The Grays

by Whitley Strieber

  The Three Thieves watched Conner from above as he moved about in his school. They wanted to get closer, but could not go into a crowd and remain invisible. They could lock their movements to no more than two or three pairs of eyes. So they could not enter his school, they could only watch. This was why grays worked at night, when people were alone.

  CONNER HAD SLEPT A RESTLESS, frightened night, and now sat in history class bored senseless because he had realized that his teacher did not understand the events in the Napoleonic Wars that he was teaching. The French loss of the Battle of Borodino in 1812 had led inevitably to the political structure of modern Europe, and discussing the way that had happened would have been interesting. Instead, he had to listen to stupefying trivia about General Kutuzov’s bad feet and Napoleon’s good lunch.

  His chest hurt. He remembered some kind of fire, but he had not been burned. He knew he had seen the grays, but it all now seemed curiously unreal, like it had happened to somebody else, or not happened at all.

  This disturbed him. He knew that he had seen them. He remembered them, though, in the unstable way that you remember a dream. He understood that this was because the experience had been so strange, but it still troubled him. He wanted these memories. He knew that the grays were here for a reason and they were obviously interested in him. But what was the reason, and why him?

  At the ten-fifteen break, he caught up with Paulie before he had reached the protection of Kevin and Will. “Do you still remember?” he asked.

  Paulie stopped opening the combination on his locker. He stared down at his feet. “Yeah,” he said in a low voice.

  “Paulie, I’m scared.”

  “I wasn’t when we got up, but I am now.”

  “Yeah, the same thing’s happening to me. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to be there at night.”

  Paulie looked at him, his eyes hollow. “I was gonna restart the busters,” he said, “but I’m not. You’re having too rough a time. But I don’t want us to be together again, Conner. I don’t want ever to see those things again, not ever.”

  “I can’t handle it, either!”

  “Yeah, you can. You’re as smart as any alien. That’s why they’re after you, I think. Because you can handle it.”

  Conner’s throat closed and tears welled in his eyes. “No, I can’t,” he said.

  FAR ABOVE, THE THREE THIEVES felt his fear, and drew closer together in their own disquiet. What was the matter with him? Was he in danger? Helplessly, they watched the purple fear flowing up out of the shimmering haze of feelings that hung over the school like a many-colored smoke. They could tell it belonged to Conner by listening to it. They could also talk to him, but dared not. Last night, they had done something with him that the grays had never before managed with human beings, which was to form words in his mind that he could hear and respond to—words, not images.

  They dared not do that now, because it might panic him and that must not happen.

  Conner went to his physics section at the college, hurrying along the snowy walk that linked Bell Attached to the campus, and wishing that he was safe inside some building and not exposed to the watchful, dangerous sky.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE SUN WAS HIGH IN a thin haze by the time Mike reached the Enterprise rental car agency that was tucked between the Wal-Mart and something called Goober’s Used Trucks. He considered buying a truck instead of renting a car, but he didn’t have but about six hundred dollars in his wallet. Too bad, a purchased vehicle would be a hell of a lot more secure than a rental, which any expert could trace, no matter what sort of identity he used.

  “I’d like a car, please,” he said. He pulled out the Harry Hill driver’s license and credit card.

  “Missouri,” the agent said, looking at the license.

  “Yes, sir. Here trying to sell the college on some new band instruments.”

  “Well, good luck. Pardon my French, but they’re tighter than a witch’s tit over there. You want a Grand Am?”

  “A Grand Am is good.”

  “Looks like we’re gonna get some serious weather tonight. If you want, I’ve got a Volvo. It’s three-sixty a week. Front-wheel drive might be useful, though.”

  This was certainly true. “Yeah,” he said looking at the sky. “It sure might.” He took the Volvo.

  In his top pocket was the remote control that would summon the triangle, which was laying by in some concealed draw somewhere in the hills. The trouble was, it connected through the MilStar communications satellite, and the second he used it, whoever was looking for him would know both where he was and where the triangle was.

  Once he had the car, he went through a drive-though and got some food. It was too dangerous to stop and eat, lest some sort of horrible serendipity expose him to those two investigators. Professionalism in a situation like this was defined by attention to detail. He also knew from long experience that going without food was a mistake when you were dealing with complex and stressful issues.

  AIR FORCE CHIEF OF STAFF Samuel Gold was ushered into the presidential executive office next to the Oval, which was open. No matter how often he passed near that room, he was always inspired by its history. No matter which president happened to be sitting at that desk, the power of the office was so intense that it was like a kind of scent around them all. Gold saw the presidency of the United States as the greatest governmental institution ever devised to expand human freedom and happiness. So he was especially concerned about this order he had come to discuss.

  “Sir,” he began, “I won’t take up but five minutes of your time. I am requesting confirmation of an order received at oh-nine-hundred today, directing—”

  “I know the order,” the president said. “You’re to prepare to fire the scalar weapon.”

  “Yes, sir! I just—sir, what you may not know is that this weapon is not stable. It’s still in development.”

  “The tests have worked pretty well.”

  “Yes, sir. But you’re going to fire it into the New Madrid fault line.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mr. President, this thing is going to devastate the entire central United States. You might see half a million deaths and trillions of dollars in damage. Sir, if I may ask, why do you need this?”

  “General Gold, you can’t ask. But I do want you to put a hold on that order until further notice.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”

  “Thank you for coming in.”

  Gold’s thick neck flushed. He went to his feet, saluted, turned, and stiffly left the room. The president watched until the door was closed, then called for his next meeting to be delayed. He went out into the Rose Garden, bleak in winter, and stood a long time alone and in silence. To slow his pounding heart and damp his rage, he sucked long, deep breaths. And it passed, and he returned to his work.

  MIKE WILKES’S NEXT STOP WAS Bell Attached School. They were all college families on Oak Road, so he could be reasonably sure that the children attended Bell, which went from kindergarten through high school. He wasn’t concerned about the Jeffers infant. The grays needed their instrument to be ready by 2012, not in twenty years. That left the two Kelton boys, Paul Warner and his sister Amy, and Conner Callaghan. There was a fair chance that he’d find his candidate among these children. If not, then he’d expand his search. He would not fail, that was unthinkable.

  The school was housed in two elegant old redbrick structures on the edge of the Bell College campus. The place was certainly beautiful, with its tall white columns and broad sports field behind the main complex. As he walked up the long sidewalk to the main entrance, he reached in his side pocket and turned on his Palm Pilot. Tucked in beside it was the remote that would call the triangle.

  Now the Palm would record the emissions of any computer in any room he entered. He would be able to access that computer again from the parking lot. If they used paper files, he’d find a way to physically invade them.

  He had held the belief for many years t
hat a person with sufficient training and resources quite simply could not be thwarted. Today, he would put that theory to the test.

  As school was in session, the doors were locked. He identified himself over the intercom as “Dr. Wenders,” interested in enrolling his children in the school.

  He was admitted by a student volunteer and led to the principal’s office. Mary Childs was a quick-voiced woman, big and ready to smile.

  “Dr. Wenders,” she said, thrusting out her hand. “I thought I knew everybody on the faculty.”

  “I’m not on the faculty just yet. I’m considering an offer, so I’m trying to get the lay of the land.”

  “Oh, okay. How can I help you?”

  “My son is a rather special case.”

  “All right.”

  “He’s extremely bright.”

  “So is everybody here. The whole school is a gifted-and-talented program, essentially.”

  “At nine, Jamie devised a muon detector that won a Westinghouse commendation. His IQ is over two hundred. As you know, even in a very accelerated program, students like this can pose some special challenges.”

  “We have such students.”

  “I’m surprised to hear that. They’re relatively rare.”

  “Oh, we have one or two.”

  “That’s very reassuring. How do you approach their needs, if I may ask?”

  “Certainly.” She turned aside and began typing into her computer. “Here,” she said, “we devise special enrichment programs to address the needs and strengths of each child.”

  “Could I see such a program, something you’ve developed for a two-hundred-plus student?”

  “We don’t actually do IQ tests, but there is a student who we’ve identified as hyperintelligent, and we’ve devised a special program for him.”

  “Could I see that, please?”

  “Well, I can show you the program itself, I think—just a minute, let’s see if I can print out his curriculum without his identity. Yeah—no, it’s not gonna let me do that. Here, I’ll read it.”

  As she read off a list of the special tutoring, the accelerated reading program, the various high school and college language, physics, and math classes the child was attending, and his grade-point levels, Mike knew that he had almost certainly identified his kid. If he was also among the Oak Road families, then it was final.

  “That’s certainly very impressive.”

  “It’s an advantage that we’ve got the college right here, of course. His college-level courses are just a short walk away.”

  That little slip told him that it wasn’t a girl. Mary Childs was easy to handle. “That’s a very impressive program. I don’t think my son’s in as good a situation now.”

  “Where are you, if I may ask?”

  Here was a chance to work his list a little more. He chose the professor with the most candidate children. His response rolled out smoothly. “I’m at Mabry in California. I’m in history.”

  “Then you know John Kelton, our department head.”

  “I certainly do. He sent me over here, in fact. But he didn’t say anything about his boys being like my son.”

  “No. But we do have one actively matriculated. That program is in current use, I can assure you.”

  Another two off the list. Nice. That left Paul and Amy Warner and Conner Callaghan among the Oak Road possibilities. But the information had come at a cost: at any time, this woman might mention “Dr. Wenders” to John Kelton. Probably, it would amount to nothing more than a moment of confusion between them, but if it went further, it could be dangerous. “I haven’t actually resigned Mabry yet, so if you don’t mind . . .”

  “Of course, I understand perfectly. Not a word.”

  “May I take a tour? Just look in on a few classes? We’ll be in middle school.”

  She conducted him through their science lab first. Among the things it contained was a truly elaborate tangle of lab glass, with three retorts bubbling happily away. “Oh, boy,” she said, striding over to the rig. “This should not be left on unattended.” She looked quickly around the lab. “Conner?”

  Silence.

  “That boy, he’s always doing this sort of thing. This is supposed to measure the body burden for some-odd-thousand pollutants found in common foodstuffs. But he can’t just leave Bunsen burners on like this.”

  “This is your super-gifted one?”

  She laughed. “Please keep my confidence, too!”

  “Of course.”

  “The Callaghans have their hands full with this one. He’s absolutely awesome. But this experiment’s going to have to be moved to Science Hall, we can’t have this in our lab anymore. Look at some of that glass!”

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it separates each molecule into a different container or something. Probably has five original inventions floating around in there. And he speaks French, German, and Spanish and, God love him, Cantonese.”

  “He must annoy the other students.”

  “Let’s put it this way. If yours comes in, he will be eternally grateful to you for a companion who runs at the same speed.”

  “My son isn’t in this kind of overdrive, but he’s close enough to where I can guess that it’ll be a relief for both of them.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m off to see the libraries,” he said. “I want to thank you for your help. You’ve moved Bell to the top of my list.”

  “Which is where it darned well should be. We’re the best little overlooked and ignored college in the United States.”

  In other words, a perfect backwater for the grays to hide their bright little baby, Conner Callaghan. On the way back to her office, he said, “I’m seeing a rather high class density.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That class back there—I saw about thirty kids.”

  “Where?”

  “Back opposite the lab.”

  She shook her head. “Let’s check that out.” She went into her office and did just what he needed: called up a class list. “Nope. Twenty-two in sixth-grade English B. And that’s high for us. We try to stay around eighteen.”

  Back in his car, he opened the Palm and tapped the screen a few times. He was out of Wi-Fi range, so he attached the antenna to the Palm and was soon looking at her computer’s desktop. The class list was still there. He downloaded it to his Palm’s memory.

  He had his weapon, now, as well, in the form of that list. Armed with it, he would not need to go near Oak Road to carry out his plan, nor would he need to be anywhere near Conner Callaghan when he died, nor would it appear to be an assassination.

  But he would go to Oak Road. Two could play the gray’s lying game, and he planned to trick them into believing that he had bought into their deception. He knew that Conner Callaghan and Paul Warner were in middle school, and that the description given to Lauren was of a high school student. That meant that it was one of the Kelton boys. So Mike would enter the Kelton house and only the Kelton house. The grays would think that he had swallowed their bait.

  What he was going to do there and elsewhere in the community did not involve directly killing anybody. Nor was the process in any way extracted from the grays. It had been invented during World War II, in fact, by a Dr. Antonio Krause, who had brought it from Auschwitz to Dr. Hubertus Strughold’s operation in Texas as part of Operation Paperclip in 1947.

  By now, it was part of CIA routine. Field-tested, reliable as rain. The only difference between what he had to do and how a field agent might function was that he didn’t have a neat little surgical kit and would have to devise his own.

  He drove down to the county seat. He needed a good map of the community, as well as the large property that surrounded the Oak Road development, in addition to a look at the plans of the houses.

  By the time he reached Somersburg, the thin light had gone. The sky was dull now, the sun pallid. The air had that empty coldness that portends a blizzard. He was glad of the car
he’d chosen. A lot of this work had to be done tonight, and he absolutely could not get stuck, not at any point.

  He went into the small county records office, and up to a clerk who sat behind a counter playing Texas Hold ’Em on a computer. He froze his screen and looked up.

  “Any luck?” Mike asked with a smile.

  The clerk raised his eyebrows as if to say that yes, he was having some luck, which meant only one thing: he was having no luck. “What can I do you for?”

  “I’ve seen a large farm out Oak Road east of the town, and—”

  “One, that’s the Niederdorfer farm. Two, they aren’t sellers.”

  “I’d still like to take a look at the plat, if I may.”

  The clerk got up and came back with a large black record book. Mike took it to one of the three tables in the room and opened it. He familiarized himself with the layout of the farm, and noted down the longitude and latitude. In the car, he would use his Palm Pilot to go online and get a topo map. Unlike a cell phone, a Palm Pilot could not be specifically identified just by using it in a wireless context, as long as it was effectively firewall protected, which his was.

  He then went to the pages that contained the little Oak Road development. He copied the plat numbers of each property, then went back to the clerk and asked for the blueprints of the houses.

  “You looking to buy?”

  “Not sure. I want to see what kind of construction I’m looking at in the area.” This office was too small and this man was too inquisitive. He would remember every detail of Mike’s visit, which was really damned unfortunate.

  He finished drawing a diagram of the Kelton place, then returned the book. “I’m looking at the wrong area. Is there an Oak Street in Wilton, maybe?”

  The clerk consulted a map of the community on the wall. “No, not up there.”

  “Well, thank you then.” He cursed himself as he left. This had been sloppy. His problem was that he was too used to power.

  He sat in his car, letting the Palm look for a network. Sure enough, it found one—the town clerk’s. It was WEP encrypted. Good, WEP was easy. The software was online in ten seconds, the encryption solved.