He finished his glass, and the table attendant set down a fresh one before Parsons had abandoned the glassware to the tablecloth. He flashed Mackey a grin that Mackey would have almost called suggestive, if he had not repressed the thought.
"This is what I mean—Gene, Fred—when I talk about the occult. There's two types of magic," Parsons continued. "There's a certain amount of superficial hocus pocus, which we can feel free to ignore. It's important to some people, but it's all just image. But just because we ignore the stage show doesn't mean that there's not real magic going on behind the scenes."
He picked at the ornate silverware, gestured to the salt shaker, with the Department of Transportation seal engraved into the perforated metal lid. "Behind all the smoke and mirrors, beneath all the ritual and protocol that we can choose to ignore, there is still belief. These stage magicians, these afternoon amateurs from the pervert pantomime society club who nearly cut Gene's throat—they believe. They believe in the ends justifying the means. Just like all the executives in this room."
Parsons spoke as if the famous faces of the dining room only existed in the one-way medium of television, as if they were on the outside of the window, hanging motionless at 1,500 feet, looking in. "The people of this government believe that they are doing the right thing. That, more than any technology, more than any weapon, is the frightening thing. Because when you believe that you are doing the right thing, that everything you have done or will do is in aid of that right thing, you will do just about anything.
"In all the sound and fury of our world, we must choose to ignore certain mechanisms running underneath the technology, to prevent us from losing our minds. But we ignore the wrong ones. Look at these men." He gestured in the direction of the two Assistant Secretaries of the National Airspace Transit Bureau with a forwardness that made Mackey flush. "This is executive territory, top level. And what do you see? No field experience. No one who's worked their way up through fire and blood like Grace. Not a one among them who could navigate a re-entry capsule burn with a pencil and slide rule if they had to, like Mary. These characters just book a one-day orbital station stop so they get the privilege to eat lunch at the top of the building, where everyone has told them they belong."
He leaned closer, poking Mackey's shoulder across the table. "Have you ever wondered why there isn't a single woman serving as a Bureau Secretary in the entire Department of Transportation? You must have. A man like yourself." He let the comment dangle in the air between them, and Mackey avoided eye contact. "The reason is that ‘it is the way it has been done.' No one questions, no one speaks about it publicly. But it underlies every decision made in the Department of Transportation, every decision made within the entire Federal Government. And that's only the most obvious outer crust of the belief structure that runs this whole country."
"I've always thought ideology was an incredibly dangerous thing, no matter what ideology it is," offered Thompson. "People make bad decisions when their only method of decision making is to fall back on their core assumptions. They ignore facts, misconstrue a situation, just so it fits with the story they already believe."
Parsons raised his glass a touch, in agreement. "Not only do they misconstrue situations, but sometimes the entire nature of reality. They spend so much time investing in elaborate secrets and parlor tricks to make the story better, they forget they made them all up to begin with."
Mackey saw Hopper emerge from a door set into the artistry of the wall, which sealed behind her silently, revealing not even a hinge or a crack. She made her way towards the table, pausing to speak a few words with a couple of tables on the way. Parsons signaled the attendant, who arrived with a drink for the Assistant Secretary. Now he caught Mackey's eyes directly. "And they say I am a strange one, because I speak the names of my gods aloud. But there are more ancient, more dangerous gods than mine in the Executive Branch."
Hopper took her seat at the head of the table, and Parsons ordered five orbital ribeyes. As interesting as Parsons' proclamations had been, they felt a bit uncomfortably personal to Mackey, somehow. He tried to move the subject further away from anything that could lead back towards himself. "If there were an occult subtext to the work of various government Bureaus and Services, wouldn't everyone know? Belief, or trick, or ideology—whatever you want to call it—wouldn't it be visible, somehow, on some level? There are millions upon millions of government employees. How could such a thing, if it was that influential, be kept secret?"
Parsons glanced at Hopper for a moment, and then spoke. "Let me tell you a story. Have you heard of the American Miscellaneous Society?"
Mackey shook his head.
Parsons looked at Hopper again, and as if relenting, she dipped her head with a shrug. Parsons continued his tale. "The Miscellaneous Society was a—group. Not an agency or division of any agency, it was best described as an hybrid entity, formed by the Smithsonian Cultural Service, the Land Service, and the Geodetic Service. Not unlike some of our joint research facilities. Like a smaller, undercover Ames, perhaps. But entirely secret. Strictly for what we might call Orthogonal Procedures."
Thompson whispered to Mackey again. "Is that the same as the Parallel Procedures?"
"Yes," he whispered back. "Well, no. It's the same, but even more secret, and more antagonistic to other agencies."
Parsons continued. "The Miscellaneous Society came up with its own secret project, called Project Mohole. The mission was to drill a hole in the ocean floor, straight through the crust of the earth, into the mantle. Why, you might ask? Well, why not? What could go wrong? All in the pursuit of science, of mining, of the technology of deep-sea drilling, of the potential of discovery or further exploiting the continental shelves and the ocean.
"Meanwhile, the Advanced Research Projects Bureau of the Department of Transportation was developing their own ship, also for the purpose of deep-sea drilling—ostensibly. As it turned out, drilling was only a cover story. The real purpose of the ship was called Project Azorian. The mission of Project Azorian was to secretly recover a sunken Russian submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. As it turned out, roughly the same technology was needed to stabilize a ship for drilling as for lifting a sunken submarine. Rumor has it, Project Azorian was successful—though no one can say exactly what was recovered from the submarine that was so valuable." Parsons took the opportunity to look at Hopper again, but she ignored him, sipping her drink and looking at the view.
He continued. "When the Miscellaneous Society heard the public Project Azorian cover story, they figured ARPB was trying to beat Project Mohole to the mantle. ARPB didn't actually know about Project Mohole, because it was secret. But Miscellaneous figured they had been discovered, and so they tried to sabotage Project Azorian's ship, completely unaware that its drilling mission was itself a cover for a secret mission. When ARPB discovered the sabotage attempt, that led them to actually discovering Project Mohole.
"The secret mission of Project Azorian having been achieved, and having the ship stabilization technology required for deep-sea drilling in its possession, ARPB turned over its ship to its internal top-secret Summa Division, who then used it to beat Mohole into the mantle. What had been the cover story became the actual goal. Partly on principle, and partly because they figured that if Miscellaneous was so aggressively defensive of Mohole, there must be something really important down there. And ARPB wouldn't be left in the dust, by the gods!
"Summa got to the mantle a month before Miscellaneous did. But in this race to the mantle, there were growing whispers about two separate, secret Parallel Procedures being conducted, with lots of subterfuge and sabotage instead of any real explanation of why they were even drilling into the earth in the first place. Plenty of questions were asked behind closed doors in the highest levels of the executive branch, and although the scandal never became public, Miscellaneous ended up dissolved in the controversy. Someone had to take the fall, and because
Miscellaneous lost the race to the mantle, it was going to be them. In the end, to save everyone a lot of embarrassment and limit the collateral damage, it was all swept under the rug. Everyone forgot what they knew, all the better to hide their potentially embarrassing secrets.
"But even though few know this, even fewer know the real reason that this competition existed to begin with"—Parsons now broke out into his bemused grin—"the real reason why anyone would want to drill into the earth's mantle. In the effort to forget, no one realized that they never even knew what it was they were looking for down there, deep beneath the earth's crust."
Their steaks arrived, and he used the opportunity to create a dramatic pause as they cut into their food. The meat was excellent, and terribly succulent, quite unlike anything that Mackey had ever tasted. He normally avoided red meat at the advice of his doctor, but if he had flavor like this readily available, he could see delicious and unhealthy dining choices filling the rest of his short life. Astronauts, he supposed, had bigger health problems at hand than hardening of the arteries.
But Mackey also wanted to hear the conclusion to Parsons' story. Finally, after the rocket scientist had savored his meal bite by bite, eyes closed, gripping his knife and the edge of the table in an evocative, almost sensual way, his eyelids snapped open, and he continued.
"The drilling"—another brief moment of thoughtful chewing—"was only the means, not the end. The real purpose was the test of another, more secret device. A sort of telescope, for looking through the earth."
They sat in silence for a moment, chewing, Parsons the only one at the table smiling, relishing his role as storyteller. Finally Thompson swallowed and spoke. "What do you mean, looking through the earth? Like into space on the other side?"
"No, looking into the earth. Under the ground."
Once more, Mackey was left confused. "How could you use a telescope to look through solid objects?"
Parsons laughed and finished his cocktail. "That's the kicker, isn't it? The trick of the whole thing."
Ross frowned. "Are you saying the Miscellaneous Society invented a way of seeing through solid matter?"
"Not exactly, and no, not them. If they had invented such a thing, they wouldn't have been dissolved. No one knows who built it. No one knows who controlled it. But it could only look into the earth itself, and that is why Project Mohole existed. If it was a matter of seeing through solid walls, you could test that in your bedroom, in a rock quarry, or wherever. This device could only be tested by drilling through the crust of the earth, to see if what they saw was actually down there. Whoever it was that made the telescope, they seeded the idea of Project Mohole to the Miscellaneous Society in secret, setting off a whole chain of events that resulted in two boreholes through the skin of our planet, and one more skirmish between Commerce and Transportation that almost ended in public scandal."
Hopper brushed a single hair off of her forehead and pushed it up underneath her hat. "A form of low-frequency radar, is what you're talking about?"
Parsons deposited his silverware on the plate, shrugging his shoulders. "No idea how it works, I didn't build it. All I know is what I've heard. But how the telescope works and what they were looking for with it isn't the point."
He turned to Mackey. "You see? There is a nesting effect, with secrets. The people doing the drilling, the people planning Project Mohole, the people planning Project Azorian for both its cover story and its real goal, the people who built the ships, the American Miscellaneous Society, Summa Division, the Russians who lost a submarine, the people trying to uncover a scandal, the people trying to brush away the scandal, and whomever it is that built the underground telescope—all of them think they know a secret. They think it is their job to believe this secret and guard its truth. And because their understanding of the secret matches up with what they think their job is, they do believe it. With all their heart.
"But in reality, they only know a little bit of the secret. The don't know the entire story. Maybe no one knows the entire story. And because they all think they know the entire story, they wouldn't believe the actual story even if they heard it. And that, my friend—is how you truly keep a secret."
"If the story is true, and not fiction," said Hopper, focusing on her meal.
Mackey was looking at the tilework on the ceiling, thinking about what Parsons had said.
"What was it they were looking for with the telescope?"
Parsons made eye contact as he answered with a perfectly straight face. "Alien artifacts, lodged in deep geological strata."
Ross snorted into her Manhattan, and Thompson grinned, assuming it was a joke, though Parsons looked quite serious. Hopper laughed out loud, throwing her head back as she did, attracting a number of eyes from around the dining room.
Parsons merely shrugged. "I merely tell the story as it was told to me. You can believe it or not. The privilege of the human mind is to believe we know the difference between reality and the opposite." He winked at Mackey, coyly. "Well! I would certainly have a"—he tried counting on his fingers, but gave up—"one more drink, but I am flying. What say we hop over the mountains and see what's cooking at the Skunk Works today?"
☆
Waiting for the elevator to arrive, Hopper adjusted her hat ever so slightly, even though it seemed to Mackey that throughout the entire day he hadn't once seen it out of place. Like the briefcase that had been with her constantly without fail, across thousands of miles, except for the brief hiatus in the Sierras. Thompson and Ross were listening to Parsons explain an anecdote about a 16th century English historical figure, by way of part of the patterns on the wall decorations.
Perhaps it was the gin, in far more quantity than Mackey ever imbibed at this hour of the day, that made him willing to hazard a question while the others were engaged by Parsons' tale. "Assistant Secretary Hopper," he began, realizing immediately how awkward it was that he was still addressing her by title, but without any other recourse he proceeded, "I…how should I take all of this? Are there secret occult and metaphysical practices going on? I don't mean to ask about classified information, if that is in fact what it is. But is he"—he nodded his head towards Parsons, still gesturing at the wall, deep in his story—"just pulling our legs? Is it a gag, or is he serious?"
Hopper looked in Parsons' direction. "Well, he's certainly not joking, from his perspective." She turned to face Mackey directly. "I told you before you would be hearing some secret information, a sort of information that was outside the scope of paperwork and procedure. But just because information is secret does not necessarily make it trustworthy. In my business, there are rumors, there are lies, there is misdirection, and there are as many false flags as legitimate banners. What I need you to do, as my assistant in this matter, is to trust your logic and intuition, and apply them to whatever we uncover. You are an engineer—only removed from your laboratory of electromagnetic radiation, and placed into this wider lab of ideas and information. Can you do that?"
When she put it that way, it didn't seem nearly as confusing. Providing executive clarity, Mackey supposed, was the Assistant Secretary's job. "Yes, I believe I can."
She nodded once. "It all does seem a little much at first, I know. And you've already had to witness terrible things, even as we've only just begun. There were times, back in the early days, when—" She shook her head slightly as she paused, then dropped it. "Always remember: focus on our goal. We protect our projects, our Department, our technological progress, and our country. That is what our jobs are about, regardless of what Orthogonal Procedures anyone deploys, and what metaphysical shibboleths someone invents to wrap them and obscure them."
He nodded, even as he recalled what Parsons had said about the efficacy of "the ends and the means" only fifteen minutes earlier in the dining room.
Hopper smiled and gave him a forceful slap on the shoulder.
The elevator door opened,
and the group entered together. In another fifteen minutes, they were back in the Vail-22. Mackey took his seat, a bit relieved that there had been no further orders for drinks. Once cleared by the Bureau Tower ATC, Parsons throttled back, and the vehicle lifted up and back from the landing platform. Banking slightly, Parsons angled the nacelles, and moved them forward, heading off due east towards the Verdugo Mountains and the larger San Gabriel Mountains beyond.
They flew in silence for a bit, crossing the busy airspace of the valley, over the tracks and factories below, a small white dot trailing them, sneaking back and forth to alter its position, disguising itself as a trick of the light, a bird, or a fragment of cloud. Parsons and Ross had some sort of brief discussion about course selection. Hopper and Thompson were both looking out the window at the ground below.
Mackey was also distracted by the view as they crossed Northridge, shadowing the freight line. A great train, hundreds of cars long, the size of a small city itself, was heading east. He watched as the containers blinked underneath the track overpasses, cutting up the region into loops and ribbons. Each of those shipping containers was as large as Mackey's apartment, filled with unknown technological materials.
The Vail-22 passed over the thirty-plus track bands of the West Coast Arterial, which trailed up from Mexico, north all the way to Canada. The small lumps of P-cars along it looked like tiny bubbles, carried along a strangely bifurcated mountain stream, rushing in two directions at the same time. They flew over Hansen Dam, a mile-long curved concrete bastion protecting the industry in the valley from the raging winter floodwaters that would occasionally rush down the steppes of the San Gabriels. Then up the dry Tujunga Creek bed through Sunland, gaining altitude to cross the mountains. Below the Vail-22, the looped tracks of housing developments finally gave way to National Forest, dry sparse pines above dry chaparral brush in the valleys and worn crevices.
Orthogonal Procedures Page 12
