by Dean Koontz
Spencer woke when the sun was above the eastern mountains. The light was coppery, and long morning shadows spilled westward across the badlands from every thrust of rock and impertinence of gnarled vegetation.
His vision wasn’t blurred. The sun no longer stung his eyes.
Out at the edge of the shade that was provided by the tarp, Valerie sat on the ground, her back to him. She was bent to a task that he couldn’t see.
Rocky was sitting at Valerie’s side, his back also to Spencer.
An engine was idling. Spencer had the strength to lift his head and turn toward the sound. The Range Rover. Behind him, deeper in the tarp-covered niche. An orange utility cord led from the open driver’s door of the Rover to Valerie.
Spencer felt dreadful, but he was grateful for the improvement in his condition since his most recent bout of consciousness. His skull no longer seemed about to explode; his headache was down to a dull thump over his right eye. Dry mouth. Chapped lips. But his throat wasn’t hot and achy anymore.
The morning was genuinely warm. The heat wasn’t from a fever, because his forehead felt cool. He threw back the blanket.
He yawned, stretched—and groaned. His muscles ached, but after the battering he had taken, that was to be expected.
Alerted by Spencer’s groan, Rocky hurried to him. The mutt was grinning, trembling, whipping his tail from side to side, in a frenzy of delight to see his master awake.
Spencer endured an enthusiastic face licking before he managed to get a grip on the dog’s collar and hold him at tongue’s length.
Looking over her shoulder, Valerie said, “Good morning.”
She was as lovely in the early sun as she had been in lamplight.
He almost repeated that sentiment aloud but was disconcerted by a dim memory of having said too much already, when he had been out of his head. He suspected himself not merely of having revealed secrets that he would rather have kept but of having been artlessly candid about his feelings for her, as ingenuous as an infatuated puppy.
As he sat up, denying the dog another lick at his face, Spencer said, “No offense, pal, but you stink something fierce.”
He got to his knees, rose to his feet, and swayed for a moment.
“Dizzy?” Valerie asked.
“No. That’s gone.”
“Good. I think you had a bad concussion. I’m no doctor—as you made clear. But I’ve got some reference books with me.”
“Just a little weak now. Hungry. Starving, in fact.”
“That’s a good sign, I think.”
Now that Rocky was no longer in his face, Spencer realized that the dog didn’t stink. He himself was the offending party: the wet-mud fragrance of the river, the sourness of several fever sweats.
Valerie returned to her work.
Being careful to stay upwind of her, and trying not to let the playful mutt trip him, Spencer shuffled to the edge of the shaded enclosure to see what the woman was doing.
A computer sat on a black plastic mat on the ground. It wasn’t a laptop but a full PC with a MasterPiece surge protector between the logic unit and the color monitor. The keyboard was on her lap.
It was remarkable to see such an elaborate high-tech workstation plunked down in the middle of a primitive landscape that had remained largely unchanged for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years.
“How many megabytes?” he asked.
“Not mega. Giga. Ten gigabytes.”
“You need all that?”
“Some of the programs I use are pretty damn complex. They fill up a lot of hard disk.”
The orange electrical cord from the Rover was plugged into the logic unit. Another orange cord led from the back of the logic unit to a peculiar device sitting in the sunlight ten feet beyond the shade line of their tarp-covered hideaway: It looked like an inverted Frisbee with a flared rather than inward-curling rim; underneath, at its center, it was fixed to a ball joint, which was in turn fixed to a four-inch flexible black metal arm, which disappeared into a gray box approximately a foot square and four inches deep.
Busy at the keyboard, Valerie answered his question before he could ask it. “Satellite up-link.”
“You talking to aliens?” he asked, only half joking.
“Right now, to the dee-oh-dee computer,” she said, pausing to study the data that scrolled up the screen.
“Dee-oh-dee?” he wondered.
“Department of Defense.”
DOD.
He squatted on his haunches. “Are you a government agent?”
“I didn’t say I was talking to the DOD computer with the DOD’s permission. Or knowledge, for that matter. I up-linked to a phone-company satellite, accessed one of their lines reserved for systems testing, called in to the DOD deep computer in Arlington, Virginia.”
“Deep,” he mused.
“Heavily secured.”
“I bet that’s not a number you got from directory assistance.”
“Phone number’s not the hardest part. It’s more difficult to get the operating codes that let you use their system once you’re into it. Without them, being able to make the connection wouldn’t matter.”
“And you have those codes?”
“I’ve had full access to DOD for fourteen months.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard again. “Hardest to get is the access code to the program with which they periodically change all the other access codes. But if you don’t have that sucker, you can’t stay current unless they send you a new invitation every once in a while.”
“So fourteen months ago, you just happened to find all these numbers and whatnot scrawled on a rest room wall?”
“Three people I loved gave their lives for those codes.”
That response, though delivered in no graver a tone of voice than anything else Valerie had said, carried an emotional weight that left Spencer silent and pondering for a while.
A foot-long lizard—mostly brown, flecked with black and gold—slithered from under a nearby rock into the sunshine and scampered across the warm sand. When it saw Valerie, it froze and watched her. Its silver-and-green eyes were protuberant, with pebbly lids.
Rocky saw the lizard too. He retreated behind his master.
Spencer found himself smiling at the reptile, although he was not sure why he should be so pleased by its sudden appearance. Then he realized that he was unconsciously fingering the carved soapstone medallion that hung against his chest, and he understood. Louis Lee. Pheasants and dragons. Prosperity and long life.
Three people I loved gave their lives for those codes.
Spencer’s smile faded. To Valerie, he said, “What are you?”
Without looking up from the display screen, she said, “You mean, am I an international terrorist or a good patriotic American?”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it like that.”
Instead of answering him, she said, “Over the past five days, I tried to learn what I could about you. Not very damn much. You’ve just about erased yourself from official existence. So I think I’ve got a right to ask the same question: What are you?”
He shrugged. “Just someone who values his privacy.”
“Sure. And what I am is a concerned and interested citizen—not a whole lot different from you.”
“Except I don’t know how to get into DOD.”
“You fiddled with your military records.”
“That’s an easy-access database compared with the big muddy you’re wading in right now. What the hell are you looking for?”
“The DOD tracks every satellite in orbit: civilian, government, military—both domestic and foreign. I’m one-stop shopping for all the satellites with the surveillance capabilities to look down into this little corner of the world and find us if we go out and about.”
“I thought that was part of a dream,” he said uneasily, “that talk about eyes in the sky.”
“You’d be surprised what’s up there. ‘Surprised’ is one word. As for surveillance, there are probably
two to six satellites with that capability in orbit over the western and southwestern states.”
Rattled, he said, “What happens when you identify them?”
“The DOD will have their access codes. I’ll use those to up-link to each satellite, poke around in its current programs, and see if it’s looking for us.”
“This awesome lady here pokes around in satellites,” he said to Rocky, but the dog seemed less impressed than his master was, as if canines had been up to similar shenanigans for ages. To Valerie, Spencer said, “I don’t think the word ‘hacker’ is adequate for you.”
“So…what did they call people like me when you were on that computer-crime task force?”
“I don’t think we even conceived there were people like you.”
“Well, we’re here.”
“They’d really hunt us with satellites?” he asked doubtfully. “I mean, we’re not that important—are we?”
“They think I am. And you’ve got them totally confused. They can’t figure out how the hell you fit in. Until they get an idea what you’re all about, they’ll figure you’re as dangerous to them as I am—maybe more so. The unknown—that’s you, from their viewpoint—is always more frightening than the known.”
He mulled that over. “Who’re these people you’re talking about?”
“Maybe you’re safer if you don’t know.”
Spencer opened his mouth to respond, then held his silence. He didn’t want to argue. Not yet, anyway. First, he needed to clean up and get something to eat.
Without pausing in her work, Valerie explained that plastic jugs of bottled water, a basin, liquid soap, sponges, and a clean towel were just inside the Rover’s tailgate. “Don’t use a lot of water. It’s our drinking supply if we have to be out here a few more days.”
Rocky followed his master to the truck, glancing back nervously at the lizard in the sun.
Spencer discovered that Valerie had salvaged his belongings from the Explorer. He was able to shave and change into clean clothes, in addition to taking a sponge bath. He felt refreshed, and he could no longer smell his own body odor. He couldn’t get his hair quite as clean as he would have liked, however, because his scalp was tender, not just around the sutured laceration but across the entire crown of his head.
The Rover was a truck-style station wagon, like the Explorer, and it was packed solid with gear and supplies from the tailgate to within two feet of the front seats. The food was just where a well-organized person would stow it: in boxes and coolers immediately behind the two-foot clear space, easily accessible from either the driver’s or passenger’s seat.
Most of the provisions were canned and bottled, except for boxes of crackers. Because Spencer was too hungry to take the time to cook, he selected two small tins of Vienna sausages, two snack-size packets of cheese crackers, and a single-serving lunch-box can of pears.
In one of the Styrofoam coolers, also within easy reach of the front seats, he found weapons. A SIG 9mm pistol. A Micro Uzi that appeared to have been illegally converted for full automatic fire. There were spare magazines of ammunition for both.
Spencer stared at the weapons, then turned to look through the windshield at the woman sitting with her computer, twenty feet away.
That Valerie was skilled at many things, Spencer had no doubt. She seemed so well prepared for every contingency that she could serve as the paradigm not only for all Girl Scouts but for doomsday survivalists. She was clever, intelligent, funny, daring, courageous, and easy to look at in lamplight, in sunlight, in any light at all. Undoubtedly she was also practiced in the use of both the pistol and the submachine gun, because otherwise she was too practical to be in possession of them: She simply wouldn’t waste space on tools that she couldn’t use, and she wouldn’t risk the penalties for possession of a fully automatic Uzi unless she was able—and willing—to fire it.
Spencer wondered if she had ever been forced to shoot at another human being. He hoped not. And he hoped that she would never be driven to such an extreme. Sadly, however, life seemed to be handing her nothing but extremes.
He opened a tin of sausages with the ring tab on top. Resisting an urge to wolf down the contents in a single great mouthful, he ate one of the miniature frankfurters, then another. Nothing had ever tasted half as good. He popped the third in his mouth as he returned to Valerie.
Rocky danced and whimpered at his side, begging for his share.
“Mine,” Spencer said.
Though he hunkered down beside Valerie, he didn’t speak to her. She seemed especially focused on the cryptic data that filled the display screen.
The lizard was in the sun, alert and poised to flee, at the same spot where it had been almost half an hour earlier. Tiny dinosaur.
Spencer opened a second can of sausages, shared two with the dog, and was just finishing the last of the rest when Valerie jerked in surprise.
She gasped. “Oh, shit!”
The lizard vanished under the rock from which it had appeared.
Spencer glimpsed a word flashing on the display screen: LOCKON.
Valerie hit the power switch on the logic unit.
Just before the screen went dead, Spencer saw two more words flash under the first: TRACE BACK.
Valerie exploded to her feet, yanked both utility-cord plugs from the computer, and sprinted into the sun, to the microwave dish. “Load everything into the Rover!”
Getting to his feet, Spencer said, “What’s happening?”
“They’re using an EPA satellite.” She had already retrieved the microwave dish and had turned toward him. “And they’re running some sort of weird damned security program. Locks onto any invasive signal and traces back.” Hurrying past him, she said, “Help me pack. Move, damn it, move!”
He balanced the keyboard on top of the monitor and picked up the entire workstation, including the rubber mat beneath it. Following Valerie to the Rover, his bruised muscles protesting at the demand for haste, he said, “They found us?”
“Bastards!” she fumed.
“Maybe you switched off in time.”
“No.”
“How can they be sure it’s us?”
“They’ll know.”
“It was just a microwave signal, no fingerprints on it.”
“They’re coming,” she insisted.
Sunday night, their third night together, Eve Jammer and Roy Miro had begun their passionate but contact-free lovemaking earlier in the evening than they had done previously. Therefore, although that session was the longest and most ardent to date, they concluded before midnight. Thereafter, they lay chastely side by side on her bed, in the soft blue glow of indirect neon, each of them guarded by the loving eyes of the other’s reflection in the ceiling mirror. Eve was as naked as the day that she’d slipped into the world, and Roy was fully clothed. In time they enjoyed a deep and restful sleep.
Because he had brought an overnight bag, Roy was able to get ready for work in the morning without returning to his hotel suite on the Strip. He showered in the guest bath, rather than in Eve’s, for he had no desire to undress and reveal his many imperfections, from his stubby toes to his knobby knees, to his paunch, to the spray of freckles and the two moles on his chest. Besides, neither of them wanted to follow the other’s session in any shower stall. If he were to stand on tiles wet with her bathwater or vice versa…well, in a subtle but disturbing way, that act would violate the satisfyingly dry relationship, free of fluid exchanges, which they had established and on which they thrived.
He supposed some people would think them mad. But anyone who was truly in love would understand.
With no need to go to the hotel, Roy arrived at the satellite-communications room early Monday. When he walked through the door, he knew that something exciting had transpired only moments before. Several people were gathered down front, gazing up at the wall display, and the buzz of conversation had a positive sound.
Ken Hyckman, the morning duty officer, was smiling broadly.
Clearly eager to be the first to impart the good news, he waved at Roy to come down to the U-shaped control console.
Hyckman was a tall, blandly handsome, blown-dry type. He looked as if he had joined the agency following an attempt at a career as a TV news anchorman.
According to Eve, Hyckman had made several passes at her, but she had put a chill on him each time. If Roy had thought that Ken Hyckman was in any way a threat to Eve, he would have blown the bastard’s head off right there, and to hell with the consequences. He found considerable peace of mind, however, in the knowledge that he had fallen in love with a woman who could pretty much take care of herself.
“We found them!” Hyckman announced as Roy approached him at the control console. “She up-linked to Earthguard to see if we were using it for satellite surveillance.”
“How do you know it’s her?”
“It’s her style.”
“Admittedly, she’s a bold one,” Roy said. “But I hope you’ve got more to go on than sheer instinct.”
“Well, hell, the up-link was from the middle of nowhere. Who else would it be?” Hyckman asked, pointing at the wall.
The orbital view currently on display was a simple, enhanced, telescopic look-down that included the southern halves of Nevada and Utah, plus the northern third of Arizona. Las Vegas was in the lower left corner. The three red and two white rings of a small, flashing bull’s-eye marked the remote position from which the up-link had been initiated.
Hyckman said, “One hundred and fifteen miles north-northeast of Vegas, in desert flats northeast of Pahroc Summit and northwest of Oak Springs Summit. Middle of nowhere, like I told you.”
“It’s an EPA satellite we’re using,” Roy reminded him. “Could have been an EPA employee trying to up-link to get an aerial view of his work site beamed down to a computer there. Or a spectrographic analysis of the terrain. Or a hundred other things.”