The Border

by Robert McCammon

  “Absolutes are difficult to predict. The odds, as you might say, are stacked against us. But I’ll give you two predictions: This installation will be attacked again, more fiercely the next time. And without some means of stopping this war that I don’t yet have, your world is finished. But you won’t care, sir, because none of you here will live beyond tomorrow or the following day.”

  “Because they want you. If you left here, they’d leave us alone.”

  “They might, but I’m sure you’re already aware that neither side cares to make peace with your civilization. The reason they want me destroyed, Mr. Derryman, is reason enough for you to help me get into S-4.”

  “No. Wrong. We’ve got to stay where we are. Conserve,” he said. His face seemed to have grown a harder skin. “Conserve,” he repeated, now desperately, and his eyes behind the glasses darted between Beale and Ethan with a wet shine of not only anger but a touch of madness.

  The President lowered his head. The tic was still bothering him. He rubbed at the place of its origin, where the nerves were corrupted. Ethan could read the confusion of the man’s thoughts, the need to get into action against a crippling fear that he would find he could do nothing, that he was useless and ineffectual and the country had been lost on his watch. That was the worst thing in the tormented mind, the knowledge that for all the power of his office, he was nearly insignificant against the might of the Gorgons and Cyphers.

  At last Beale looked up.

  Not at Ethan, but at Jefferson Jericho.

  “You’re a man of God,” the President said. “I trust you. What should I do?”

  For once in his life, Jefferson was unable to speak.

  He saw it then. The purpose of his being here. The real purpose, it seemed, of his measure of days. He was being given a second chance, what might be called a shot at redemption, and maybe the peacekeeper couldn’t see the future, that book was yet to be written, but he remembered Ethan saying to Dave We might need this man, so there had been some inkling that he should not be thrown aside or executed or left to die out on the highway like a diseased dog.

  At least that’s what Jefferson wanted to believe, in this moment that came upon him with an overwhelming, nearly heart-stopping force. He felt pushed back into his chair as if all the old air was being forced from a small puncture in his soul.

  “You should trust Ethan,” he said. “Do what he asks.”

  The President sat silently, staring into Jefferson’s eyes.

  “Jason.” Derryman’s voice had weakened. “You can’t go out there. If we lose you, it’s all over.”

  “When can the helicopter be ready?” Beale asked.

  “Please…we can figure something out. You don’t have to—”

  “The helicopter. When can it be ready?”

  The reply was awhile in coming, because Vance Derryman clasped his hands together and worked his knuckles and did not want to surrender. The President waited.

  “Two hours, give or take,” Derryman finally said. He looked like a man in severe conflict, but he’d realized that his first duty was to obey. “It’s been a long time since Garrett or Neilsen have flown. I’d like to put them in the simulator first.”

  “Do that,” Beale said. No one could mistake that it was an official command.

  “If I can’t talk you out of this in the next two hours,” Derryman told him, “I’m going with you. No argument on that point.”

  “No argument, but my mind is made up. Fuel the ’copter, get the pilots ready, get whatever we need. Let’s find out what’s in S-4.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Ethan. “And thank you,” he said to Jefferson Jericho, who also had decided to go on the flight. Jefferson had come so far, it was not something he wanted to miss no matter what the danger. He thought Dave would feel the same way, and maybe Olivia would too.

  There was much to be done. President Beale dismissed them, and they left the apartment to get themselves ready for a journey into the unknown.

  THIRTY-TWO.

  A HEAVY-DUTY TRACTOR TOWED THE BIG, DARK GREEN VH-71 Kestrel helicopter from its hangar onto the helipad on the western side of the White Mansion. This version of Marine One carried only the identification number ‘AA3’ just aft of the cockpit. Small blue lamps outlined the helipad’s edges. A wind had picked up from the northwest bringing an acidic smell of poisoned rain. The clouds had thickened to blot out the last of the sun’s rays, and the light was cut to a dim, grayish cast.

  The passengers were already aboard. Along with President Beale and Vance Derryman were Foggy Winslett, Ethan, Dave, Olivia, and sitting at the back of the cabin two uniformed and helmeted Marines armed with 9mm Colt submachine guns, frag grenades and automatic pistols. The seats were beige-colored fabric and there were two sofas along the left wall the same color and fabric. The windows were covered with dark blue curtains. Light strips glowed along the ceiling, and there was a small table with a lamp on it. The lampshade, Ethan noted, still wore its plastic dust cover. Dignifying the President’s armchair was the Presidential seal. Soon there came the low growl of the three turboshaft engines warming up. The noise grew in power. None of the passengers spoke; this was going to be a trip that tested the nerves, and no one felt like talking. The two Marines had volunteered for the assignment and the pilots, Garrett and Neilsen, had flown Super Stallion transport ’copters from aircraft carriers off Iraq. Everyone knew their job and was professional, though it had been so long since the pilots had been up, they welcomed some time in the simulator.

  Dave pulled a curtain aside for a look out. Beyond the window was a bleak and threatening sky, but the light show of battling warships had ceased. Either their combat had ended in the defeat of one side, or the fight had whirled on many miles distant.

  Everyone was buckled in. Garrett’s voice came over the intercom: “We’re three minutes from liftoff, lady and gentlemen. Welcome aboard, it’s our privilege to serve.” To his credit, he sounded perfectly in control and perfectly at peace with the idea of flying Marine One into the teeth of the alien enemy.

  The rotors started up. Their noise was muffled to a civilized rumble by the construction of the helicopter, made to allow the President to attend to business while in flight.

  Though there was no conversation, Ethan could look at a person, give them his full attention, and ‘hear’ their thoughts like a voice in a dark room. Scanning the people here, he was nearly overwhelmed. What human emotion was not riding in this helicopter? He did the best thing he could; he leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and allowed everyone their privacy, and himself a chance to rest.

  The Kestrel lifted smoothly off from its helipad and rose above the White Mansion. Keeping just below the clouds, it took a southeasterly turn and flew toward its destination at one hundred and seventy miles per hour.

  Ethan, Dave, and Olivia had gone to the infirmary to visit Hannah and Nikki. Hannah was drugged and haggard. She looked ninety years old and as lost as an orphan child. She didn’t make much sense when she talked, but she lay in her bed and at least seemed to be listening when Olivia had told her where they were going.

  “Will you be back?” Hannah had asked in a slow murmur, as if afraid a louder voice might bring a monster back from the dead. She grasped the other woman’s offered hand. “Say you’ll be back, Olivia. We can’t keep going without you.”

  “We’ll be back,” Olivia promised. She herself was in need of more rest and another Valium or two, but she had, as Dave had once said to Jefferson, put her balls on. No matter what was ahead, she had to be there to see it, and she thought Vincent would have approved.

  “Panther Ridge can’t hold on without you,” Hannah continued. She shivered as if struck by a thought like a bullet and her hand tightened on Olivia’s. “Where’s JayDee? I need to see JayDee.”

  “He’s around somewhere,” Olivia said. “Not far.”

  “You’re the leader,” Hannah told her. “You’ve always been the leader. You have to come back. You and Dave
both. Is that Ethan there? My eyes are so screwed up.”

  “It’s me,” Ethan said.

  “I saw you…when you ran into that parking lot. The high school. I saw what happened to the cars and the trucks.” She tried to focus on Olivia again. “They came alive,” she said, as if sharing the most awesome and terrible secret. “Dave said keep that quiet, so I did. Ethan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Protect them. They have to come back to Panther Ridge. All of you do.”

  “I know he’ll do his best,” Olivia said. “You rest now, just try to sleep. Can we get anything for you before we go?”

  “Time,” the old woman said weakly. “More time.” She was already drifting away from them, into what Olivia hoped was the safety of her dreams. They stayed with her until her hand fell away from Olivia’s, the drugs took her down again, and for at least a little while she had left this embattled world.

  “I have to see Nikki,” Ethan said. “I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  He found her in a bed in another room where the walls were painted pale green and there were framed prints of flowers. She had a table and a lamp beside her. She was sitting up against two pillows, there was a plastic cup of orange juice on the table and the remnants of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a small blue plate. She’d been paging through an old copy of a magazine called Elle when Ethan looked into the room.

  “Hi,” he said, in his closest emulation of a fifteen-year-old boy’s tone of voice. “Can I come in?”

  Her single chocolate-colored eye stared at him. The star of her eyepatch glittered under the overhead light, which was powered by a technology a thousand times older than her. Some color had returned to her face, she had taken a shower and the waves of her blonde hair were clean and freshly brushed. The peacekeeper thought it was very good that she was drinking and eating and reading, though reading about the world that used to be and seeing the pretty pictures did nothing to lighten the sadness in her soul.

  He knew she missed Ethan. She had come with him on this trip because she had trusted him, and he’d left her without a word of goodbye. It was not the boy’s fault, it was his own necessity, the way the plan had always been since the moment of his arrival. It was indeed not fair, it was indeed a cruelty, and though the peacekeeper’s intent was on the benefit of the Many he did have feeling for the emotions of the One.

  He had existed a long time, longer than Nikki Stanwick could comprehend. He was nothing she could fully understand. But in all that time he had never faced a situation such as this, and he didn’t know what to say.

  He could feel her deciding whether to invite him in or not, and he almost backed off and went away to spare her any more of him, but then she said, quietly, still uncertain but willing to give him a chance, “Sure.”

  He went in.

  “Nice room,” he said.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Got everything you need?”

  “I guess.”

  “Weird not to have windows.”

  “Weird,” she said. “That’s funny, coming from you.”

  “Yes…” He hesitated and tried that again: “Yeah, I know it is.”

  “Don’t try to talk like him,” she said. “You’re not him. Don’t pretend.”

  “Oh. Yes. Okay.” He nodded. “You’re right, I could never be him.”

  “Did you come here for some reason?”

  “I did. Dave, Olivia, and I are leaving here in a couple of hours. We’re going with President Beale in his helicopter to Area 51. Well…an area called S-4. It’s where research is done on alien artifacts.” He decided to simplify that. “Things taken from flying saucers that have crashed. I think—I hope—something may be there I can use.”

  “You mean…like…a ray gun or something?”

  “I’m not sure a ray gun would stop this war, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  “Hm,” she said. It was a moment before she spoke again, and Ethan heard the words as they formed in her mind. “Actually…that’s kind of cool.”

  Ethan didn’t know where to rest his silver eyes. He knew they creeped her out. One had been ‘kind of cool’, but two were too much.

  “What do those letters on your chest mean?” she asked. “Why did they come up? How come when you’re touched your skin turns silver there?”

  Everything came from the greater power, Ethan thought. Everything to remind him that he was in the service of that power, and though he wore a suit of skin he was not permitted to believe he was one of them, even for an instant.

  “General Winslett wears colored bars on his chest to signify battles he’s been in, or medals he’s been given,” the peacekeeper said. “These are mine. Each symbol has a meaning, and together they spell out my purpose: Guardian, in your language.”

  “I’ve seen runes like that before. Don’t they come from Earth?”

  “They’re very ancient. I imagine they found their way to this world somehow, maybe in a crashed ship or as a gift. I’m sure other symbols did, and are considered now to be ancient or unknown languages. Sorry…I know I’m sounding kind of…” He searched for the word. “Weird,” was what he came up with. “As for my skin—Ethan’s skin—turning silver at the touch…I believe it’s a chemical reaction.” Living tissue to tissue that I am keeping alive by my own life force, he thought, but he didn’t want to speak this because to Nikki this would be way beyond the boundaries of weird.

  “I understand,” she replied. Then she frowned. “I guess. Wow,” she said. “What my buds at the Bowl-A-Rama would have thought about this!”

  “They would never have believed it, even if I was standing next to you. They’d think I was made up for…” He shrugged.

  “A horror movie,” Nikki said.

  He smiled a little bit. “Am I that bad?”

  “With those eyes, you’re as scary as hell,” she said, giving him the truth.

  “Let’s hope I can scare the Gorgons and Cyphers into ending this war.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “let’s hope.”

  Again he searched for the right language. Communication on this world seemed to be a matter of figuring out what sequence of words would hurt someone the least. “I’m sorry I took him away so suddenly,” he said at last.

  “You said it was time, and I guess he knew that. You don’t have to tell me you’re sorry. Anyway…you’re something—somebody, I mean—special. Like astral. So who I am to say you did wrong?”

  “Because even something astral can make a mistake. You came with us because you trusted him. I took him away from you. From all of you. I should’ve allowed him more time.”

  “Well,” she said, “he’s out of this now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I ought to be happy…but I really do miss him. He was a pretty cool guy.” She gave him back a tender, wistful smile. “And you’re pretty cool too, but you’re not him.”

  “Weird, scary, but cool,” the peacekeeper said. “What more can an astral entity ask for?”

  She was able to laugh, and he thought it was a beautiful sound. She had a distance to go, but she was going to be all right. Now he had to find a way to do what was needed, for Nikki and Olivia, for Dave and JayDee and Hannah, for everyone who had struggled on and lived with fading hope. Even for the memory of those who had withered away and died in barren misery, and even for Jefferson Jericho, who’d fulfilled a role that Ethan had not fully realized was waiting for him.

  “Can I bring you anything?” he asked.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Well…I suppose I should go now.”

  “Ethan?” she said as he started to withdraw. He hesitated. “I forgive you, if you want to hear that,” she said. “But you did the right thing.”

  “Thank you, Nikki,” he answered, because though he was not human and was far from being so he did need to hear that, just as much as if he’d been born from this Earth and not created in what seemed like a dream in the unknowable mind of the greate
r power.

  Then he left her, and he continued on to where he needed to go.

  The VH-71 Kestrel was in sure and steady hands. It flew into the gathering darkness, all its identification strobes turned off, the noise of the rotors a muffled hum within the helicopter’s soundproofed cabin.

  They had been flying over an hour. Ethan opened his eyes and felt the Cypher tracker on him like a hot spot at the top of his head. It was always on him, and had been following since the Kestrel had left its helipad. Now there were other things out there, too. It only took him a few seconds to process the harmonic signals of two Gorgon warships, one to the east and one to the west, on courses parallel to their flight path. They were drifting along, following the tracker embedded in the back of Jefferson’s neck. Each ship was still over a hundred miles away; that distance was nothing to them, they could eat that distance up in less than ten seconds if they went to a higher speed, but Ethan sensed that they were moving slowly, not wanting to get too close. Of course, they reasoned he could feel them. There might be a specialized entity on board each craft who could sense Ethan’s awareness of them. They were in no hurry. And they were being cautious too, because on his own highly-tuned mental radar, he could “see” the movements of the sleek black Cypher warships prowling through the clouds at a higher altitude. There were five of them in a precise V-shaped formation. Those also were over a hundred miles distant, yet could speed across the miles in less than the time it would take for Ethan to tell Vance Derryman that they were being stalked.

  But Ethan knew that Derryman already figured the Cyphers and Gorgons were not very far away. No one in this helicopter doubted that they were being followed. So Ethan closed his eyes again and rested while he kept his mental eye open for any change of speed in the warships. It would do no good to increase the anxiety of anyone here, particularly not Derryman, General Winslett, the President, or the pilots. They were aware; that was enough.

  The flight continued without incident. Everyone was free to get up, to use the bathroom, to get a drink of water or a canned soft drink from the bar. At one point the President got up and stretched, and he went through the door into the cockpit and stayed there awhile. Derryman and Winslett talked in hushed whispers. Ethan declined to listen either to their words or the creation of those words in their minds. But they were deeply afraid, that was apparent. Neither one had dared to pull aside a curtain and look out a window since the flight had begun.