini, swimming gracefully and down, her long blonde hair trailing out behind her like ribbons of gold. Stanford turned back to Gerhardt. He was leaning across the table. His green eyes were slightly obscured by the yellow light that flowed out of the lantern.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep that night. I was just lying on top of the bed. It was hot and the room was pretty bright because of the moonlight. Then the moonlight disappeared. It just seemed to blink out. The room was plunged into darkness and I looked through the window and I couldn’t see a star in the sky. That sky was pitch-black. I couldn’t see a thing out there. I couldn’t see the walls of the room, and then it suddenly turned cold. Then the fear came. I remembered my nightmare. The fear increased and I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move a muscle. That really terrified me. I was completely paralyzed. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t make a sound and I seemed to be freezing. Then suddenly there was light. It poured in from the balcony. The doors opened and two figures came in and advanced straight to the bed. I couldn’t see them very well. They were silhouetted in the dazzling light. They were wearing one-piece suits, were no taller than five feet, and their heads were tilted toward me, looking at me, neither saying a word. I just lay there, paralyzed. I’d never known such fear before. I just lay there and watched them as they walked up to the bed, as one started leaning over me, his hand reaching out to me. He pressed something against my neck. It was cold and then it burned. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t make a sound, and then the pain, the burning, went away. I stared up at the two men. I couldn’t think through my fear. Both men made a little bow, a kind of curtsy, and then they walked from the room. “Saturday,” I thought. I thought one of them said “Saturday”. I don’t believe they said anything at all, but that word filled my head. Then they were gone. There was a strange vibrating sound. The light from the balcony blinked out and the moonlight returned. I remember the moonlight. I remember wanting to sit up. I fell asleep and I didn’t have dreams and I awakened refreshed. Then I went to the mirror. I examined myself. There was an ugly red scar on my neck where that man had touched it with something. That scar has gone already. Maybe it never really there. But I don’t feel any fear anymore… I feel an odd, calm elation.’

  Stanford studied Gerhardt’s eyes, thought of the girl on the porch of the ranch near Galveston, shivered and then turned his head away and looked down at the swimming pool. The blue water reflected the lanterns. The golden girl had disappeared. The pool was a rectangle of light in a vast, starlit darkness. Stanford turned his gaze on Epstein. The old man scratched at his beard. Stanford returned his gaze to Gerhardt, saw the green eyes in yellow light, and he thought again of the girl on the porch and felt the mystery deepening.

  ‘This is Saturday,’ Stanford said.

  ‘That’s right, Dr Stanford. This is Saturday and I’m talking to you and I don’t feel a thing.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Epstein asked.

  ‘Yes, there’s something else. I feel that something’s going to happen tonight, and I believe it concerns you.’

  Epstein scratched at his beard, glanced thoughtfully around him, saw the diners at the other tables, couples dancing on the stone-slab floor, the silk shirts and snap brims of the Trinidadian band members , the colored lanterns swaying in the breeze that trickled through the restaurant.

  ‘Why call us?’ he asked. ‘There must be more than that.’

  ‘There is,’ Gerhardt said. ‘There’s something else… and it’s right up your street.’ He leaned farther across the table, his chin propped up in his hands, his green eyes diffused in the yellow light, the white arch behind him. ‘There’s an English film crew here,’ he said. ‘They’re making a movie about Captain Cook. Now the morning after the incident I was talking to their stills photographer, a young guy who was looking pretty stunned. He knew I worked for the government, that I was some kind of scientist, so he thought I was the best man to talk to. Apparently, the night before – about the same time I was having my little experience in my room – he had been down on the beach trying to take some low-speed shots in the moonlight. He was taking some pictures of the movie’s replica of Captain Cook’s ship, the Endeavour, and he managed to shoot one roll in color. Now, the next morning, when he developed that film in his room, he was startled to see what appeared to be a very large, blurred, milky-white, disk-shaped object hovering in the night sky above the boat. What really stunned him about this was his conviction that at no time during the shooting of those pictures had he seen anything but stars in that sky. He was absolutely convinced of this. He was willing to swear to it. And yet that huge diskshaped object was in nine of his thirty-six pictures, a little higher up in each single picture, finally cut off by the top of the frame in the very last one.’

  Stanford glanced over the wall, saw the dark sea and sky, the stars glittering above the gliding moon, a few clouds drifting languidly. He then looked at Gerhardt’s eyes, recalled the girl on the porch, remembered the lights in the sky and felt a chill passing through him.

  ‘Any estimation of size?’ Epstein asked.

  ‘Pretty rough,’ Gerhardt said. ‘Judging by the land behind it, and by the boat just below it, we both thought it was at least a hundred feet wide – but we couldn’t be sure of that.’

  ‘What was the duration between each of the pictures?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Anything else in the photographs?’

  ‘No. There was just a sort of glowing around the disk. The disk itself was quite blurred.’

  Stanford knew what was coming. He looked directly at Epstein. The restaurant behind Epstein was busy and romantically lit. The lanterns glowed with different colors, candles flickered on all the tables, and the musicians on the small stage were excited, sweating over their instruments. The whole scene was enchanting, was too good to be true, so Stanford turned his gaze back upon Epstein, knowing what he would say.

  ‘We’ll have to stay,’ Epstein said. ‘I think we should hang around here for a while. I seriously doubt that anything else will happen, but you just never know. I also want to talk to that photographer. I want copies of all his pictures. I want the photographer to take me down to the beach and show me just where he was standing when he took those photos. So I guess we’ll just have to stay on.’

  Gerhardt slumped into his chair, spread his hands and shook his head, then leaned forward again and looked right at Epstein, his green eyes very bright.

  ‘That’s the whole point,’ he said, almost whispering. ‘The photographer’s vanished.’

  The rain started just before midnight, splashing in thick drops on the verandah outside Stanford’s room and making him open his eyes. There was a distant clap of thunder. The verandah doors rattled. Stanford cursed and glanced around the silent room and saw the white walls in darkness.

  The thunder rumbled again. The rain fell more heavily. The doors rattled and Stanford stared at them, feeling strangely uneasy. The doors were still closed. The shutters revealed no moonlight. The thunder rumbled and the doors shook and rattled while the rain poured down heavily. Stanford thought he heard the sea, a muffled sound far below, the waves rushing in and washing over the rocks and then poured back out again. It was an unexpected sound; he hadn’t anticipated such weather. He closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep and thought again of the girl.

  Stanford groaned aloud. He opened his eyes to see the ceiling. There was a wooden fan spinning above his head, casting cool air down upon him. He heard the rain on the verandah, falling even har
der now. The thunder rumbled and the double doors rattled as if being pushed open. Stanford felt strangely nervous, unreal, disorientated, trying to sleep and thinking only of the girl… and of Gerhardt’s green eyes. ‘Godammit,’ he muttered.

  He closed his eyes and saw the girl. Her luminous gaze drew him in. He saw the thumb between her lips, the breasts thrusting against her dress, the triangle of her thighs and shadowed crotch, her belly pressed to the windowsill. Stanford felt himself hardening. He saw Gerhardt’s green eyes, filled with fear and an odd elation, and he cursed and sat up on the bed and shook his head in despair.

  The room was very dark. No moonlight came through the shutters. Stanford wondered what was happening, though of Gerhardt’s fearful calm, then thought of the girl on the porch and of her empty, revealing gaze. She had Gerhardt had something in common: an unnatural calm, a sheltered secret; they had both seemed like people not quite real, couched in awed expectation. What had they both experienced? What dreams did their eyes conceal? Stanford sat up very straight and stared around him, seeing white walls in darkness. Suddenly, he felt frightened. He hadn’t felt that before. The thunder rumbled and the double doors rattled as if being pushed open. Stanford shook his head disgustedly, stroked his own face, rubbed his eyes, than reached out and switched on the light and sat back with a sigh.

  Then he heard the footsteps. They were advancing toward the main door of the room. He stiffened as if he had been stung, and just looked straight ahead. The footsteps stopped outside the door. He felt his throat drying. He held his breath and kept looking at the door and tried to hold his fear down.

  ‘Stanford?’ Knuckles hammered on the door. ‘Are you still awake?’

  Stanford exhaled his breath, took it in again, sighed again, leaning his head back on the pillow and feeling very relieved.

  ‘Yes, Epstein, I’m awake.’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Why not?’

  The door opened and Epstein entered.