“Please, Dr. Scarborough, call me Kate,” said the woman with a sexy chuckle in her voice.
“Only if you call me Everett, my dear.” The doctor paused to clear his throat. Even this sound had the tone of authority, as though an announcement of great import were about to be intoned. “Make sure your Sony’s on. I’m about to present you with a sparkling and brilliant answer that may well sound like a monologue. You may break it up with appropriate questions if you like, and then maybe you can tell me something about yourself!”
“The tape recorder’s rolling, Everett, and I’m afraid I’m married.” The light tone of flirtation remained in her voice, however.
“But of course you are, my dear. All truly delightful and beautiful women are.”
The woman blushed prettily and allowed Scarborough to continue.
“Yes, of course. Back to the interview,” he said, his fork playing amongst the vegetables in his Niçoise salad. “You have a point, Kate. Statistically, life should exist elsewhere in the universe, even in this galaxy. I won’t bore your readers with the scientific details, but scientists are quite aware of this—hence, legitimate programs such as SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence—utilizing radio-telescopes to sweep the skies not only to map the radiation emitted by the stars, but also to pick up signals of civilization, signs of life. We’ve also been broadcasting ourselves, as well as launching our own testament of civilization, the Pioneer Mission, replete with pictures of our species and the music of Chuck Berry. But then perhaps you should talk to such luminaries as Carl Sagan on that—he’s so much more eloquent than I on that subject.
“Alas, I concern myself not with the expansion of human knowledge, but the correction of human knowledge. Civilizations have always had their mythologies. I suppose the general population is entitled to thrill to stories of flying saucers, of visits from extraterrestrials bearing crystals and news of peace, or perhaps just channeling their good vibrations across the dimensions. Or even, God forbid, visitors’ morbid abductions and laboratory experiments upon human beings. But when a goodly percentage of our citizens actually believe that this is the truth—well, when it’s not the truth, it’s necessary for someone to stand up and make a few announcements. Necessary for the successful practice and understanding of science amongst the populace.
“All of my books, all of my lectures, all of my appearances on television, are for a common goal: to battle the insidious upsurge of pseudoscience and falsehood. Our civilization has its problems, certainly, and industrial and scientific progress has had its backlashes—but the backbone of human hope, I believe, is the practice of scientific principles. We must base our knowledge of the universe on empirical facts ... that is, everything must be proven. What many call the New Age, is, I believe, actually more of a return to the Dark Ages. And yet those I have sworn to oppose—the UFO-ologists spouting nonsense so fluently—claim to present factual evidence. As I see it, it is my task to explore this evidence logically and intelligently, and show it for the flimflam and fuzzy thinking it truly is.
“In my new book, Above Us Only Sky, I not only address UFO sightings and theories case by case, but I also discuss my own investigations. Including my investigations from when I was on the Air Force’s Project Blue Book study back in the late sixties. I make the point there—and emphasize it here—that science is a tool that has been developed by mankind. We are not naturally inclined to analyze things by the scientific method. This explains, I think, our tendency to be fooled. It is my job to remind people—goodness knows, from time to time I have to remind myself—that the scientific method, based on the sound and functional rules of logic, is to be used as a tool. It is here for our benefit, that our race can grow intellectually and spiritually.
“To get back to your initial question: No. I do not believe that earth has been visited by creatures from another planet, or that it is currently being visited. Of all the thousands of sightings and experiences that have been investigated, none have been proven to be the result of extraterrestrial visitation by the tenets of the scientific method.
“Now, as to what these sightings actually comprise—well, that’s an entirely different kettle of aliens!”
At the table of the two suited men, the waiter arrived to take the guests’ orders. The younger man ordered a simple coq au vin, while his companion requested the special of the day, sea bass au Provencal. When wine was offered, both men declined, asking instead for fresh-squeezed orange juice.
When the waiter left, the younger man listened to a few more sentences flowing eloquently from the table only eight yards distant, and then turned to his companion.
“He is a proud man. I sense a great deal of self-confidence. He clearly enjoys his—work.” The younger man’s accent was almost Midwestern in its flatness, although each word was clearly pronounced, and with excellent diction. The other’s accent was mid-Atlantic ... American, with a touch of high British, and perhaps a trace of something vaguely Germanic.
“Yes,” said the older, smiling for the first time. “In his calling, he needs such. For a debunker—a negative profession that tends to earn much social enmity, and tends to attract sour, negative personalities—he enjoys much popularity. His books sell well, and he receives large sums on the lecture circuit. He is often invited on local as well as national talk shows, along with the usual UFO-ologists. He takes great pleasure in having been a chief antagonist of the late J. Allen Hyenk, and regularly locks horns with such luminaries as Stanton Friedman, Whitley Strieber, Maximillian Shroeder and Jascque Valle.”
“Jascque Valle?”
“Yes. The Francois Truffault character from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. You are an excellent partner, smart and skilled—but you have much to learn in the UFO field. In the coming months, you will learn much indeed, I think. Now, let us eavesdrop a little longer. This is vital for your imminent mission.”
The interview at the other table had proceeded apace, with Dr. Everett Scarborough expounding at length on his factually based opinions, totally unaware that the two men sitting past the screen and the potted plant were listening carefully to him. He fielded Kate Ennis’s questions with expertise and good humor, taking the occasional opportunity to flirt. He seemed particularly concerned with the importance of the American public’s attitude toward UFOs.
“You know, I read somewhere that a poll claims over 50 percent of the American public believe that extraterrestrials are buzzing over their housetops. Just as many believe that there’s some sort of government conspiracy to keep this knowledge from the public! You remember when Ronald Reagan made those hypothetical comments concerning possibilities of aggressive intrusion of starships from another planet?”
“Oh, certainly. That certainly made for good happy hour conversation at The Front Page,” said Kate Ennis, referring to a press hangout on Dupont Circle. “An alien attack would bring all the countries of the world—including the Soviet Union and the United States—together, and make us realize that what we all share is our humanity.”
“An innocent enough observation, if quite a bit fantastic–well, the UFOols ... my abbreviation for UFO-ologists, Kate ... well, they absolutely pounced on that one. ‘The President is almost admitting that he knows there are aliens visiting Earth!’ they cried. ‘There’s been a huge cover-up for years! We’ve been right all along!’ “
Scarborough tapped his head. “The mind is a complex thing, Kate. It is like a film projector. Most of these deluded people simply do not realize that what they are experiencing is merely a superimposition of their own self-produced movie from Ludicrous Productions.”
“But people do see things in the sky!” said Kate Ennis. “My brother-in-law saw some kind of hovering light up near Westchester, Maryland.”
“Of course there are things in the sky. I’m not saying there aren’t UFOs. But we forget too soon that UFOs are Unidentified Flying Objects—not spinning disks stocked with bug-eyed monsters. Most UFOs thoroughly investigated become IFOs�
��that is, Identified Flying Objects. They’re usually weather balloons, or aircraft or clouds or lots of other normal things like bright stars and planets, warped and twisted by atmospheric effects. What we see, Kate, are not things, but the reflection and refraction of light from things. And our atmosphere—particularly with present-day pollution of various chemicals—is a veritable funhouse mirror show! This is what most people see, and their imaginations run wild. But even wilder run the paranoias of the whacko UFOols who interpret the sightings, and have created a pseudoscience: a folly that will be laughed at by our ancestors for centuries to come, much as we laugh at the phrenologist doctors who believed that a man’s intelligence could be interpreted by the number of bumps on his head!”
The interviewer laughed, and Dr. Everett Scarborough smiled smugly as he lifted a tinkling ice-water glass to his lips.
They paid their check, and agreed to continue their conversation at the Devonshire Bar down the street, over drinks.
They took absolutely no notice of the two men who had been listening to their conversation as they left the restaurant.
At the table of the eavesdroppers, lunch arrived.
When the waiter left, the younger man looked over his steaming, fragrant coq au vin and said, “What a persuasive speaker. There is more there, though—I sense the emanations of his power and ability. I can understand now his importance. I look forward to this assignment.”
His companion nodded. “Yes. The next few months are of vital importance to our mission, and Dr. Everett Scarborough plays a key role.” He lifted his briefcase to his lap, dialed a combination, and opened it. From within, soft multicolored lights winked, as though a small Christmas tree were secreted inside. The man took out a manila folder and handed it to his protégé, shutting the case and placing it back beside his chair. “You’ll find the preliminary information needed for your duty inside.”
The younger man opened the folder, keeping its contents screened by his head and chest.
The first item in the folder was a picture of Dr. Everett Scarborough, followed by sheets of information concerning him.
“Yes,” said the greying man, a frown playing on his thin, sensitive lips. “And the next few weeks will be a time of danger and trauma and fear for Dr. Everett Scarborough. Few men have the mental stamina to bear up to what he will soon go through without a psychological collapse. That is, if he survives at all.”
The next item was a picture of a blonde woman— young, smiling, eyes bright and full of life.
“And that,” said the older man, as though reading his colleague’s mind. “is Dr. Everett Scarborough’s daughter and only child, Diane. Diane Scarborough is the most important person in Scarborough’s life.”
The younger man glanced over the computer printout following the picture. “Yes. Her mother is dead ... A physical and intellectual resemblance ... I believe that we might term this young woman the doctor’s Achilles heel.”
“Yes,” said the other, taking up his fork to address his meal. “After so many years of dormancy, so many years of subtlety, the project is finally entering a dangerous period of potential violence ... perhaps even of cataclysm. And Dr. Everett Scarborough is a man very much in the middle of it all.”
“And if it doesn’t work,” said the other in a monotone, “that is why I have been trained as I have. I understand now.”
“Do you still accept?”
“I have no choice. I am devoted to the Cause. If Dr. Everett Scarborough veers from this purpose, I shall terminate him.”
The older man plucked the eyeball from the whole sea bass and regarded it placidly for a moment as it dangled from the tine of his fork. “And his daughter?”
“And his daughter.”
Chapter 2
Dr. Everett Scarborough, she thought.
Here she was, in a parked car in Make-Out Lane in the middle of the night, with her boyfriend’s left hand on her breast, his right one under her dress struggling with her panties in a deliciously slow way, and all Diane Scarborough could do was to think about her father.
“Uh—Tim,” she said, raising her voice above the rasp of his breaths. Suddenly, she wasn’t turned on at all by his dousing of Obsession for Men, a cologne that generally turned her extremities to the consistency of hot oatmeal. In fact, the scent made her feel a little ill. She turned away from it toward the open window, toward the trees beyond, shadows of spring below the moonlight. “Tim, can we give it a rest.”
The guy came up for air from the smooth juncture between her neck and shoulder, blinking and sputtering. “What—something wrong?”
“I guess I’m just not in the mood, that’s all,” she said, sitting up a little, pulling her dress down in a time-honored female signal of sexual disinterest.
Timothy Reilly was silent for a moment, his face inert in the red light from the dash radio. The Eagles were droning “One of these Nights” from a soft-rock FM station. Then he lifted his hands up as though an imploration to heaven itself. “You drove me out here!”
She tapped the wheel of her ‘89 Nissan, Tim’s ring clicking rhythmically. “I thought it would get my mind off things.”
“You mean your goddamn father, don’t you,” he said, words a little heated. “Diane, I’m pretty sick of hearing about the old man, and I’m generally not uncompassionate!”
“He’s not old, Tim, and you’re hardly a man.”
“He’s almost fifty, that’s old. I’m almost twenty-five, and that’s far enough past twenty-one to be a man. As for the hard part—well, I guess I can take a cold shower later.”
She laughed. “Sorry. I can be a real bitch. It’s just that I’m so worried about him.”
Tim Reilly sighed with exasperation, looking out at the stretch of Kansas fields and roads that faded into the distance. He was a slender fellow, with a cap of long curly reddish hair, light eyes, wearing Levi jeans and a Sears red checked flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up. Everything from his gift of gab to his square, cleft chin said “Irish” except for his accent, which was pure Middle American.
“The guy’s in great health, he’s got a book on the Nonfiction Bestseller List of the New York Times, he’s raking in the dough on a lecture tour, you’re going to see him next week for spring break ... and you’re worried about him?”
“He’s in danger,” said Diane, softly but emphatically. “I know he is.”
“He’s not in danger,” said Tim. “Don’t worry.”
“Tim, the Tarot cards say ‘Danger,’ his astrological chart is flashing red flags like crazy——and I’ve got this intuitive feeling...”
“God, ever since you talked to that psychic last week, you can’t let this go, can you? That’s when this started, right? When that loony channeler started going on about your old man!”
“She wasn’t loony; she said a lot of fascinating, truthful things about everything, including us.”
“Look, I’m as interested in this stuff as you are, though it’s quite apparent that I’m far more of a skeptic than you. I’ve been studying it for years, I’ve done the ashram trip, I’ve been to India, I’ve studied plenty of psychic phenomena—and dearest, you can’t take any of it too literally. That’s the whole point. One rides with the Tao of existence, and all this shit is just frequencies for your personal TV set. You tune them in, you tune them out.”
“My father might be in danger, and it’s because of what he does—he has to be warned. I’ve decided.”
Tim nodded. “Oh, I get it. You just didn’t know whether or not to call out the National Guard, or to just tell him and take his abuse, huh?”
Diane flinched a bit inside. Hammer to head of nail. Her father, the eminent Everett Scarborough, Ph.D., was Mr. Rationality himself, Mr. Spock of “Star Trek” without the eyebrows and the flickers of humanity. Normally, Diane delighted in teasing her father about his dedication to the realm of logic. Much of her adolescent life was a rebellion against cold analytical numbers, bare brass facts. Her interest in the real
m of the spirit world—an interest that had led to participation in the Lifespring movement, a brief tenure as a disciple of Sri Hasha Rodani, a brush with astral projection and trance channeling, to say nothing of the weekend seminar she’d taken taught by Shirley MacLaine—made her father positively livid. He’d spent hours upon hours attempting to reason with her, pointing out the fallacies and follies of her New Age spiritual pathways. But now she felt like the boy who had cried wolf. She really did have a bad feeling about her father’s future, with no proof but a turn of the cards, a few words from a psychic, and a bellyful of heavy intuition. Chances were that at the merest mention of the causes of her trepidation, therein might lie the actual cause of the danger itself: he’d go purple with apoplexy and die of a heart attack.
Still, she had to warn him.
Something was going to happen to him.
Something bad.
“I’ve got to try, Tim. I’ve really got to try.”
“Great. Lay it on him next week in D.C. when you go back home. I don’t understand why it’s giving you all this distress. Meantime, long as we’re out here—“ Tim reached into the back seat and pulled a can of beer out of a foam ice-chest, “let’s relax a bit. It’s exactly 11:00, the moon looks like a big white pizza with extra amore on, I’m with my honey, and even if she doesn’t feel like satisfying my molten, desperate urges, I feel like being with her.“ He popped the top off the Coors and offered it to her. “So let’s make nice, huh?”
“I’m sorry, Tim. Maybe you should find someone else. I let my moods get to me too much.”
Tim finished his long sip of beer. “Sorry, kiddo. I got this terrible problem, you see. I’m stuck on you.”
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 4
