Majestic

by Whitley Strieber

  Should they persist strong measures will be taken as appropriate. The atmosphere of denial and ridicule is intended to curtail public understanding, and frighten non-MAJIC-associated scientists into ignoring the whole area.MJ-3 will also be responsible for the infiltration of "flying saucer" study groups now springing up as a by-product of recent radio and newspaper attention. All cover operations will be coordinated by MJ-3.

  MJ-4 Position

  The MJ-4 Position is Coordinator of Military Activities. The Army Air Force BLUE TEAM set up to retrieve alien objects and remains will advise MJ-4 of all its activities. All MAJIC-related military operations will be coordinated by this office, including those carried out after the impending transfer of BLUE TEAM to Air Materiel Command from its present S-2

  Intelligence status. MJ-4 will manage Project REDLIGHT in cooperation with AFMC and AFOC with the mission of flying any intact alien craft that may be recovered. A civilian-based National Reconnaissance Organization will be established to provide site security for all activities relating to alien craft, their movements and attempts to fly them.

  MJ-5 Position

  The MJ-5 Position is Coordinator of Security. All incoming personnel must receive MAJIC clearance. This clearance can only be granted to persons able to pass the most stringent tests of background and loyalty. MAJIC clearance will be given only after stringent FBI clearance investigation. Should a situation develop where MAJIC clearance cannot be extended to a given elected individual above the MJ-1 level, that individual will be isolated from all knowledge of MAJIC for the duration of his term of office. MAJIC

  clearance procedures apply to all persons exposed to any MAJIC information, no matter how trivial, and will be applied to elected as well as appointed officials.

  MJ-6 Position

  The MJ-6 position is an internal executive position. MJ-6 is responsible for all record-keeping and isolation of MAJIC-related files within the Library of Congress and related collection centers such as military document centers. This position will maintain not only a record-keeping division but also a research division that will be devoted to the discovery and classification of related isolates from other branches, such as FBI or Air Force documents that incidentally refer to MAJIC, MAJESTIC or related activities. It will coordinate all activities with MJ-9.

  MJ-7 Position

  MJ-7 is Coordinator of Allied Relations. MJ-7 will develop liaison with presently forming Allied alien activities organizations. MJ-7(A) will provide civilian liaison to these organizations, and MJ-7(B) will provide military liaison.

  MJ-8 Position

  MJ-8 is Coordinator of Soviet Bloc Relations. MJ-8 will attempt to create an atmosphere of complete and open sharing of information, in view of the apparently hostile nature of the alien incursion and the obvious need to cooperate at the highest levels in order to achieve a meaningful and effective human response to the possible arrival of massive alien force.

  MJ-9 Position

  MJ-9 is Project Historian. The historical mission is twofold. First, historians shall be enlisted to attempt to determine the extent of alien activity prior to the present time. Second, a MAJIC Historical Bureau shall receive all documents from all units and prepare and maintain a large-scale historical resource for use in briefing and as a source of reference.

  MJ-10 to MJ-12 Positions

  These are scientific positions.

  MJ-10 Position

  MJ-10 is Coordinator for the Physical Sciences. Subgroups will include Astrophysics, Propulsion, Electromagnetics, Particle and Atomic Physics and other areas to be added as needed. The primary mission of the MJ-10 position is to collect data and provide meaningful answers regarding the science behind the amazing alien craft and their apparent mastery of such forces as gravity, and the nature, capabilities, and limitations of their weapons.

  MJ-11 Position

  MJ-11 is Coordinator for Biological and Behavioral Sciences. The mission of the MJ-11 position is to collect information as to the nature of alien biology, brain function and behavior. It is especially important it be determined if any viruses, bacteria, gases, chemicals or radioactive elements might be effective as weapons.

  MJ-12 Position

  MJ-12 is overall Coordinator of Scientific Activities. Under MJ-12 will be two subsidiary positions, MJ-12(A) and MJ-12(B). MJ-12(A) will be coordinator of defense-related scientific activities, with priority on the development of weapons/ strategies which will provide the US with an effective deterrent where none whatsoever now exists. MJ-12(B) will be coordinator of other scientific activities, with priority on the understanding of the physical nature of the aliens and their

  motives/objectives.

  Chapter Twenty

  While Hillenkoetter was meeting with the President, Will Stone was having a deeply shocking personal experience, one which I believe was intended either to lead him to deep inner understanding, or to shatter him.

  When he had arrived at Los Alamos he had found that things had been magnificently organized by the talented Sally Darby. Her timetable, however, did not allow for what he really wanted to do, which was sleep for about twenty hours.

  Sally now had a team of six CIG personnel working with her, and they were getting the full cooperation of ZIA, the private company that arranged all the Hill's logistics, supplies and construction. Will could detect the hand of the White House in all this; he allowed himself to hope that Hilly had gained ground with Truman.

  While Sally got the cadaver into cold storage he called Washington to report to Hilly. It was one o'clock in the morning Mountain time. That made it three A.M. in Washington.

  The director had just returned from the White House. Will was informed that the President would probably approve Hilly's plan for a new agency. If he did, Will was going to be its head.

  It was a tremendous vote of confidence for a young man still reeking of formaldehyde and covered with road dust.

  He hung up the telephone and tried to take a little time for himself in the room that had been provided for him at Fuller Lodge, the Hill's hostel for visiting dignitaries.

  After a fitful ten minutes trying to nap he had a shower and a shave. He was surprised to find GI soap in the bathroom. It reminded him that, until literally a few days ago, Los Alamos had been a military city.

  When he finished his shower there was a message from Sally under the door. As he dressed again he looked wistfully at the bed.

  He went to her office in the Big House a short distance from Fuller. Both buildings had been part of the boys'

  school that had been here before the government moved in, and as a result they were fairly well constructed.

  The rest of the Hill's residential area was a mass of Quonset huts, prefabs and trailers.

  There were people everywhere; the place was a hive of activity even at one o'clock in the morning. Lights blazed along the perimeter fence and all through the Tech area.

  His obsession with secrecy made Will dislike the small-town feeling, the frank and curious looks that he got as he walked down the street. Even though everyone here was cleared—and many of them at a very high level

  - few really accepted the "need-to-know" concept that was beginning to redefine American secrecy. Nobody, no matter how exalted their clearance, had a right to know everything, not even the President. Knowledge was only to be shared as required by very specifically defined need. Will could see these people gossiping among themselves, confident that their clearances made it legal.

  He did not like Los Alamos for another and more curious reason. That was its exposure to the sky. He would rather have gone underground with the disk than take it up onto the top of a mesa like this.

  The sky was like an open door. If a car could be taken off a road and the driver not even know it, they were going to lose this thing flat. That was too much power, too much capability.

  Will simply refused to believe that the people of White Lakes had actually seen his car coming out of a huge disk. Because he remembers nothin
g more about what happened, it is impossible to be certain. Maybe all he encountered in White Lakes was a little hysteria.

  He himself was close to that point. Every innocent stranger seemed full of hostile intentions. If he'd been armed he thinks now that he might have shot somebody. It took everything he had not to dive for the shadows and make his way to the Dig House as though he were back in Algiers.

  The building wasn't designed for offices. There was no receptionist, no phone and it was the middle of the night. He didn't know where to find Sally. He was so exhausted that this simple problem actually choked him up.

  He surveyed the large, silent room. There were books everywhere. Despite the lateness of the hour people crowded the library, browsing, reading, all reflecting the tremendous intellectual energy of this place.

  Finally Will spotted a staircase at the far end of the room and mounted it, passing through the haze of pipe and cigarette smoke.

  When he had opened the door every head in the room had turned toward him. And every eye followed him as he went to the staircase.

  Of course it wasn't hard to find Sally. Her office was the only lighted room on the second floor.

  "Will," she said, "congratulations!" She looked absolutely glorious. She was glowing. He had seen her as a pale, effective woman haunted by her own vulnerabilities. Now he understood why Hilly had chosen her.

  Pressure was obviously her milieu. Confidence, competence, effectiveness poured from her.

  He tells me now that Sally Darby should have been MJ-2, the leader of MAJIC. I can't pass judgment.

  "How in the world did you know? Hilly only told me a few minutes ago."

  "I talk to Hilly, too. He called here half an hour ago looking for you. And he asked me if I thought you could do the job."

  "Thank you for your support."

  "Hell, I told him I could do it better."

  "Will you second me?"

  "Maybe, MJ-2. Assuming your appropriation is big enough."

  "I want the disk guarded. Heavily."

  "We have tanks and antiaircraft guns at our disposal."

  "This place has tanks?"

  "A company."

  "Get them deployed. I want the whole place on full alert status against attack from the air."

  She picked up her telephone. A moment later Drew Shelburne came into the office. He had been a bright counterintelligence expert in the British Division.

  "Hello, Drew."

  "My Lord, Will, when did you die?"

  "I've been on the road for eleven hours. Why do you look like a flower at one A.M.? Both of you."

  "I guess we're just too enthusiastic to get tired," Drew replied.

  Sally gave him instructions to relay to the guard units.

  When Drew left Will dropped into a hard chair, the only spare one in the office. "I'm an exhausted man in a place where nobody ever sleeps. Have you got any headache powders, dear?"

  "Bromo-Seltzer."

  He poured the stuff directly into his mouth and swallowed it before it foamed up too much. Sally brought him water from somewhere and he washed the residue down. "I feel like hell and I'm scared to sleep alone."

  She raised her eyebrows.

  "It's not a proposition. But they come in the night. Last night, that sentry—my God."

  "Look," she said, "I hate to tell you this but you have a meeting with the scientific group at seven in the morning. The pathologist wants to get to work as quickly as possible. He's the only one from off the Hill. The other three are locals. A physicist, an electromagnetic expert and an aerodynamicist to examine the disk."

  "Tell me about this pathologist."

  "Gene Edwards. University of California at Berkeley. Working on a top secret radiation pathology project.

  Married, two children. Prominent New Dealer during the thirties. Flirted with the Party in '33-34."

  "A Communist? You got me a Communist?"

  "His security clearance is his bread and butter. We promised to erase his record in return for absolute secrecy."

  "Don't actually do it."

  "Of course not. The point is, he can be blackmailed if necessary."

  "Good. And the others?"

  "Straight-arrows, nothing to hold over them. One of them once had a mistress." "Big deal."

  "Exactly. We just have to rely on them being good, loyal Americans."

  Will recalls that he took her hand. She seemed beautiful and desirable to him at that moment. Had she reacted differently it probably would have been the beginning of the only love in his life.

  "You're tired and scared and you need a friend."

  "Hello, friend."

  "I'm a colleague, Will."

  "And I'm just a scared hick kid from upper Westchester. I think I need a lap to put my head in."

  Her response was to call the security service and ask them to post a guard outside his room.

  She accompanied him back to Fuller and helped him get settled. "Everything you own stinks," she commented offhandedly.

  "Call the laundry."

  "They have a laundromat."

  "I thought I was in a hotel."

  "With GI soap? I'll hire a day laborer to get you clean. Maybe if we soaked your clothes in Oxydol for a couple of hours."

  "Find me fresh clothes. My suitcase is still in Roswell, anyway."

  "We can manage a suit by morning, I expect."

  "I'm a forty-two long. Remember that. I don't want to be forced to wear a bag."

  That was the last thing he remembered until he woke up abruptly at three-thirty A.M.

  The room was dark except for a line of light coming in under the door. Will felt reassured; a faint smell of cigarette smoke told him that his guard was at hand, no more than twenty feet away.

  In the next instant he discovered how very far twenty feet can be.

  There was somebody crouched on the foot of his bed.

  At first he thought it was a shadow, but as his eyes adjusted to the light he could see that the form was solid and very much alive.

  He called to the guard—and all that came out was a puff of air. His next thought was to turn on the reading light that was clipped to the head of the bed.

  A small man sat there as solid and real as any living person. Will called out again but there was only more hissing.

  Will cannot describe the man in detail but his impression is distinct that this was a human being. He had the disquieting impression that it was a child, a boy with a huge, bobbing head.

  Will threw back the bedsheets and started for the door. A hand pressed against his chest, delivering what felt like an electric jolt. The man's arm was clad in silver cloth.

  Will remembers vividly how startled he was by the effect the touch had on him. Blackness came around his eyes.

  "It's all right, Willy, it's all right," the creature said. His voice was ugly and low and rattling as if his lungs had given out. "We're going to capture you, Willy."

  It took him an hour to mutter the rest of this story. Will is terrifically reticent about sex, and even after all these years the embarrassment of talking about what next took place was painful to witness.

  First he felt a terrific blast of pleasure in his groin. Then fingers were touching him intimately and their strange electricity was pouring waves of pleasure into him. In the shadows he could see the head come forward, closer and closer. He thought that he saw the face of a demented child. The lips smacked wetly.

  Will toppled back into the pillows, swooning with terror and pleasure. An instant later his body gave a spasm and he experienced a terrific blast of sexual release. "It's all right," the thing repeated, "it's all right, Willy."

  My heart went out to Will as he described enduring an intimate and protracted exploration that he was helpless to prevent. All the while it continued the voice kept repeating that it was all right.

  As far us Will was concerned, it was very far from all right. At last the strange creature withdrew his hand.

  The bed springs creake
d as he jumped down to the floor.

  He took a few steps toward the window and the next thing Will remembers the creature was gone and he was screaming. This sound the guard heard. He responded instantly. The door swung open.

  Will managed to quiet himself down. He could not tell the man what had happened. Finally he croaked that he'd had a nightmare. He apologized to the guard.

  He could not tell anybody that he had just been, in effect, raped. It was a secret he kept for forty-two years, until yesterday.

  In his day homosexuality was the darkest of secrets, a deep personal shame for any man. Had he been able to gain access to his own sexuality, I suspect that he might have discovered that he was somewhat attracted to men.

  As the guard left he called out, "Get me a pot of black coffee. And if I fall asleep wake me up." "Yes, sir."

  He lay down to wait for the coffee. It was a long moment before he was aware that somebody was stroking his cheek. "Sleep, little one," said the voice of the strange man. Will's eyes flew open.

  He was alone.

  He buried his head in the pillow. "Stop," he shouted, "for the love of Mike stop!"

  A sweet voice sang in response. "Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, mother will come to thee soon."

  "God help me! Stop them! Stop them, God, stop them!" Then the world faded to black and he slept. The guard said in the morning that he tried to rouse him but couldn't.

  He had slept their sleep, perfect sleep, the sleep of babies and old men. They had given him a gift, I think, the chance to see himself as he was. I cannot blame him for passing it up. It takes great courage to love one's true self.