Hunt Along the Iron River and Other Timeless Tales

by Orrin Jason Bradford

  Webster tried to reply to deny the charge but Lumley was on a roll and without pausing for so much as a breath, he said, "Isn't it true, Doctor, you two are playing God and in the process threatening the lives of every American, possibly every human being on the planet? Isn't it true? Or am I off the mark on this one, Doctor?"

  It was Lumley's turn to sit back in his chair, a smug look on his face. He turned his best side towards the cameras.

  Webster stared at him, his mouth partially open but with no sound coming out. Shut your mouth, he told himself, you look like an idiot. Finally his mouth obliged.

  "I have information from a reliable source," Lumley continued, waving several sheets of paper at Webster, “that indicates your team, headed by Dr. Mallory, is building a contraption capable of making something else, molecule by molecule and," Lumley turned to the camera as it zoomed in for a close up, “you have no idea what the aliens have programmed it to make. Do you deny this, Doctor?"

  We're screwed, Webster thought. Where did Lumley get his information? Obviously, he must have a person on the inside. Who on the team had turned into a Judas? A silly question at this point, Webster realized. The damage had already been done.

  He turned to his right, leaned over and whispered in his attorney's ear. "We're dead in the water on this one, Matthew. How about calling Mallory and telling him it's time to clean out his room. I owe him that much."

  ****

  Webster dropped the morning newspaper on the kitchen table and walked over to the counter to pour himself a second cup of coffee. Hard to believe three months had passed, he thought as he poured the dark brew into the mug. Three months and still the debate about the message raged on. Probably will be three years from now, too, bureaucratic red tape being so effective at gumming up progress.

  He sat back down at the table and started to browse through the paper when the phone rang. God, please no reporters this early in the morning, he prayed as he picked up the phone.

  The voice on the other end caught Webster completely by surprise. "Hey ol' man, I've got an erector set I think you'd be interested in. Want to come out and play?" It was Mallory.

  "Where in the hell are you?" Webster sputtered. “You do a great job of disappearing."

  "Yeah, thanks for the advance warning. It helped. Sorry to hear about you losing the directorship."

  "To tell you the truth, I'm not," Webster replied. "I've never felt better. For the first time in years, my blood pressure is almost back to normal and my attorney is doing a good job of keeping me out of jail."

  "Good," Mallory said. "Listen, I don't have much time. I'm serious, the erector set is ready to be turned on. You interested?"

  Erector set? What was Mallory talking about? Then it hit him. "You didn't?"

  "Of course. You don't think I'm going to let a little bureaucrat like Lumley keep me from my toys, do you? Now, do you want to be here when I start it up?"

  "Where is here?" Webster asked.

  "Can't tell you,” Mallory replied. "Your phone might be tapped. If you're interested, you just sit tight and I'll get you to me."

  It took Webster less than two seconds to make up his mind.

  "I'm interested."

  "I thought you would be." Mallory laughed. "I'll be in touch. Be ready to move fast." The line went dead.

  Within the hour, Webster received a message from a private courier directing him to a small cafe on the other side of town. There he met a man who looked like he'd stepped out of a 50’s detective movie, trench coat and all, who whisked him to a private air strip where a twin-engine Beechcraft sat idling on the runway. As Webster stepped up to the plane, he noticed the rear windows where he would be sitting were blacked out. Wherever he was going, when he arrived, even he wouldn't know what their route had been.

  He paused at the door. Do I trust this guy? Mallory might be kidnapping me for all I know. The truth was he didn't trust Mallory, not completely. But for a chance to see what the assembler from space looked like and what it could build, for that, he was willing to run the risk. He ducked his head and stepped into the plane.

  ****

  Mallory was in the mountains again, Webster realized as he stepped off the plane, but clearly not the North Carolina mountains. Too sharp and too tall. Colorado? Wyoming? USA? Hell, they'd flown around long enough, they could be in Canada by now. No matter. What was important was he had made good his escape without anyone following him. Now, to find out how far along Mallory really was.

  A short time later, the two men sat on the deck of one of the larger buildings, gazing at the picturesque beauty of the surrounding scenery.

  "It's been a lot easier this time," Mallory said. "I learned a lot about the message the first time so for the most part it was simple to repeat the procedure. Plus, I corrected a couple things that might have prevented our first attempt from working."

  "How did you manage to get the data out of the lab in the first place?" Webster asked.

  "Oh, it wasn't any problem," Mallory replied. "I snuck it out when I first arrived, before anyone had time to suspect I might do something like that. I downloaded it from the computer to another computer at one of my installations, then had an assistant save it to disk. Your security really sucked," he added with a chuckle.

  "Good thing as it turned out," Webster said. "How about the security here?" He waved his arm to encompass the compound.

  "Not bad," Mallory said. "We've got Mother Nature on our side. We're 150 miles from the closest convenience store. The only way in is either over old logging roads very few people even know exist or by air. As for our little erector set, the building we're constructing it in has been wired with explosives. If anything were to go wrong, we could blow it to that convenience store 150 miles away."

  "And what if we were still in the building?" Webster asked, growing nervous with the turn of the conversation.

  "Oh, we probably would be," Mallory replied. "We'd go up with the explosion, of course."

  "Of course," Webster repeated, trying to imitate Mallory's casual tone. "When will the assembler be ready to be activated?"

  "Oh, it's ready now," Mallory said as he stood up. "Let's go take a look. The tank is being filled right now."

  The tank? Webster wondered what to expect as he followed Mallory down the steps of the deck and across the grassy courtyard towards a one story building at the far end of the compound. As they stepped into the building, he wondered, would just this building go up, or would the entire facility be enveloped in one massive cloud of smoke and destruction? He decided not to ask.

  "The main lab is off limits to everyone," Mallory said as they walked down the hall, passing several technicians clad in blue coveralls. "Unless I'm in the lab. I don't want anyone playing with my toy without me." He smiled in a way that reminded Webster of a rich kid who used to live in his neighborhood, over forty years ago. All men are little boys, Webster thought. The only thing that changes is the size of our toys.

  As they entered the private lab, Webster paused and looked around. "Where is it?" he finally asked.

  "Over there," Mallory said, pointing to a large opening in the floor surrounded by railing. "In the pit."

  Webster walked over to the railing and looked over. The assembler reminded Webster of a very large jeweled egg, like the miniature ones he remembered from Christmas time many years ago, only this one was hundreds of times larger.

  "It's roughly ten feet long and a little over six feet in diameter," Mallory said, as though reading his thoughts. "Lovely, isn't it?"

  Most certainly, Webster thought as he walked slowly down the stairs to take a closer look. The front of the egg was dominated by a large oval window, through which Webster could see a viscous suspension filling the inside of the egg.

  "The fluid and the lining of the egg are the two miracles of the technology," Mallory said, walking behind him. "The fluid is filled with the raw material from which the nano-machines, which are floating in the suspension, will draw. The nano-mac
hines will get their commands from millions of nano-computers that line the egg.

  "Once the tank is filled, we'll activate the computers and, in a few minutes, hours, days, or longer, we'll have whatever it was our interstellar neighbors wanted to send to us." Mallory stroked the smooth side of the unit, anticipation and excitement lighting his face.

  "On top of which we'll also have the dawning of a new age of technology that will revolutionize humankind more than Gutenberg's press, the Industrial Revolution, the Wright brothers and penicillin all put together," Mallory added.

  Webster chuckled. "You remind me of a kid on Christmas Eve. Just can't wait to run downstairs and see what Santa brought you."

  "Yeah," Mallory replied. "It is a little like that. Only much, much bigger than any Christmas either one of us has ever had." The two men stared through the window at the swirling fluid.

  Finally, Webster asked, "What do you think it'll be?"

  "God only knows," Mallory replied with an unexpected note of reverence. "And I really mean it. God only knows."

  ****

  With massive amounts of coffee, the two men held vigil throughout the night, into the next day and through a second night, taking turns catnapping on a cot which had been brought in for that purpose. Slowly, as Mallory predicted, something began to take form inside the tank.

  On the second day, Webster leaned back in his chair and stretched his aching muscles. It's like a ghost, he thought as he gazed through the egg's window. Every now and then he caught a glimpse of something through the cloudy fluid. Yes, like a ghost ship cutting through the fog. First it's there, then it's gone, leaving you to wonder if it had really been there in the first place.

  But as the hours passed, the shape continued to enlarge and become more solid. Finally, towards the end of his shift of the third day, the swirling stopped.

  Webster walked over to the cot where Mallory slept and gently shook him by the shoulder. As Mallory slowly opened his eyes, Webster whispered, "I think something is happening. The fluid motion has stopped."

  Mallory's eyes flew open and he bonded off the cot. "All right, Santa has arrived. Let's go open our present."

  The two men returned to the assembler unit as the fluid drained from the receptacle, exposing the gleaming surface of the ghost ship.

  The smooth contoured unit measured almost four feet high by two feet across and deep. It reminded Webster of a giant thumb. Like a piece of modern art, the artist using his thumb as the model, Webster thought with a twinge of disappointment. What if that's all it was? Just a sculpture of a giant thumb to let Earth's civilization know their alien neighbors also had opposable thumbs. No, the idea was crazy. Surely, they'd at least send an entire replica of what they looked like, unless they were afraid their appearance would be too alarming for Earthlings.

  "What is it?" Webster whispered.

  "Don't know," Mallory whispered back with a note of awe. "Kinda cute, though."

  When the last drops of fluid had drained from the tank, the side of the assembler with the window slowly swung away from the rest of the unit on invisible hinges.

  "Is it alive?" Webster asked, feeling a little silly for asking the question.

  "Of course not," Mallory replied, turning quickly to his companion as though shocked at the thought. "At least, I don't think so," he said more cautiously.

  "Well, let's go take a closer look," Webster said, but didn't move, waiting for Mallory to take the lead. After all, Mallory had been the one to build it. He should have the honors.

  Webster looked up towards the railing where one of Mallory's assistants stood, his hand resting on a console with one simple button covered by a red cap. Flip the cap, push the button and visit the convenience store, 150 miles away. Lord, I hope the young fella up there doesn't have an itchy trigger finger. I'm not quite ready to visit you or the convenience store. Not just yet.

  The two men stepped over the threshold of the assembler tank at the same time. When they were within a couple feet of the giant thumb-like sculpture, they felt or heard a soft, high-pitched hum and the top third of the thumb began to glow.

  Oh, shit, Webster thought as he stopped in his tracks. Out of the corner of his eye, he tried seeing what Mallory's reaction was without taking his eyes off the glowing sculpture.

  "What do we do?" Webster whispered after several seconds had elapsed without either man moving forward.

  "Just move softly," Mallory replied. "Don't scare it."

  Webster noticed Mallory had spoken about the sculpture as though it were alive but decided not to say anything. Who knows, he thought. Maybe it is alive. Is it possible, he wondered.

  The two men crept forward, moving as one. Mallory walked to the left and Webster to the right, circling around the unit.

  The humming, which had been slowly building in pitch, disappeared as it surpassed the capacity of the human ear, but Webster could still feel the mild vibration through the soles of his shoes.

  Amazing, Webster thought, I'm one of the first humans to stand in the presence of an object designed by another intelligent life form and I don't have the foggiest idea what to do about it.

  The glowing tip of the form began to dim like a light set on a rheostat, then leveled off to a soft luminescence. When nothing else happened for almost a minute, Mallory stepped forward, paused, then raised his hand and held it a few inches from the glowing surface, as though checking it for heat.

  "Cool," Mallory said. Webster wasn't sure whether the comment referred to the forms lack of heat or Mallory's opinion about it.

  Webster watched as Mallory slowly lowered his hand towards the alien form until it rested lightly upon its surface. The second the contact was made, the form starting glowing again as though suddenly reactivated. Mallory jerked his hand away.

  "You okay?" Webster asked, taking a step towards him.

  Mallory held his hand out to stop him. "I'm fine," he replied. "Don't move."

  The icon continued to glow, this time surpassing the light it had originally given off, but still no heat as far as Webster could tell.

  The humming resumed for several seconds then suddenly stopped, to be replaced by another sound — a voice.

  "Greetings from Vector 6214, sub-unit zetaphon. We welcome the new open channel."

  "What. . . the . . . fuck. . ." Mallory said, as the two men simultaneously stepped back, startled by the unexpected voice. The voice, clearly emanating from the glowing form sounded strangely familiar to Webster. Webster stared at Mallory, waiting for the young scientist to say something. Mallory shrugged, then pointed to him.

  "Go on," Mallory urged, smiling. "You're the stargazer. My part of the project is finished."

  Webster realized Mallory was right. He had done his job. He'd taken the message from the stars and built the assembler from scratch and obviously he'd done it correctly. It suddenly dawned on him what the assembler must have built. What would be one of the first things an alien race would want to send to Earth? What would it be if the tables were reversed? What would we want to provide to another civilization? Webster stepped forward to test out his hypothesis.

  "Hello, this is Dr. Webster Strovall of the planet Earth, third planet from the star known to us as the Sun, or Sol." Well, it wasn't "one step for mankind" type material, but it would have to do.

  "Hello, Dr. Strovall," the voice from the icon replied. "It is a pleasure to welcome you to our communication network as our newest member who trusted us enough to build from our instructions without knowing what the outcome would be." As the voice spoke, Webster realized why it was familiar. It had the tone of an old radio announcer, one from the early days of radio. No doubt what they had used to decipher our language, Webster thought.

  His gaze wandered to the young man standing next to the panel. If you only knew how limited our trust was, he thought. Would you be so interested in inviting us into your network?

  "How are we able to communicate with you so far away without any apparent time lag?" Webster
asked the obvious question.

  "For the moment, let's just say that we've perfected the use of subatomic hyperdimensional tunnels, which in effect connect us in a manner beyond time. It is a technology upon which we've built the network of which you are now a part. This is a momentous occasion for your world. You are to be congratulated."

  Webster looked at Mallory and smiled. Yes, a momentous occasion. Life on Earth would never be the same. An infinite number of futures closed off forever and a new set of possibilities instantly created. Earth no longer belonged to itself or to the relatively small neighborhood of the solar system. We have instantly become galactic citizens. Not since the first fish crawled out of the primordial soup and onto land had such a evolutionary leap taken place.

  But would people like Lumley consider the moment momentous, Webster wondered. How many fish had been left behind in the water, cursing and fussing over the antics of those first land dwellers? Oh well, let the cynics think what they would. Science and technology go on and, with them the people of Earth, swept up in the wave. And, as Mallory had said, God only knows upon which beach Earth's people would finally come to shore.

  Words Unspoken

  P. T. felt the light touch on his arm. His eyes fluttered but did not open.

  "It's time, Father." Maura's voice, softer than the touch of her fingertips, caressed his ears. "The angels have begun to meld."

  He felt the muscles in his neck tense. He opened one eye. "How many times have I told you not to refer to those damn bugbats as angels?"

  "Sorry, Father." But he could tell from the edge in his daughter's voice she wasn't. He draped his arm over his eyes to shield them from the light. He hadn't really slept, only rested. He seldom slept anymore. The constant throb of his right knee and hip saw to that.

  After another moment, he opened his eyes again and turned his head to gaze at his sixteen year-old daughter. Every day you look more like your mother, he thought. Recently, he had caught himself almost calling her Evelyn. When did you exchange your baby-fat cheeks for the well-chiseled cheekbones? Probably about the time you traded in the sparkling, laughing eyes of a child for the intense stare of a young woman with a purpose. So much like your mother. His neck muscles knotted further.