Moon Dreams
Page 24
Desert Rat
Charles Martin Murdoch, known to those few people he talked to these days as Chuck, Old Chuck or that old desert rat didn’t like not understanding what was going on anywhere in the area of the world he had mentally designated as home. So he was clambering down the rock face towards a watch point with his rucksack full of gear.
CM, as he had been known in his younger years, had been, was, an accountant. He’d also been a rock climber, a rock collector and outdoorsman. When the accounting firm he’d dedicated his career to had imploded in scandal leaving him with no job and no realistic chance for a future career, he had reinvented himself as a sort of new age hermit. He lived quite comfortably on the lonely old ranch he had bought many years before as an investment.
He hadn’t liked it when the powers that be had decided to play God in the Primus Range. He had in fact spent a fair amount of time and money trying to discredit the plan, though always by proxy, never letting his own name or situation be known. But the project had been proposed many years before he had settled here, and like many projects of its kind, the Primus Range Canal project had developed a life of its own.
Chuck had never given up easily, but these days he no longer objected to the project. He didn’t want Primus Junction to die and die it would unless the project was a success so now he was a sort of corporeal conscience for the canal project and something was very wrong with it.
The main channel and the distribution network in New Valley seemed fine but secondary projects like the hydropower station at the head of the Canal, the main pumping station for New Town, and the big artificial wetlands and lake that were to be part of the New Town’s attraction, were at best far behind schedule, at worst total shams.
The camera in his rucksack held pictures of the interior of what was called the generator hall at the Lake of the Sky. But there was almost literally nothing in the hall at all. The structure was little more than a shell and would require immense and expensive modification to take any real equipment. He had similar pictures from the site at New Town.
Chuck had been doing a lot of research on AI, his suspicion was that the company was very nearly bankrupt and almost unbelievably, all those billions seemed somehow to touch Aristide Industries advanced development group, and the Hollow. He wanted to know what was happening at Ship Plateau, whatever was going on at the Hollow was tied to the Canal, but how was beyond him.
At last he got to the hidden ledge he had been heading for and slipped off his rucksack. He got out his camera, with its excellent low light optics and its tripod. He fiddled with its set up for a while, finally settling on a view that caught most of Ship Plateau and some of the sky above it. In the intensified image the natural hollow that creased most of the top of the Plateau cast an evil blue glow skyward. He could even see shadows moving in that glow, though nothing that he could understand.
With a grunt he remembered the other item he had brought. A bundle of sticks connected by cloth. A couple of pulls and twists and it expanded into a tripod mounted directional microphone, a big dark sound reflector with a microphone at its focal point. Chuck used some rocks to hold down the lightweight structure’s feet and connected the cable to the microphone jack on the camera.
He settled down to wait with thermoses of coffee and stew, his old HP tablet set up as a monitor so he could lean back against the rock and watch what was going on. He fiddled with the audio for a while, in the end he could hear machine noises and other things but distorted beyond any understanding.
It was almost two o’clock and he was dozing when a new sound jerked him awake. A diesel sound, then an odd ringing note with a basso undertone, alien, eerie, and lonely, as the other noises from the Hollow had ceased. The lights in the hollow had gone out, the image on the tablet showed detail that he could not see by himself but there was no longer that extra glow emanating from the hollow.
The diesel sound stopped and the other sound grew louder and something rose out of the hollow. At first it was quite slow but it accelerated up and out of view. Chuck lurched, knocking the microphone over and the monitor program cut off its squawk of protest. Chuck picked up the camera assembly and swung it up. He was lucky, somehow his instincts brought the target into view almost as if by magic, and then he lost it; found the blot, lost it again, found it. He stood with the camera in his hands panning it up as the blot rose and diminished. The zoom function worked but his hands were shaking and the target was small and indistinct, the shape flicked back and forth across the screen a few more times and then he lost it for good.
He put the camera down and went back to the table to replay the scene. As he did he heard the sound again; he spun, picked up the camera and caught the shape, or another one, falling out of sky. Darker than the sky, darker than the ground, the geometric blot fell unhurriedly out of the sky. Even without the microphone he could hear it faintly on the breeze. Then it was gone.
Chuck let the camera down and looked up; the Hollows light came back on. And he could hear faint, but ordinary noises again.
What had he seen? The stories about UFO’s came back to him and they were no longer incredible. But they did not explain the rest of his observations. The only question he had about that was - were they loading or unloading? His suspicion was loading, but loading what, and for where?
He stood there for a long time. A sound from nearby surprised him. In the darkness of deepest night he could just make out bulky shapes moving towards him. Human shapes with misshapen heads.
“Mr. Malcolm, you really should have minded your own business.” The voice in the dark was clinical.
Chuck backed away from the advancing shapes, “Who are you…No…No…I know who you are, why you’re here. This is public land and I’m perfectly within my rights to be here. I’m even within my rights to take pictures of whatever I damn well want to.”
“Mr. Malcolm, please don’t make this difficult, your little hidey hole was a lot harder to find than we anticipated, it’s late and I’m tired. Please just come along quietly.”
Chuck backed away, shaking his head, his chest tight, his hands shaking, the black shapes followed, “No.”
“Watch out Mr. Malcolm!” The calm voice from the lead shape was suddenly tense, “You’re getting close to the edge!”
Chuck wasn’t listening; he was tired, confused, frightened, he took another step back. The lead shape lunged forward, hands outstretched, Chuck jerked back ‘stupid move CM’ a tiny part of his mind dispassionately opined as he lurched back into space.
The dark figure’s hand was out, grasping, wanting to help, Chuck’s wind milling arms almost made contact. But only almost. One of the dark figures companions yelled, in a woman’s voice, “Tom, don’t, you’ll go over with the old fool.”
Pitching out and away Chuck cried out as he was swallowed by the darkness.