by Stephen Cox
‘I can’t discuss that,’ Anderson said at last, ignoring Pfeiffer’s glowering.
Maybe it was a trap: the FBI would let them all go and be on the watch for them to incriminate themselves.
Pfeiffer was looking at Molly, rather oddly.
‘Let me show you out,’ Gene said.
Without any word, Pfeiffer turned and left.
Molly counted to ten, and then did it again, and again. Had they left anyone? She checked the ground floor, then went up the stairs two at a time. Is the house really empty? We must never talk about Cory on the phone. Three steps up that stupid attic ladder it suddenly struck her: Cory hadn’t been hiding there at all.
She hurried to their bedroom, where the dogs had been acting up, and stood in the doorway. Where was he? ‘Cory, it’s me,’ she whispered, and the next second, Cory appeared in the closet. To her alarm, the helmet was in his lap. She took him in her arms and carried him to the bed, hugging him.
‘Clever to hide,’ she said. ‘The bad men have gone. But we need to be careful: always keep watching for them, okay?’
‘Bad Men gone,’ he agreed. ‘Cory hiiiiide. What-called?’ He made an excellent little bark.
‘Dogs, Cory. The bad men had dogs. Like the ones in the book.’
‘Dogs like Cory. Dogs freeennds.’
That hug lasted for ever and he showed no signs of wanting it to end.
She’d never again hear a knock at the door without wondering if it was someone come to take Cory away.
Footsteps sounded in the hall and Gene appeared at the bedroom door. ‘That Pfeiffer is an odd guy,’ he said.
‘You’re telling me. What a reptile.’
‘What rep-tile?’ asked Cory.
‘You won’t guess what he said to me,’ Gene went on. ‘He told me he guessed male doctors don’t get what it’s like for a woman to lose a baby! Honestly! He said you should find a female doctor – a psychiatrist.’
‘Oh, he’d love to find someone to spy on me,’ she said, feeling heat in her cheeks. ‘That little skunk.’ He couldn’t have been genuine, surely. But purple ears were listening; she had to be careful.
‘Well, maybe.’ Gene didn’t look convinced. ‘You do crazy very well, Molly: cold, quiet and nuts.’
‘Nuts enough to marry you,’ she said.
Cory sneezed. It was quite a show, tentacles writhing all over the place, and Molly jumped up. ‘Come on you: let’s get you washed up, shall we?’ She got him disinfected and back in the clean room, but it looked like Earth wasn’t going to kill Cory just yet.
*
Later that day, in the kitchen, Molly started plotting. Lying to the authorities didn’t trouble her one bit, but lying to her friends did – but what choice did she have? Off work again, and soldiers at the house for hours? Janice and Diane would need a story. Since the Meteor, there’d been endless notes and calls, but she’d played tired, managing a quick coffee here and there to keep things more or less under control. Now she was home, though, Janice would be popping over, expecting to stay all afternoon, searching the refrigerator or the cupboards for snacks, generally treating the place as her own, just like normal. She’d likely bring the twins, who’d be halfway around the house before you’d finished turning your back.
Diane’s steely gaze could tell almost instantly if Gene was smoking or if Molly was drinking; Molly sometimes thought her friend even knew when the Myers weren’t sharing the double bed.
‘Put them off – go to theirs,’ Gene suggested. ‘I like your friends, I really do, but you have to admit, they’re nosy as hell.’
She sighed. Men don’t understand. Not asking them over would be a red flag. She’d need to play it just right. So she phoned and asked them to tea, the first time since Meteor Day. Gene would take himself upstairs.
‘Not Bad Men?’ said Cory.
She kissed his ear. ‘No, they are my friends: but we can’t tell them about you. Cory, it’s really important you stay hidden. Do you understand?’ She didn’t think he did.
‘O-kay.’
‘And in the attic, not the bedroom. And no sneaking around, yes? We’ll put the books there, ready, shall we?’
‘O-kay.’
And when Diane and Janice came to the door, eager for the story, Molly hugged them both and felt the tears come, tears of relief, and fear for the future.
‘Molly, they brought dogs and everything!’ Janice said, her voice shocked. ‘It’s like Russia!’
‘Oh, it was a muddle,’ Molly started. She offered shop cake and lied calmly, ‘Such a nonsense! They’re so paranoid about the radiation, they completely over-reacted. Bad enough they’ve fenced off Two Mile Lake, but I guess it’s not safe to fish in or swim in anymore. Anyway’ – she took Janice by one hand and Diane by the other – ‘so . . .’
She paused and took a deep breath. ‘So, another child died, on Meteor Day, this sweet little boy . . . it was from the radiation. I thought I could take it, you know? I thought I—’
Her friends hugged her again as she admitted, ‘It’s too much. I’m leaving work, just for a while.’
Kindness ran so deep in them. Diane offered wise words from her own grief; Janice, her best friend, found something strengthening to say and Molly felt so ashamed. They were so generous to her. She could ask them anything – and here she was, lying to them.
Diane looked at her softly. ‘How are you feeling, Molly? How well are you?’ That was their code.
She smiled wryly. ‘I’m still sober, at least, but it’s real hard. I’m going to find a new doctor.’ Another lie.
‘And how’s Gene doing?’ asked Diane. That was code too.
‘Oh, we’re getting along okay, but it’s been tough for him. He should maybe go for a beer with Roy.’ She paused, then took their hands in hers. ‘Listen, I need something from you. Just sometimes, can we go out? To Francine’s, or for a walk, or into Bradleyburg. I feel so trapped – and it’s easier to talk somewhere else . . .’
It would be easier to hide Cory if her friends were never in the house. And she missed them both. She wouldn’t cut them out of her life, but her lies meant their friendship would never be the same.
‘Of course!’ they both said, their eyes full of compassion. ‘Of course.’
Molly felt like the worst person in the world. She knew she could tell them, but . . . Janice would tell Roy, and he was a good husband, a decent, gentle father, an honest and upright man, but he trusted the President and the FBI; he would be torn apart by hiding Cory. And Diane’s sister was often at her house, and the minister was a frequent visitor. And their children . . . Three people can keep a secret if two are dead.
Cory came first – and at least this way she could stay friends, go out with them, even if she did have to live as mad Molly, the almost-recluse, most of the time.
Only after they were gone did Molly breathe easily. She shut the front door and leaned her head against it for a moment. If she wanted to keep Cory safe, lying to her friends was the only thing she could do.
She turned to see Cory in the helmet coming down the stairs. He must have been on the landing, listening.
‘What-do?’ he said, clinging to the banister rail.
And she breathed out all the worry and all the futures she couldn’t see. ‘So many exciting things, Cory. We’ll do lessons and games. I’ll see if I can take you into the garden.’
‘No helmet now. Cory fine.’
He couldn’t know it was safe; she saw endless arguments ahead of them. Infection control still mattered, even if he’d been exposed, at least until they knew more. ‘And in a day or two, I might take you out in the car. Won’t that be exciting?’
‘Swim-swim-swim!’
When she slept in the hospital, he’d slipped into her dreams and she’d felt his pleasure at being in the water. Jarman’s house had a swimming poo
l, but she dared not take Cory there, not now, in case the place was being watched . . . The waterhole down in the meadow was often green with scum, which was just begging for him to catch some disease.
‘In time, Cory,’ she prevaricated, ‘in time.’ There were so many dangers – and yet so much else to see and do, as long as they were careful.
‘Let’s put some music on the radio and I’ll teach you an Earth dance.’
Her bare hand touched his ear. No, she thought, we can only keep Cory safe if we keep him a secret.
CHAPTER 11
Under the lake
Dr Pfeiffer drove up the familiar road into the sunlight-dappled woods. The old sign with a jolly cartoon of a boat on water said Two Mile Lake, 1½ miles. The new, brash, much larger sign, said US ARMY, DANGER, RESTRICTED, NO THROUGH ROAD.
Pfeiffer had watched the Engineering Corp toiling day and night under the floodlights running off those stinking diesel generators, turning the forest into a place of barked orders, whining saws, clanging poles and rumbling earth-moving equipment. Trucks with materials and men had arrived throughout the night, so no one got any sleep. Of course, it was no intellectual achievement, but he had to admire the brute efficiency of the army’s plan.
The impact crater to the east was impressive: he had walked through trees turned to fallen stalks of charcoal to a textbook crater as big as a park, littered with lumps of twisted space-iron the size of houses. But he had little interest in the impact crater, and the Meteor itself was notable purely for its size.
What mattered to Dr Pfeiffer was the lake and what hid within it.
Now he was driving parallel to the double fence topped with barbed wire and strung with alarms. The signs grew more threatening:
ARREST, ARMED SOLDIERS, FEDERAL LAW!
and
☢ WARNING: RADIOACTIVITY ☢
Fourteen miles of fence, and most weeks some joker tried to get in. And there was a gatehouse, thirty yards from the gate proper, an army truck waiting on the other side so no one could try to squeeze round it.
An armed soldier came out while the guards in the tower raised binoculars to stare at him. The soldier saluted him, which pleased Pfeiffer, although he doubted the camp commander would be so happy.
‘Dr Pfeiffer,’ the soldier said, starting to raise the pole.
‘You should check my pass,’ Pfeiffer said. ‘I might be an imposter.’
So the man checked the licence plate of the car against the list and Dr Pfeiffer’s pass photo against the real man. Pfeiffer was not displeased that the man was so quick to obey him, but still, security was security. He wouldn’t put it past the Soviets to be able to find a look-alike.
Two Mile Lake hid the most precious secret in the country, a truth hidden from all but the most senior officers. The Ship. Even the existence of the alien spacecraft could not be referred to in unscrambled communications.
As the gate opened, Pfeiffer took the radioactive safety monitor from his pocket and pinned it to his lapel. His heart rate was rising: he was seeking an audience with an oracle from another world – and whatever was lurking deep in the water could reason and argue and threaten with the best of them. Pfeiffer had never said so aloud, but he thought of it as alive.
The lake glinted gold, but its depths were hidden. All the wooden cabins round the shore had been requisitioned by the army, but for a moment, the view made him remember holidays with his daughters; they’d always enjoyed summers at the cabin. He missed them.
The radioactivity story was true: the Ship was throwing off powerful radiation. The water mitigated the danger, but no one slept anyway near it. The engineers had blocked the lake outflow to protect the water table. Tents and pre-fab army cabins clustered by the shore of the lake, a sort of squatters’ camp, extraordinarily poor conditions for the scientists’ important work. He’d blown up at some functionary trying to cut costs, shouting, ‘I can’t work in a shed,’ and from that day, all the scientists called the camp the Shed.
Pfeiffer parked his car and walked the rest of the way. Dr Haldeman came out to meet him. The top NASA scientist was tall and lean. He was Pfeiffer’s age and yet he ran three miles in the forest every morning and enjoyed it. Pfeiffer loathed that type of silver-spooned Anglo-Saxon Protestant hearty, but Haldeman met his exacting test for brilliance, so they had formed a frigid and effective alliance, united by the overriding importance of stopping the army putting one of their mediocre scientist-bureaucrats in charge.
‘Dr Pfeiffer.’
‘Dr Haldeman. Are we ready to go?’
‘Yes, we got the apparatus to the end of the jetty. The Ship wasn’t happy.’
The wooden jetty had once been a diving board for summer holiday-goers and, in cooler seasons, a place to fish from. Now the fish were dying and today Dr Haldeman had put machines on it so they could spy on the Ship, the craft from the stars whose first words, over ordinary radio, had been, ‘I am damaged and may explode. Withdraw to a distance of at least two miles.’
The main room was crammed with equipment, glowing screens and dials, and shirt-sleeved scientists. There was the microphone, through which they now spoke securely, and a man with a massive reel-to-reel tape recorder sat by the speaker every minute of the day, in case the Ship had anything to say. Most days it didn’t.
‘Ship, this is Dr Pfeiffer and Dr Haldeman.’
They waited. Pfeiffer put his hand over the microphone. ‘So, if it emits muons . . .’
‘. . . then it isn’t powered by nuclear fission. It’s a wholly unknown energy source,’ Haldeman said, rubbing his hands. ‘Or maybe exotic new particles?’
‘This is the Ship. What is the purpose of the devices on the jetty?’ The vessel’s most banal comments still made Pfeiffer tingle. The Ship spoke in a perfect, neutral, unemotional Mid-Western English. Only the intonation was sometimes a little odd. It clearly knew speech had to be modulated to sound normal; it just didn’t always get it right.
‘Ship, good afternoon,’ Pfeiffer responded. ‘We are concerned about the radiation you emit. We need to monitor it.’
‘It would be safest to withdraw to a greater distance.’
‘Are we interfering with your repairs?’ That was Haldeman; they still needed to ascertain whether the Ship could repair itself.
The Ship would have made a good poker player. It answered many questions with silence. It made noises underwater; there were sometimes lights. The radioactivity fluctuated. The Ship was not inert.
‘If the devices are intended to interfere with me, I will destroy them. Even your technology allows you to assess the radiation risk from the shore. Your story is implausible. Remove the devices.’
Haldeman was scribbling on a pad. Pfeiffer decoded the writing. Ask how does it ‘see’ the devices. Good question, and exactly the sort it never answered.
‘Are our monitors causing you any inconvenience?’
‘Your presence causes me inconvenience. Please leave. I can contact you if I require it.’
‘This is our planet,’ Pfeiffer said. ‘We need a better reason to leave our own lake-side.’
‘Will you remove these devices?’ the Ship said.
Pfeiffer glanced at Haldeman, who shook his head.
‘No,’ Pfeiffer said.
There was silence for a count of four or five seconds, then the walls of the hut shook as a dull boom emanated from the direction of the lake. The light from the lake-facing window changed, dirty water slashed across the window and something large bounced off the corrugated roof.
Red lights flickered wildly all around the room, as the growl of an unhappy Geiger counter started. The man monitoring it started reading out figures, a tremor in his voice.
Everyone crowded around the window. Pfeiffer, the furthest away and the shortest, couldn’t see what was happening.
‘It blew up the jetty,’ someone said.
Pfeiffer pushed his way to the front to see the surface of the lake was roiling like boiling coffee. Pieces of blackened wood floated there, and yet more dead fish.
‘Keep an eye on the radiation levels. Let’s not take any risks,’ Pfeiffer said, but his gaze was still fixed on the lake, where the Ship hid.
Haldeman drummed his fingers on his thighs, pure glee. ‘Well, we prodded it and it lashed out. I can’t wait to look at the other detectors. Whatever it did must have left a trace. There must be some exotic energies involved . . .’
‘I think it uses the radioactivity to frighten us off,’ Pfeiffer said. ‘Like insects that squirt poison. We should send two divers down, really challenge its boundaries. Put an X-ray source on the hull, or conduct some electrical activity right next to it.’
Haldeman’s mouth was open, wordless for a moment. ‘My God, they would get a hell of a dose – and the machine might just kill them.’
‘Well, yes, we’d need to plan it,’ Pfeiffer agreed. Of course, the men might die, and that would be genuinely unfortunate. But these were career soldiers; they stood on the frontline of the war against the forces of evil. Their families would be provided for. It would be fascinating data, confirming if the machine would kill humans, and how it would do it.
Pfeiffer felt that moment of rage again. Oh, the knowledge and power the Ship represented. Satellites sent over the lake malfunctioned; planes suffered electrical interference. Those strange small purple creatures had the skill to fly between the stars. And Jarman and those fool nurses had hidden the boy who might have opened it all up to them.
The soldiers were all so squeamish about the radioactivity; it might be hard to get volunteers to dive. It was a problem to let simmer. A solution would present itself, he was sure. Maybe line a boat with lead and manoeuvre it over the spot . . . ?