by Greg Bear
“Precisely. We’ve screwed up. Polluted, overarmed. The twentieth century has been a mess. The bloodiest century in human history. More needless human death than at any other time.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Hicks said.
“And now, we move outward. Perhaps we’ve been suffered only so long as we remained on Earth. Now—”
“It’s an old idea,” Hicks interrupted, his unease converting rapidly to irritation.
“Does that mean it’s invalid?”
“I think there are better ideas,” Hicks said.
“Ah,” Crockerman said, his own breakfast still untouched. “But none of them convince me. I am the only judge I can truly rely upon in this situation, am I not?”
“No, sir. There are experts—”
“In my political career, I have ignored the advice of experts many times, and I have prevailed. This made me different from other, more standard aspirants to high office. Now, I grant you, such a ploy has its risks.”
“I’m getting lost again, sir. What ploy?”
“Ignoring experts.” The President leaned forward, extending his hands across the table, fists clenched, his eyes moist. Crockerman’s expression was a rictus of pain. “I asked the Guest one thing, and received one important answer, from all of our questions…I asked it, ‘Do you believe in God,’ and it replied, ‘I believe in punishment.’” He leaned back, looking at his fists and relaxing them, rubbing the palms, where fingernails had dug deep. “That must be significant. Perhaps the Guest is from another world, another place where transgressors have been dealt with severely. That thing out there in the ‘Furnace,’ Death Valley of all places…We have been told it will render the Earth down into slag. Total destruction. We have been told we cannot destroy it. I believe in fact we cannot.”
Hicks was about to say something, but Crockerman continued, his voice low.
“God, a superior intelligence, sculpts us all, finds us wanting, and sends our material back into the forge to be reshaped. That thing out there. The Furnace. That’s the forge of God. That’s what we’re up against. Might be up against.”
“And the Australian artifact, the robots, the messages?”
“I don’t know,” Crockerman said. “It would clearly sound insane to claim the Australians were dealing with an adversary…But perhaps.”
“Adversary…a kind of Satan?”
“Something opposed to the Creator. A force that hopes we will be allowed to continue our transgressions, to put all creation out of balance.”
“I think there are better explanations, Mr. President,” Hicks said quietly.
“Then please,” Crockerman pleaded, “tell me what they are.”
“I am not qualified,” Hicks said. “I know almost nothing about what’s happened. Only what you’ve told me.”
“Then how can you be critical of my theory?”
The way Crockerman spoke, like a child though using grown-up words, chilled Hicks to the bone. A friend had once spoken to Hicks in a similar tone in London in 1959; she had died by her own hand a month later.
“It is not realistic,” he said.
“Is anything about this situation realistic?” Crockerman asked. Neither had done much more than push the food around on his plate.
Hicks took a bite. The omelet was cold. He ate it anyway, and Crockerman began to eat his. Neither spoke again until the plates were empty, as if engaged in a contest of silence. The waitress took the plates away and poured more coffee into Hicks’s cup.
“I apologize,” the President said, wiping his lips with the napkin and folding it on the table. “I’ve been rude with you. That’s unforgivable.”
Hicks mumbled something about the strain they were all under, and how it was understandable.
“You give me a kind of perspective, however,” Crockerman said. “I can see, just watching your reaction, how others would react. This is a very difficult time, in more ways than one. I’ve had to interrupt my campaign schedule. The election is less than a month away. Timing is very important. I see I need to trim the rough edges from my phrases…”
“Sir, it is not phrasing. It is perspective,” Hicks said, his voice rising. “If you pursue these theories of cosmic recrimination, I can hardly imagine the damage you might cause.”
“Yes. I see that.”
Do you? Hicks asked himself. And then, examining Crockerman’s suspicious, half-lidded expression, Yes, perhaps you do…but that won’t stop you.
17
Octobers
Arthur unfolded a newspaper as the Learjet taxied across the runway. On a far apron, B-l bombers lined up, their sleek tan, gray, and green shapes obscured by a layer of early morning sea haze. It took a few seconds for him to focus on the headlines. His thoughts were still on Harry Feinman, and on the autopsy.
The Guest had no discrete internal organ structure. Stuffed within the thoracic cage was shell-pink tissue continuous except for occasional cavities, more like a brain than anything else. The head consisted of the Lexan-like articulated bone material, arranged in large solid masses, with no discernible central nervous system. Small nodes the size of BBs interrupted the continuity of the bone; they appeared to be made of some sort of metal, perhaps silver.
Harry would soon be undergoing his own probing and examination in Los Angeles.
The plane completed its taxi and began to accelerate down the runway, small jets screaming thinly beyond the insulated walls.
Arthur focused on the newspaper. The front page headline read,
PRESIDENT ON SECRET DEATH VALLEY VISIT
Details Unclear:
May Be Related to Australian Aliens
The same unscrambled transmission that had brought Trevor Hicks to Furnace Creek had led other reporters, just hours later, to reach similar conclusions. Hicks had struck a mother lode. The others had had to make do with testimony from inhabitants of Shoshone and one phone call to Furnace Creek Inn that had gotten through to the apartment of a maid who spoke only Spanish. Bernice Morgan had not been interviewed. Perhaps Crockerman persuaded her, Arthur thought, tracking the story several times to see if he had missed any telling details.
General Paul Fulton, Commander in Chief of West Coast Shuttle Operations, was on the flight with Arthur. He came forward as soon as they were in the air and had finished their climb to 28,000 feet.
“Ah, the good old free press,” he commented, taking the neighboring seat. “Pardon me, Mr. Gordon. We haven’t had time to just sit and talk.”
“You’re going back to testify?”
“Before some key congressmen, before the Space Activities Committee senators — God only knows what Proxmire is going to make of this. How he got on that committee in the first place is beyond me. The man’s politically immortal.”
Arthur nodded. He felt as if his brain were mush. He had hoped to sleep through the entire flight, but Fulton seemed to have something on his mind.
“A lot of us are worried about Crockerman’s choice of Trevor Hicks. He’s a science fiction writer—”
“Only recently,” Arthur said. “He’s quite a decent science writer, actually.”
“Yes, and we actually don’t fault the choice of Hicks, but we wonder about the President’s need to go beyond the…primary group. His staff and advisors and Cabinet. The assigned experts.”
“He wanted a second opinion. He mentioned that a couple of times.”
Fulton shrugged. “The Guest shook him.”
“The Guest shook me, too,” Arthur said.
Fulton dropped the subject abruptly. “There will be two of our Australian counterparts in Washington when we arrive. Flown in fresh from Melbourne. They were spare parts down there, I suspect. The really important man — Quentin Bent — is staying behind. Do you know him?”
“No,” Arthur said. “There’s something of a gap between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, science-wise, in all but astronomy. Bent’s not an astronomer. He’s a sociologist, I believe.”
&n
bsp; Fulton looked dubious. “Your colleague, Dr. Feinman… Is he going to be able to keep up?”
“I think so.” Arthur recognized that he was taking a disliking to General Fulton, and wondered how reasonable that was. The man was only trying to gather information.
“What does he have?”
“Chronic leukemia.”
“Terminal?”
“His doctors think it’s treatable.”
Fulton nodded. “I wonder if that’s not a good diagnosis for the Earth.”
Arthur didn’t catch his meaning.
“Cancer,” Fulton volunteered. “Cosmic cancer.”
Arthur nodded reflectively and looked out the window, wondering when he would find time to call Francine, talk to Marty, touch base with the real world.
Lieutenant Colonel Albert Rogers took the radio message in hand and climbed out of the rear door of the communications trailer, down the corrugated metal steps to the crunchy white sand. He didn’t really want to think about the implications of his orders; thinking on such an esoteric level would do him no good whatsoever. The Guest was dead; Arthur Gordon had ordered his team to investigate the interior of the Furnace. Rogers would not allow anyone but himself to do it.
He had been planning for such a mission. He had drawn incomplete diagrams of the bogey’s interior in a small notebook, little more than suppositions based on length, height, width, and the angle and length of the tube running through solid rock. Climbing the tube would present no problem — even where it angled straight up, he could take it like a rock climber in a chimney, back against one side, legs/jackknifed and feet pressed against the other, inching his way up. He would carry a miniature digital video recorder, smaller than the palm of his hand, and a helmet-mounted finger-sized video camera. A Hasselblad for high-resolution pictures and a smaller, lighter automatic film-packed 35mm Leica completed his equipment. He doubted the investigation would take more than a day. There was, of course, the possibility that the bogey was honeycombed with interior spaces. Some-how, he doubted that.
As a sergeant and corporal brought the supplies he requested from the stores trailer, he drew up his itinerary and discussed emergency measures with his second-in-command, Major Peter Keller. Rogers then donned the chest pack and heavy climbing boots, coiled three lengths of rope neatly and hung them from his belt, and walked around the south side of the bogey.
He checked his watch and set its timer. It was six a.m. The desert was still wrapped in gray dawn, high cirrus stretching from horizon to horizon in a thin layer. The desert smelled of clean cold air, a hint of dry creosote bush.
“Give me a lift,” Rogers instructed Keller. The major meshed the fingers of both hands to make a stirrup and Rogers stepped into the stirrup with his left foot. With a heave-ho, Keller lifted him into the tunnel. Rogers lay on his back in the angled shaft for a moment, staring at the first bend, about forty feet into the rock. “Okay,” he said, punching the button on his watch for the timer to start. “I’m off.”
They had decided against unwinding a telephone wire and communicating directly with him as he climbed. The video recorder was equipped with a small lapel mike, into which he would make oral observations; the video camera would make an adequate record of what he saw from moment to moment. If time and opportunity presented, he would take pictures with the other cameras.
“Good luck, sir,” Keller called as. he began his low-angle ascent up the tunnel.
“The hell with that,” Rogers grunted under his breath. The first thirty feet were easy, a wriggling crawl. At the bend, he paused to shine a light up into the darkness. The tunnel angled straight up after the first thirty feet of incline. He noted this aloud for the record, then looked down over his stomach and legs at the cameo of Keller’s face. Keller made an okay sign with circled thumb and index finger. Rogers blinked his light twice.
“I’m going into the belly of an alien spaceship,” he told himself silently, grimacing fiercely to limber his tense jaw and face muscles. “I’m crawling up into an unknown. That’s it. Don’t be afraid.” And he wasn’t — a kind of energetic calm, almost a high, came over him.
He thought of his wife and four-year-old daughter living in Barstow, and a variety of scenarios stacked up behind their faces. Heroic dead father and lifetime benefits. Actually, he wasn’t clear on the benefits. He should be. He vowed to check that out immediately when he got back. Much better thought: heroic live father and retirement at twenty years and going into some business, defense contract consultant maybe, though he had never thought of that before. First man inside an alien spaceship. Real estate was more likely. Not in Barstow, however. San Diego, maybe, though being ex-Navy or ex-Marine would be more help there.
He began to climb, rubber-soled boots grabbing the rock and hands bracing against the opposite wall. A foot at a time. No damaging the spacecraft; not even a scratch. He heaved himself up with a grunt, again locking his boots and hands against the rock. Smooth surface, nothing like lava. Featureless and gray, amorphous. Astronauts had been trained in geology when they landed on the moon. No need to train an Army colonel. Besides, this wasn’t a natural place; what good would geology do?
At least it wasn’t slippery.
He had climbed fifteen feet when he paused and shined his light forward. Another bend above him, beyond which they had not probed with the pole-mounted cameras. Truly unknown. Rogers conjured up the few science fiction movies he had seen. He had never been a big fan of science fiction movies. Most of his buddies had enjoyed Aliens when they watched it on a VCR just out of boot camp. He tried to forget about that one.
The Guest was dead. What if that made the others angry? What if they knew, somehow, and were waiting for him?
He was still calm, still slightly high, eyes wide, pupils dilated in the dark, face moist with exertion. Up, up, and then over the lip of the bend. He rested in the nearly level tunnel beyond the bend, shining his light into impenetrable darkness. Pulling out his notebook, he worked quickly to figure angles and distances. He was about fifteen or twenty feet from the outer surface. Shining his light on a notebook page with the chart of the interior, he drew in the level tunnel. His path resembled a dogleg tire iron, thirty feet into the mound at an upward angle, then straight up twenty feet or so, and now horizontally into the interior.
Silence. No sounds of machinery, no voices, no air moving. Just his own breathing. When he had rested a few minutes, he crawled, flashlight strapped to one wrist sweeping the tunnel with every motion.
Ninety feet ahead, the tunnel opened into a larger space. He did not hesitate. Eager to be out of the confinement, Rogers scrambled forward and grabbed the lip of the tunnel with both hands, pulling his head out. He played the light across the enclosed volume.
“I’m in a cylindrical chamber,” he said aloud, “about thirty feet long and twenty across. I’m probably in the middle of the mound” — he referred to his sketch — “below the peak maybe sixty or eighty feet. The walls are shiny, like enamel or plastic or glass. Dark gray, with a bluish tint. The tunnel opens near the rear of the cylinder, and at the front” — he consulted his chart — “pointing northwest, there is another space, even larger. No sign of quarters or inhabitants. No activity.”
He stood up in the cylinder, testing the surface with his boots. There was still enough traction to walk easily. “I’m going forward.”
Rogers walked to the edge of the cylinder, keeping his light shined ahead. Then he opened his chest pack and pulled out two superbright torches. Holding them away from his eyes, he flicked the switches on both.
Mouth wide open, Rogers surveyed a cavern at least a hundred feet long and eighty feet high. The cylindrical chamber was squarely in the center of one end, placing him about twenty feet above the bottom. “It’s full of shiny facets, like a gem,” he said. “More like glass, not mirrors but shiny. Not just facets, either, but structures — beams, supports, braces. It’s like a cathedral inside here, but made of blue-gray glass.” He took several dozen
pictures with the Hasselblad, then lowered the camera and just stared, trying to impress the memory and make sense out of what he was seeing.
From the end of the cylinder to the ornate gleaming surface below was a drop of at least thirty feet. No rappelling down; there was nothing to tie the rope onto, and he would not even try to hammer a piton into place.
“I can’t go any farther,” he said. “There’s nothing moving. No place I’d call living quarters. No machinery visible, even. And no lights. I’m going to turn off the torches and see if anything glows afterward.” He plunged himself into complete darkness. For a moment, his throat constricted and he coughed, the sound breaking into a chatter of echoes.
“I don’t see anything,” he said after a few minutes of darkness. “I’m going to turn the torches on to take more pictures.” He reached for the switches and then paused, squinting. Directly ahead, burning dimly and steadily, was a tiny red light, no more than a star in the vastness. “Wait. I don’t know if the video can pick that up. It’s very weak. Just a single red light, like a pinprick.”
He watched the gleam for several more minutes. All motions it made were easily explained by optical illusion; it changed neither in position nor brightness. “I don’t think the ship is dead. It’s just waiting.” Then he shook his head. “But maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, just because of one little red light.” Turning on his wrist flashlight, he mounted a telephoto lens on the Hasselblad and set the camera to a long exposure, then rested it on the lip of the cylinder, facing the red light. With a remote button, he opened the camera lens. When the exposure was complete, he reset for even longer and shot another. Then he turned on the torches and sat down to fill his memory with as much detail as he could. “It’s still silent,” he said.
After fifteen minutes, he got to his feet and instinctively brushed off his pants. “All right. I’m going back.”
To his enormous relief, nothing interfered with his return journey.
