Hopper held her palm open to Parsons, for him to look into it. In the chaos of the test lot, no one saw her hand except for Parsons, Mackey, Thompson, and Ross. Mackey could see a ring on her finger, turned inward, but still glinting in the strong light. He hadn't noticed her wearing it before. He was about to lean closer to try and see what was on the ornament, but she snapped her hand shut and looked Parsons in the eye. Thompson looked as intrigued as Mackey, but Ross seemed to be willfully ignoring the exchange.
Parsons now returned Hopper's serious gaze. "I see. Well, I suppose we'd better go to my office. Let's grab a shuttle. Not that one, though." He gestured to their previous vehicle, then turned to Priscilla. "See that they salvage as much as they can. And keep bothering Bill! I'll call you in a bit."
Priscilla seemed relieved to see him go, and hurried off.
In a new, undamaged shuttle car, Parsons squeezed on the seat across from Ross and Hopper, sitting between Thompson and Mackey, his arms thrown up across the seat back behind them both. "Orthogonal Procedures, is it? I am a bit surprised you're coming to me, given the climate at the Secretary's office lately."
Hopper seemed slightly less authoritative in front of Parsons, but that certainly didn't change her commanding stare and disarming smile. "Webb was busy. Some underling tried to step in."
Parsons stroked his thin mustache with a smile. He was clear into his fifties, with slight wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that complemented the scar running just down the underside of his chin. His face had just a shade of stubble upon it, completing the image of a man who had experienced a fair bit of life, but had not yet given up on his attractive mystique. Nor would it give up on him. His dusty clothing was a bit disarming, however, and it caused Mackey to want to brush himself off, though he couldn't on the crowded seat. On the arm behind Mackey on the seat back, underneath the rolled-up sleeve, were visible the dark bands of a tattoo, just out of sight beneath the fabric.
Conscious that Mackey was looking at him, Parsons turned to the man and gave him a grin and a wink, which caused Mackey to immediately direct his attention out the window, to the massive research center buildings they were passing. Turning to Hopper, Parsons said quietly, "Yes, I think there was some satellite combat. Unpiloted, no casualties. But several intrusions across the LEO frontier will generate long meetings. As for the underling, you must mean Winslow, that slick daffodil. He'll be the one to hear from me about the dangerous lapses in facility maintenance that burned up my engine. So don't you worry, I'll see to him."
☆
In the Design building, the group followed Parsons' stuttering pace as he alternately ran ahead, then turned around and stood still to lecture about the finer points of his new hybrid rocket-jet engine system. He only paused speaking when they arrived at a door marked J. Parsons. With a smirking smile and a little too much gusto, he threw open the door, whispering, "Welcome to my chambers."
The office was anything but standard Bureau issue. The room was dark as they stepped inside, thick red velvet drapes blocking the windows. Parsons threw a overwrought knife-switch on the desk, and orange filament bulbs in a variety of brass lamps and candelabras burst into electric life. They illuminated a vast painting behind the desk of a horned man ascending the side of a stepped pyramid. The desk itself was covered in papers, some of them engineering blueprints, some of them much older, like parchment.
As Mackey nervously entered further, half afraid that spiders would descend upon his head from the ceiling, he saw a lighted cabinet, carved from dark mahogany, at the side of the office. Inside were all manner of curiosities—a collection of short swords, old books bound in wrinkled leather, a rack of small glass bottles containing colored, misty contents, and in the very center, a human skull. The top of the cabinet was decorated with a wooden shield, upon which was painted an obscure symbol in brilliant metallic silver paint. Mackey was drawn into it, tracing its graceful curves with his eyes.
When he focused again, Hopper was seated in a high-backed chair opposite the desk, and Parsons had settled into the leather seat behind it, his feet on top. Ross and Thompson pulled up chairs from the edge of the room, Thompson grabbing one for Mackey as well. Hopper's briefcase was on her lap, with her hands on top of it. Mackey noticed that the odd ring she had shown Parsons was no longer on her finger.
"Do close the door, would you, Fred? And then have a seat," Parsons purred.
Mackey hurried to do so, gladly. He had a sense that he didn't particularly want to be seen inside Parsons' office, for some reason. It seemed a chamber of odd, awkward secrets.
"What have we got, Grace?"
Hopper snapped open her briefcase and removed the dossiers they had retrieved from Mount Weather. Opening to the photos, she placed them on the desk. Parsons quickly snapped them up and leaned back in his chair to study the images, while Hopper briefly explained their source at the Weather Service and the connection to the ARPNET, though leaving out the intrusion at Mount Weather. Ross leaned forward and picked up a set as well.
"Not aerial images. Satellite," Ross noted.
Hopper gave a single, curt nod.
"Not ASTB, either," chimed Parsons.
"I don't imagine so."
Ross scrutinized the image, nodding her head in agreement. Parsons removed a magnifying lens from a desk drawer and leaned closer to the nearest light bulb for a better look.
"This banding here, over the grassy area." Hopper and Ross stood to see what he was referring to. "That isn't agricultural. They are scan lines."
He leaned back in his chair again. "That means it's electro-optical, and that means it is NRS."
Mackey looked at Hopper, and Hopper looked at Parsons, waiting for him to continue. After an appropriately dramatic pause, he continued.
"Mary could tell you this as well as I could, as she's been a part of the ASTB studies on the technology. The satellites are called Crystals, as far as we can tell. Only rumors, really, as it's all Top Secret. Officially, the National Reconnaissance Service doesn't even exist. But when some of the best orbital and imagery scientists are all supposedly working for the US Geodetic Service, and yet they officially don't have an office number in the directory, it's pretty easy to make guesses."
Ross gave Parsons a look that questioned, quite clearly, his lack of discretion. Parsons glanced at Mackey and Thompson, then continued.
"I imagine that as Grace doesn't have you two at gunpoint already, we can talk about this. A benefit of the fact that I don't officially know about it is that I'm not officially sworn to secrecy either.
"It went like this: in 1961, the military wanted a permanent agency in charge of all Top Secret satellite imagery. It couldn't be in any of the branches of the armed forces or the CIA, because of all the convoluted rivalries in the military and intelligence community. ASTB put out a secret bid for it, and so did the USGS. Commerce got it rather than Transportation, it was developed under the USGS, and that was the last anyone heard of it."
"Why," Mackey hesitated, but having already spoken up, continued to ask his question, "would they give the task to a new agency, when the ASTB already has jurisdiction over satellites?"
Parsons shrugged. "The dark mysteries of Parallel Procedures, coupled with some sort of backhanded maneuvers that I don't know about." He glanced at Hopper. "You win some, you lose some. Commerce won that one, and a new secret Service was born. But what I do know is that they have developed some sort of method of transferring imagery captured by electric crystal back to earth via radio waves. ASTB satellites use film, retrieved by Postal Bureau aircraft after the recovery capsule re-enters the atmosphere. We've been working on an electro-optical method, but it isn't quite ready yet. The National Reconnaissance Service has the only Crystal birds in the world, and they would likely produce scan lines on the imagery just like this."
"What are Parallel Procedures?" Thompson whispered to Mackey.
&nbs
p; Mackey was trying to follow the conversation, and answered him quickly, under his breath: "When Departments do something they aren't supposed to do, because they have to do it. More or less." Thompson looked confused, but nodded anyway.
Parsons flipped the satellite photo to the side, to read the rest of the dossier.
"My, my, my—what is this?" He showed it to Ross, who traced the lines of one of the astrological charts with her fingertip.
Hopper smiled. "That was my second question for you."
Parsons studied the odd, circular diagram, again picking up the magnifying glass, and also grabbing a pencil and paper, upon which he jotted some notes. "They appear to be astrological birth charts."
Hopper tapped her fingers idly on the edge of her briefcase. Mackey leaned forward and opened his mouth to ask another question, but Parsons interrupted him, continuing to scrutinize the diagram.
"Birth charts, Fred, describe the exact apparent locations of the planets and zodiac at the moment and place in which you are born. Or at any particular moment in time and space, really. At any time and place, the relative locations of the stars and planets in the sky will be unique. From there, one can analyze the planets astrologically, and come to conclusions about the person in question."
"So, the Weather Service was reading their horoscopes?"
Parsons jumped up and dashed across the room to retrieve a large leather-bound volume from a shelf. He returned to the desk and then, as if trying to remember something, put a finger to his lips. Dodging over and digging into a cabinet, he removed a cartridge reel of magnetic tape, held it to the light to check the label, and then dashed over to a curtain on the wall. Jerking it back, Parsons revealed a computer console with all the showmanship of a stage magician.
"What is he doing?" Thompson whispered again.
"If my guess is correct," Ross said, "he's going to do an analysis of the planetary positions in the charts, to try and see what dates and times they might indicate."
Parsons hit the switches and allowed the machine to spin up, the front panel becoming an incandescent blaze of indicator lamps. Opening the tape drive drawer, he inserted the cartridge and latched it home. Returning to his desk, Parsons snatched up his notes, and then drew up a stool to the card puncher, pecking the keys rapidly, pausing occasionally to refer to the giant leather tome he held open on his lap. Ross stood behind him, looking over his shoulder and double-checking his work. As soon as he was done, he handed the cards to Ross, who loaded them into the reader and hit the button. Clattering away, the constellations of lamps on the console danced incandescently and the printer whirred into life. Tearing away the printout, Parsons returned to his desk, and Ross drew her chair up alongside.
Parsons' brow furrowed as he compared the printout to the charts in the dossiers.
"Who are these people in these files?"
"We haven't had time for any deep analysis. Mackey says that they appear to be a number of mid-level Transportation bureaucrats, from no specific Bureaus or Sections," Hopper told him.
Parsons picked up a pen and circled some areas of the printout. He pointed, and Ross nodded. "These aren't birth charts. Or, at least the astronomical positions aren't equivalent to the birth dates and places listed on the dossiers. According to the program, these astronomical positions are current—within the last six months. All places within the United States."
Ross handed the paper across the desk. Hopper looked at the printout, considering the dates that Parsons had circled. Parsons leaned back, placing his pen to his lips, thinking. "There's a . . . possibility."
Hopper looked through her glasses at the man, whose mustache was now curling into a smile. "Do tell, Jack."
"Census are all astrology nuts, right? That's the missing link between the Weather Service and the Geodetic Service. The Weather Service has a parallel version of your ARPNET. The Geodetic Service has the Crystals. To match up celestial navigation data and personnel records, they use birth charts created by Census as a format, because the Census Service has the most extensive database of Transportation staff in all of the Department of Commerce. Census is the nexus uniting the purloined files with the photographs, the hub between the parallel ARPNET at Weather and the Crystals at Geodetic. And the birth charts prove it."
Hopper returned his wry gaze. "So, it seems like we have at least three Commerce agencies involved. Good thing I didn't speak to formerly-of-the-Census-Service Winslow about it, then."
Mackey was hopelessly lost in this chain of reasoning. "Census, sure—there's Winslow and Gregory of the Census Service, who both seem connected to this. But what do you mean by saying that Census loves astrology? Why would birth charts indicate the Census Service?"
Thompson nodded, the same question on his mind.
Parsons turned in his seat, quizzically placing his fingers under his chin as he eyed Mackey. "No one likes to talk about it," he shot a look at Hopper, "but most of the Bureaus and Services have—occult interests."
Thompson folded his arms across his chest, as if he was trying to figure out if this was a joke. Mackey's mouth was open. He noticed, and closed it.
"Typically for code names of missions, research projects, and the like. It's an inside joke, really," Hopper attempted to explain. But Parsons cut her off.
"It's no joke. Each agency has always gravitated towards a particular field of occult research. The Census focuses on astrology, the Weather Service catalogs strange atmospheric phenomena, the Land Service's interests are in dowsing, and the USGS researches ley lines. Here at ATSB we take more of an interest in—"
"Transportation Bureaus, just like the various Services of the Department of Commerce, are all strictly science-based," Ross interrupted. "We didn't get to the moon using flying daggers and philosopher's stones."
Parsons chuckled. "You'd be surprised how much alchemy goes into building a Saturn rocket."
Hopper ignored the remark and turned to Mackey. "Every agency remembers its pre-scientific roots in different ways. As you can see from Dr. Parsons' natural history museum"—she gestured at the cabinet—"he prefers props as his method of paying homage to the occult foundations of chemistry and physics. Other scientists prefer to honor their progenitors via project names, like the Apollo spacecraft or the Aquarian System."
Parsons smiled, fingers rubbing his chin. "Put up a skeptical front if you must, Grace. While the 20th century's historians like to pretend that the current federal government has left its occult origins behind, the 20th century's history tells a different story."
Mackey didn't know what to make of this. He couldn't tell who was trying to kid him, or if all of them were. Instead, he moved on. "Celestial navigation—that's like . . ."
"Telemetry systems that use star tracking rather than ground-point tracking, usually coupled with an inertial system," Ross broke in. "In the same way that birth charts are unique for every time and place, a traveling ship, aircraft, or spacecraft can tell exactly where it is from looking at the stars."
"We must figure out the purpose of these charts. USGS is just up the road in Menlo Park," Hopper said. "I think it might be best if we just go—" she smiled, "ask them directly."
Parsons waved his hands, shaking his head. "Grace! Why break in when we have the best mind in orbital telemetry right here in the room?"
They both looked over at Ross. Thompson and Mackey did as well, waiting to see how she would respond.
She nodded slowly. "We can do a deeper analysis of the charts, but I'll need the orbital computers back at Plant 42 to do it. If this is celestial navigation data linked to the images, we should be able work backwards and find the NRS satellites. Then, from the orbits, we might be able to see what they are looking at now."
"Plant 42, in the Mojave." Hopper thought out loud. "It would be preferable, certainly, to conduct further studies from a secure facility, after our recent misadventure. And you're s
ure your programs can deliver, Ross?"
"I believe so, Assistant Secretary. We use the same programs to track the telemetry of everything that the ASTB puts into orbit. The equations are quite trustworthy."
"Like the stars themselves." Parsons smiled, and gestured towards the heavens with both hands. "But aren't we forgetting a key piece of this puzzle?"
"What part?" Mackey asked.
"Well," Parsons mused, leaning back in his chair again. "You, Fred, are an engineer with highly specialized knowledge of Commerce's bureaucratic structures, and I suppose that explains your accompanying Grace well enough. She always travels with an entourage of engineers, if she can." Hopper did not take the bait. "But what about—" he gestured to the man in the Forest Service coat, "our friend Ranger Gene here? How does he fit into the puzzle?"
Ross and Hopper relayed the basics of the events in the Sierras to Parsons, who sat forward in interest.
"I certainly didn't wish to be proven correct about my assertions of the occult, through something so awful and unbelievably foolish," he muttered. "Like a two-bit movie set, some low-budget made-for-television schtick. To what deities did they suppose they were sacrificing your pilot?"
"I think they said Enki," Thompson recalled. "And maybe Ninkharsag?"
Parsons shook his head, rolling his eyes skyward. "Some half-chewed Babylonian imitation—it's insulting to all of us, Enki most of all. They no doubt read about it on the back of a cereal box."
"The flames and blood seemed real enough," Mackey said, morosely. "There was this symbol, painted in some sort of grease, and it started to…I mean I thought I saw it—"
"Charlatans. Witless, spineless, common carnival imitators, cheap stage hacks with pocket pyrotechnics. Those kinds think a little bit of blood is enough to please the gods, as if they haven't seen enough blood from uncreative cutthroats over the millennia. I always have half a mind to let those gutless impostors try and defile the womb of Ninkharsag with mortal blood, and see what that gets them. They'll be begging to be shot by the time the goddess is through with them!"
Orthogonal Procedures Page 8
