The Year of the Quiet Sun

by Wilson Tucker

  The legend on the red dustjacket was as familiar as the back of his hand. From the Qumran Caves: Past, Present, and Future. The line of type next below omitted the word by and read only: Dr. Brian Chaney. The bright jacket was an abomination created by the sales department over the inert body of a conservative editor; it was designed to appeal to the lunatic fringe. He detested it. Despite his careful explanations, despite his scholarly translation of a suspect scroll, the book had stirred up twice the storm he’d expected and aroused the ire of righteous citizens everywhere. String up the blasphemer!

  A small card protruded from the middle pages.

  Chaney opened the volume with curiosity and found a calling card with her name imprinted on one side, and the address of a government laboratory in Illinois written on the other. He supposed that the ten fifty-dollar bills tucked between the pages represented travel money. Or a shameless bribe added to the blouse, the pants, and the perfume worn on her breast.

  “I’m not going!” he shouted after the woman. “The computer lied — I’m a charlatan. The Bureau can go play with its weights!”

  She didn’t turn around, didn’t look back.

  “That woman is too damned sure of herself.”

  Elwood National Research Station

  Joliet, Illinois

  12 June 1978

  A hair perhaps divides the false and true;

  Yes, and a single Alif were the clue

  (could you but find it) to the treasure-house,

  And peradventure to the Master too.

  —Omar Khayyam

  TWO

  Two steps ahead, the military policeman who had escorted him from the front gate opened a door and said: “This is your briefing room, sir.”

  Brian Chaney thanked him and went through the door.

  He found the young woman critically eyeing him, assessing him, expecting him. Two men in the room were playing cards. An oversized steel table — the standard government issue — was positioned in the center of the room under bright lights. Three bulky brown envelopes were stacked on the table near the woman, while the men and their time-killing game occupied the far end of it. Kathryn van Hise had been watching the door as it opened, anticipating him, but only now did the players glance up from their game to look at the newcomer.

  He nodded to the men and said: “My name is Chaney. I’ve been—”

  The hurtful sound stopped him, cut off his words.

  The sound was something like a massive rubber band snapped against his eardrums, something like a hammer or a mallet smashing into a block of compressed air. It made a noise of impact, followed by a reluctant sigh as if the hammer was rebounding in slow motion through an oily fluid. The sound hurt. The lights dimmed.

  The three people in the briefing room were staring at something behind him, above him.

  Chaney spun around but found nothing more than a wall clock above the door. They were watching the red sweep hand. He turned back to the trio with a question on his lips, but the woman made a little motion to silence him. She and her male companions continued to watch, the clock with a fixed intensity.

  The newcomer waited them out.

  He saw nothing in the room to cause the sound, nothing to explain their concentrated interest; there was only the usual furniture of a government-appointed briefing room and the four people who now occupied it. The walls were bare of maps, and that was a bit unusual; there were three telephones of different colors on a stand near the door, and that was a bit unusual; but otherwise it was no more than a windowless, guarded briefing room located on an equally well-guarded military reservation forty-five minutes by armored train from Chicago.

  He had entered through the customary guarded gate of a restricted installation encompassing about five square miles, had been examined and identified with the customary thoroughness of military personnel, and had been escorted to the room with no explanation and little delay. Massive outer doors on a structure that appeared earthquake-proof stirred his wonder. There were several widely scattered buildings on the tract — but none as substantial as this one — which led him to believe it had once been a munitions factory. Now, the presence of a number of people of both sexes moving about the grounds suggested a less hazardous installation. No outward hint or sign indicated the present activity, and Chaney wondered if knowledge of the vehicle was shared with station personnel.

  He held his silence, again studying the woman. She was sitting down, and he mentally speculated on the length of the skirt she was wearing today, as compared to the delta pants of the beach.

  The younger of the two men suddenly pointed to the clock. “Hold onto your hat, mister!”

  Chaney glanced at the clock then back to the speaker. He judged the fellow at about thirty, only a few years younger than himself, but having the same lanky height. He was sandy haired, muscular, and something about the set of his eyes suggested a seafarer; the skin was deeply bronzed, as opposed to the girl’s new tan, and now his open mouth revealed a silver filling in a front tooth. Like his companions, he was dressed in casual summer clothing, his sportshirt half unbuttoned down the front. His finger pointed at the clock dropped, as if in signal.

  The reluctant sigh of the hammer or the mallet plowing sluggishly through a fluid filled the room, and Chaney wanted to cover his ears. Again the unseen hammer smashed into compressed air, the rubber band struck his eardrums, and there was a final, anticlimactic pop.

  “There you are,” the younger man said. “The same old sixty-one.” He glanced at Chaney and added what appeared to be an explanation. “Sixty-one seconds, mister.

  “Is that good?”

  “That’s the best we’ll ever have.”

  “Bully. What’s going on?”

  “Testing. Testing, testing, testing, over and over again. Even the monkeys are getting tired of it.” He shot a quick glance at Kathryn van Hise, as if to ask: Does he know?

  The other card player studied Chaney with some reserve, wanting to fit him into some convenient slot. He was an older man. “Your name is Chaney,” he repeated dourly. “And you’ve been — what?”

  “Drafted,” Chaney replied, and saw the man wince.

  The young woman said quickly: “Mr. Chaney?”

  He turned and found her standing. “Miss van Hise.”

  “We expected you earlier, Mr. Chaney.”

  “You expected too much. I had to wait for a few days for sleeper reservations, and I laid over in Chicago to visit old friends. I wasn’t eager to leave the beach, Miss van Hise.”

  “Sleeper?” the older man demanded. “The railroad? Why didn’t you fly in?”

  Chaney felt embarrassed. “I’m afraid of planes.”

  The sandy-haired man exploded in howling laughter and pointed an explanatory finger at his dour companion. “Air Force,” he said to Chaney. “Born in the air and flies by the seat of his pants.” He slapped the table and the cards jumped, but no one shared his high humor. “You’re off to a fine start, mister!”

  “Must I hold a candle to my shame?” Chaney asked.

  The woman said again: “Mr. Chaney, please.”

  He gave her his attention, and she introduced him to the card players.

  Major William Theodore Moresby was the disapproving Air Force career man, now in his middle forties, whose receding hairline accented his rather large and penetrating gray-green eyes. The ridge of his nose was sharp, bony, and had once been broken. There was the suspicion of a double chin, and another suspicion of a building paunch beneath the summer shirt he wore outside his trousers. Major Moresby had no humor, and he shook hands with the tardy newcomer with the air of a man shaking hands with a draft dodger newly returned from Canada.

  The younger man with the bronzed muscular frame and the prominent dental work was Lieutenant Commander Arthur Saltus. He congratulated Chaney on having the good sense of being reluctant to leave the sea, and said he’d been Navy since he was fifteen years old. Lied about his age, and furnished forged papers to underscor
e the lie. Even in the windowless room his eyes were set against the bright sunlight on the water. He was likable.

  “A civilian?” Major Moresby asked gravely.

  “Someone has to stay home and pay the taxes,” Chaney responded in the same tone.

  The young woman broke in quickly, diplomatically. “Official policy, Major. Our directive was to establish a balanced team.” She glanced apologetically at Chaney. “Some people in the Senate were unhappy with the early NASA policy of selecting only military personnel for the orbital missions, and so we were directed to recruit a more balanced crew to — to avert a possible future inquiry. The Bureau is mindful of Congressional judgments.”

  Saltus: “Translation: we’ve got to keep those funds rolling in.”

  Moresby: “Damn it! Is politics into this thing?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m afraid so. The Senate subcommittee overseeing our project has posted an agent here to maintain liaison. it is to be regretted, sir, but some few of them profess to see a parallel to the old Manhattan project, and so they insisted on continuous liaison.”

  “You mean surveillance,” Moresby groused.

  “Oh, cheer up, William.” Arthur Saltus had picked up the scattered cards and was noisily shuffling the deck. “This one civilian won’t hurt us; we outnumber him two to one, and look at the rank he hasn’t got. Tailend of the team, last man in the bucket, and we’ll make him do the writing.” He turned back to the civilian. “What do you do, Chaney? Astronomer? Cartographer? Something?”

  “Something,” Chaney answered easily. “Researcher, translator, statistician, a little of this and that.”

  Kathryn van Hise said: “Mr. Chaney authored the Indic report.”

  “Ah,” Saltus nodded. “That Chaney.”

  “Mr. Chaney authored a book on the Qumran scrolls.”

  Major Moresby reacted. “That Chaney?”

  Brian Chaney said: “Mr. Chaney will walk out of here in high pique and blow up the building. He objects to being the bug under the microscope.”

  Arthur Saltus stared at him with round eyes. “I’ve heard about you, mister! William has your book. They want to hang you up by your thumbs.”

  Chaney said amiably: “That happens every now and then. St. Jerome upset the Church with his radical translation in the fifth century, and they were intent on stretching more than his thumbs before somebody quieted them down. He produced a new Latin translation of the Old Testament, but his critics didn’t exactly cheer him. No matter — his work outlived them. Their names are forgotten.”

  “Good for him. Was it successful?”

  “It was. You may know the Vulgate.”

  Saltus seemed vaguely familiar with the name, but the Major was reddened and fuming.

  “Chaney! You aren’t comparing this poppycock of yours to the Vulgate?”

  “No, sir,” Chaney said softly to placate the man. He now knew the Major’s religion, and knew the man had read his book with loose attention. “I’m pointing out that after fifteen centuries the radical is accepted as the norm. My translation of the Revelations only seems radical now. I may have the same luck, but I don’t expect to be canonized.”

  Kathryn van Hise said insistently: “Gentlemen.”

  Three heads turned to look at her.

  “Please sit down, gentlemen. We really should get started on this work.”

  “Now?” Saltus asked. “Today?”

  “We have already lost too much time. Sit down.”

  When they were seated, the irrepressible Arthur Saltus turned in his chair. “She’s a hard taskmaster, mister. A martinet, a despot — but she’s trim for all of that. A really shipshape civilian, not an ordinary government girl. We call her Katrina — she’s Dutch, you know.”

  “Agreed,” Chaney said. He remembered the transparent blouse and the delta pants, and nodded to her in a manner that might be the beginning of a bow. “I treasure a daily beauty in my life.” The young woman colored.

  “To the point!” Saltus declared. “I’m beginning to have ideas about you, civilian researcher. I thought I recognized that first one you pulled, that candle thing.”

  “Bartlett is a good man to know.”

  “Look, now, about your book, about those scrolls you translated. How did you ever get them declassified?”

  “They were never classified.”

  Saltus showed his disbelief. “Oh, they had to be! The government over there wouldn’t want them out.”

  “Not so. There was no secrecy involved; the documents were there to read. The Israeli government kept ownership of them, of course, and now the scrolls have been sent to another place for safekeeping for the duration of the war, but that’s the extent of it.” He glanced covertly at the Major. The man was listening in sullen silence. “It would be a tragedy if they were destroyed by the shelling.”

  “I’ll bet you know where they are.”

  “Yes, but that’s the only secret concerning them. When the war is over they’ll be brought out and put on display again.”

  “Hey — do you think the Arabs will crack Israel?”

  “No, not now. Ten, twenty years ago, they may have, but not now. I’ve seen their munitions plants.”

  Saltus leaned forward. “Have they got the H-bomb?”

  “Yes.”

  Saltus whistled. Moresby muttered: “Armageddon.”

  “Gentlemen! May I have your attention now?”

  Kathryn van Hise was sitting straight in her chair, her hands resting on the brown envelopes. Her fingers were interlaced and the thumbs rose to make a pointed steeple.

  Saltus laughed. “You always have it, Katrina.”

  Her responding frown was a quick and fleeting thing. “I am your briefing officer. My task is to prepare you for a mission which has no precedent in history, but one that is very near culmination. It is desirable that the project now go forward with all reasonable speed. I must insist that we begin preparations at once.”

  Chaney asked: “Are we working for NASA?”

  “No, sir. You are directly employed by the Bureau of Standards and will not be identified with any other agency or department. The nature of the work will not be made public, of course. The White House insists on that.”

  He knew a measure of relief when she answered the next question, but it was of short duration. “You’re not going to put us into orbit? We won’t have to do this work on moon, or somewhere?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s a relief. I won’t have to fly?”

  She said carefully: “I cannot reassure you on that point, sir. If we fail to attain our primary objective, the secondary targets may involve flying.”

  “That’s bad. There are alternatives?”

  “Yes, sir. Two alternatives have been planned, if for any reason we cannot accomplish the first objective.”

  Major Moresby chuckled at his discomfiture.

  Chaney asked: “Do we just sit here and wait for something to happen — wait for that vehicle to work?”

  “No, sir. I will help you to prepare yourself, on the assurance that something will happen. The testing is nearly completed and we expect the conclusion at any time. When it is completed, all of you will then acquaint yourselves with vehicle operation; and when that is done a field trial will be arranged. Following a successful field trial, the actual survey will get underway. We are most optimistic that each phase of the operation will be concluded in good order and in the shortest possible time.” She paused to lend emphasis to her next statement. “The first objective will be a broad political and demographic survey of the near future; we wish to learn the political stability of that future and the well-being of the general populace. We may be able to contribute to both by having advance knowledge of their problems. Toward that end you will study and map the central United States at the turn of the century, at about the year 2000.”

  Saltus: “Hot damn!”

  Chaney felt a recurrence of the initial shock he’d known on the beach; this wasn’t to
be an academic study.

  “We’re going up there? That far?”

  “I thought I had made that clear, Mr. Chaney.”

  “Not that clear,” he said with some embarrassment and confusion. “The wind was blowing on the beach — my mind was on other things.” Hasty side glances at Saltus and the Major offered little comfort: one was grinning at him and the other was contemptuous. “I had supposed my role was to be a passive one: laying out the guidelines, preparing the surveys and the like. I had supposed you were using instruments for the actual probe—” But he realized how lame that sounded.

  “No, sir. Each of you will go forward to conduct the survey. You will employ certain instruments in the field, but the human element is necessary.”

  Moresby may have thought to needle him. “Seniority will apply, after all. We will move up in the proper order. Myself first, then Art, and then you.”

  “We expect to launch the survey within three weeks, given the completion of the testing schedule.” Her voice may have held a trace of amusement at his expense. “It may be sooner if your training program can be completed sooner. A physical examination is scheduled for later this afternoon, Mr. Chaney; the others have already had theirs. The examinations will continue at the rate of two per week until the survey vehicle is actually launched.”

  “Why?”

  “For your protection and ours, sir. If a serious defect exists we must know it now.”

  He said weakly: “I have the heart of a chicken.”

  “But I understood you were under fire in Israel?”

  “That’s different. I couldn’t stop the shelling and the work had to be done.”

  “You could have quit the country.”

  “No, I couldn’t do that — not until the work was done, not until the translation was finished and the book ready.”

  Kathryn van Hise tapped her fingers together and only looked at him. She thought that was answer enough.

  Chaney recalled something she had said on the beach, something she had quoted or inferred from his dossier. Or perhaps it was that damned computer profile rattling off his supposed resolution and stability. He had a quick suspicion.