“No way. That’s it. Go tell Muehlenfeldt he can blow up the whole damn world for all I care. I’m not going to do anything to stop him. As if I could anyway.”
“Have you ever got it wrong,” said Spencer, laughing. “You didn’t get picked up by Muehlenfeldt’s men—we just rescued you from them. What do you think all that shooting was about?” He gestured, encompassing the helicopter and the distant car. “This is the Beta group, dummy.”
“No such thing,” said Ralph sullenly. “That’s just Muehlenfeldt’s paranoid fantasy.”
“Ha. I bet he wishes that’s all it is. Unh-unh. This is for real.”
“Yeah? Then how come you didn’t tell me about it back in L.A.?”
“I didn’t know about it then.” Spencer shrugged and spread his free hand. “I didn’t find out about it until they picked me up, right after we tried to bug the Opwatch office. Remember when I phoned you? That’s who was after me, not Muehlenfeldt’s bunch. Look.” He caught Ralph’s elbow and tugged him to the helicopter. “We have to hurry. Get in and I’ll fill you in on everything. Trust me.”
One of the two men who had been in the car’s front seat during the rush from the city was now walking toward them. The headlamps glared around his bulky outline. “What’s the problem?” he said as he approached.
“What are you waiting for?”
“No problem,” said Spencer. “Just a little fear of heights, that’s all.” He pulled harder on Ralph’s arm.
He hesitated for a moment, then stepped towards the helicopter.
What’ve I got to lose, he thought as he climbed-through the oval door. The worst that can happen is more lies. The pilot grinned over his shoulder and formed an O with his thumb and forefinger. Spencer got in, then closed and dogged the door. The machine tilted and the ground fell away.
Ralph looked down through the clear, curved side of the helicopter. The police escort were turning their motorcycles around and heading back into the city. Their lights grew smaller and were lost as the helicopter banked and headed west. Below, he recognized the long strip of highway he had travelled just a few hours ago in the opposite direction. Back to the base, he realized. That’s where we’re going. He glanced at Spencer beside him, as he felt the outlines of what he’d assumed wavering once more.
How much of this should I believe this time? “Well, let’s hear it, then,” he said.
“You know,” said Spencer, “a lot of this stuff is kind of hard to believe. Pretty strange and all.”
“I don’t think I’ll have any trouble with it. Not anymore.”
Spencer leaned forward and picked up an object from the helicopter’s floor. It looked like a miniature portable television, white plastic and gray screen. He set it on Ralph’s lap and pressed a button on its side. The screen lit up and began focusing into a picture. “Pretty neat, huh?” said Spencer. “This is a first class operation, believe me. Maybe a little more elaborate than necessary, but really top notch electronics.”
The screen held Ralph’s attention. He watched as words appeared, almost too small to read: “Beta Group Orientation Aid.” Below that was his own name. The words vanished and were replaced by the minute image of a serious-faced young woman wearing glasses with heavy black frames. She was seated at a desk and held several sheets of paper in her hands. “Greetings,” she said—her voice sounded tinny coming from the viewer sitting on Ralph’s knees. “If you are watching this—”
“What is this?” shouted Ralph. The voice stopped and the woman’s image froze as Spencer reached over and pressed the button on the side.
Ralph knocked his hand away and slapped the top of the viewer. “I’m not going to sit here and watch some crummy training film, for Pete’s sake.”
“Take it easy,” said Spencer. “We went to a lot of trouble to prepare this for you. It went into the can only a few hours ago.”
“Yeah, well, what is it?”
“It’s an orientation aid, just like it said.” Spencer’s exasperation showed. “You sure have become hostile. You know that?”
Ralph snorted in disgust. “That’s because this is a sleazy universe we’re operating in,” he said. “As I’ve been finding out.”
“Big deal. Welcome to the club.” Spencer pressed the button again. “So just watch the film, okay? Tape, actually.”
The image on the screen was moving again. Ralph focused on it and shut out the cramped interior of the helicopter.
“—this,” the intent woman was saying, “Mr. Metric, you will shortly be asked to assist in an endeavor the success or failure of which will literally determine the fate of the world.” She paused and the letters FATE spelled out at the bottom on the screen.
“The audio-visual company that did this for us,” whispered Spencer, “also contracts for a lot of children’s educational TV. I think some of it carries over.”
Ralph ignored him. The glowing screen pushed the darkness outside the helicopter farther away.
“The purpose of this presentation,” said the woman on the screen, “is to inform you of the actual nature of the organization known as Operation Dreamwatch, and to familiarize you with the agency seeking to counteract this threat to humanity.”
“Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?” said Spencer.
“Shut up.” Ralph leaned closer to the viewer.
“Briefly,” continued the woman, “the group you were in contact with before, known as the Alpha Fraction, was not the only one investigating and working against Operation Dreamwatch. The Alpha Fraction was in fact only a diversion designed to help conceal the existence of the Beta group—the real anti-Opwatch organization. Organized as a section of Army Intelligence, the Beta group has been investigating Senator Muehlenfeldt and his activities for over a year. The formation of a separate, clandestine organization for this purpose was necessary due to the domination of the Federal Security Agency by Muehlenfeldt and his associates.
“The existence of the Beta group was kept a complete secret from the members of the Alpha Fraction. This was done in order to maintain the smaller group’s usefulness as a decoy for Muehlenfeldt’s attention.
“Knowledge of the Alpha Fraction’s existence was deliberately planted in the Opwatch organization. As they were then under varying degrees of surveillance by Muehlenfeldt’s agents, any knowledge of the Beta group on their parts might have endangered the secrecy of the larger organization.
“One man, Michael Stimmitz, was a member of both groups, serving to coordinate the actions of the two groups.”
“Mike didn’t even tell me about it.” Spencer sounded proud of the fact.
“It was only after they caught up with me in that phone booth that I found out.”
“Unfortunately,” continued the woman on the screen, “last week Muehlenfeldt learned of the Beta group’s existence, due to the inadvertent exposure of one of its members who had infiltrated the Federal Security Agency. At the outset of interrogation, the Beta member was able to trigger a miniature bomb planted in his skull.”
So that’s what Stiles was talking about, thought Ralph. An image filled him for a moment of the unnamed infiltrator’s explosive death ripping out from the head’s center.
The woman shuffled the papers she held and spoke again. “Other infiltration attempts have been more successful, even onto the staff of the Thronsen Home. Enough has been pieced together just a short time ago to form a picture of Operation Dreamwatch’s true intent and the mechanics involved in fulfilling it.
“From the first reports of what was going on inside the Thronsen Home, it was hypothesized that the sleeping juveniles were part of an elaborate cover-up for the project’s real purpose. Upon further investigation this hypothesis turned out to be in error. The children are in fact the essential component of Operation Dreamwatch’s plans.
“The real purpose of Operation Dreamwatch is the construction and detonation of an explosive device of tremendous force. The children kept sleeping at the Thronsen Home are themselves the bomb
.” The letters BOMB appeared on the bottom of the little screen.
Ralph felt his innards constrict at the image of the sleeping children.
Stimmitz knew, he thought. He had it figured out.
“The principle involved,” continued the woman, “is analogous to the construction of a nuclear reactor pile, but using psychic energy rather than atomic. The devisers of Operation Dreamwatch have developed the means for converting the basic energy of the human mind into a destructive device of incredible magnitude.” The woman paused, the eyes behind the glasses seeming to pierce the double layer of glass between her image and Ralph. “The estimated potential,” she said quietly, “is sufficient for the literal destruction of the planet through the conversion of the earth’s crust into a molten and/or gaseous state.”
Ralph rocked back in the seat and stared at the viewer on his lap. The woman on the tape was watching her hands shuffle through the sheets of paper. He turned his head away and looked out through the side of the helicopter at the night. A vision moved through him of the earth’s surface boiling away, exposing the fierce core. There was no question of belief—within himself he knew the world was only a thin shell against all possible furies. The woman’s voice brought his attention back.
“The psychic bomb,” she went on, “works in the following way. The children involved were carefully selected from psychiatric profiles for their high innate energy levels and low tolerance of emotional frustration. These were the qualities that led to their delinquent behavior in the first place.
“Maintained in a sleeping state in the Thronsen Home, their psychic energies were then united in a common pool through the formation of the dreamfield. Dream experiences, based on each individual’s psychological history, were then administered to heighten the degree of emotional tension, increasing in turn the amount of psychic energy in the pool.
“Eventually, as in a nuclear pile, levels of energy are reached where further increases take on an exponential growth curve, the energy increasing faster and faster without any further input. This chain reaction continues, eventually resulting in the bomb’s fantastic destructive capacity, unless somehow controlled.
“To control the rate of reaction in a nuclear pile, a damping material such as cadmium can be used. This metal, inserted into a nuclear pile, soaks up some of the energy and maintains the reaction at a safe level.”
That’s right, thought Ralph. Zip rods.
“To keep Operation Dreamwatch’s ‘psychic bomb’ from premature explosion, a similar method has been employed. Individuals characterized by low psychic energy levels—the so-called ‘watchers’—were inserted into the dreamfield to soak up enough of the dreaming children’s released energy to keep the process from reaching its exponential growth curve. Just as some individuals are capable of infinitely higher levels of psychic energy, the watchers are capable of unlimited absorption of that energy without altering their own nature. This was confirmed by the secret electronic monitoring of the serotonin/melatonin activity in each watcher’s brain. While these hormonal levels are not themselves the psychic energy process, they are an indicative side effect of it. To further insulate the watchers from the energy released on the dreamfield, large amounts of ethyl alcohol—in the form of beer—were made available to them. Thus, the children’s psychic energy levels were kept damped until the psychological frustration experiences on the dreamfield had developed their capacities to the point of a world-annihilating release of energy.”
The woman paused again before going on. “Unfortunately, Operation Dreamwatch has reached that point. The psychic bomb’s assembly has been completed. At this moment, the children’s collective psychic energy has entered its exponential growth curve, and is increasing to the levels necessary for detonation.”
The screen suddenly went blank except for the words “End of Orientation.”
“Just in time, too,” said Spencer. “Here we are.”
Ralph looked up from the now empty viewing screen, then out the helicopter’s side. Curving up towards them were the roofs of the base’s familiar buildings. Beyond the apartments he could see that Muehlenfeldt’s jetliner was no longer there. And where’s Sarah now? he wondered.
Ralph said, “Wait a minute.” The helicopter settled among clouds of dust. Figures could be seen emerging from the administration building and heading toward them. “That tape didn’t explain enough.”
“That sort of thing never does.” Spencer took the viewer and set it on the helicopter’s floor. “So what else do you want to know?”
“If all the watchers’ energy levels were being monitored, how come your brother wasn’t ever suspected of being different? I mean, his energy level must have been pretty high.”
Spencer nodded. “Just goes to show what a first class operation this Beta group is. They knew about the monitoring before they sent Mike to hire on as a watcher. So they modified his brain chemistry—this is what I was told when I asked about it—so that instead of his producing normal serotonin, a molecular tail was added to the hormone. That way, his serotonin/melatonin activity couldn’t be accurately determined by the Opwatch monitors, making his psychic energy level seem much lower than it really was.”
Puzzled, Ralph scratched his chin. “But what about, me?” he said. “If the watchers are only good for soaking up other people’s energy, then why did Mike think I could be of any use to the Beta group? What am I supposed to be able to do?”
“Mike figured you were different from the other watchers. There was something that made him think that your psychic energy level wasn’t naturally low, that actually it’s normal or even higher. But before you hired on as a watcher you must have gone through a period of being surrounded by very low-energy persons, and a subconscious telepathic ability picked up on that and depressed your energy level to match.”
The Juvenile Hall, thought Ralph. The helicopter’s cramped interior seemed to fade away as his memory shot back to the long night-shift hours at the correctional facility below L.A. Of course, he thought. The kids there hadn’t gotten into trouble because of too much energy and frustration. They were the ones who drifted into dope and petty theft because they didn’t have enough energy to resist. So passive that life just blew them along like leaves. And there I was surrounded by them every night, their dreams oozing under the doors of their little locked rooms. Tangling my feet as I walked down the corridor with my flashlight. No wonder I was ready to become a watcher after that.
“But what was the clue?” he said, focusing again on Spencer. “What made Mike suspect all that?”
“Really want to know?” Spencer grinned. “You were the only watcher—besides him and Helga, of course—that didn’t have a television in your apartment. Not even a little portable one. That’s a very un-watcherish thing to do. A TV is always the most important thing a low-energy person owns.”
“Maybe,” said Ralph. He briefly wondered what his energy level was like now, after all that he had gone through. “But what am I supposed to do now? I mean, what did you bring me back here to do?”
Someone unlatched the helicopter’s door from outside. Spencer laughed and pushed Ralph toward the opening. “Do?” he said. “Save the world, schmuck! What else is there to do?”
Ralph stumbled out of the helicopter, his heel catching on the rim of the door. A man wearing some kind of military uniform caught him. “Mr. Metric?” the man shouted over the helicopter’s noise.
He nodded, shielding his eyes from the grit tossed up by the whirling blades. Behind him he heard Spencer’s feet hit the ground.
“Come on, then.” The uniformed man steered him by the elbow away from the wind and noise.
The army seemed to have taken over the base. As they headed for the administration building, Ralph pushed his hair away from his eyes and saw groups of soldiers standing at regular intervals around the fence. Dark green military trucks were parked in the base’s center. The buildings and the grounds were bathed a harsh electric blue by enormous flo
odlights at the top of wheeled towers.
A rifle-bearing guard at the door of the administration building saluted as they went in. With Spencer behind, the uniformed man—some kind of Intelligence officer, Ralph guessed—hurried him down the corridor.
Another guard saluted and held open the door of Commander Stiles’s office.
Inside, a gray-haired man with the face of a crabby eagle set around a briar pipe was sitting at the desk. He was wearing a dark green jumpsuit with four metal stars on each shoulder. This time the man who had met them at the helicopter saluted, then withdrew, closing the door behind him.
“Here he is. General.” Spencer turned to Ralph. “This is General Loren. He’s in charge of the whole Beta group’s operations.”
“Mr. Metric.” The general stood up and extended a massive brown hand over the desk. As Ralph took it, he could see behind him the torn corner in the window screen and the bloodstain on the carpet where Stiles’s head had been. “Glad to have you here with us at last,” said the general. “There’s very little time left, I’m afraid.”
“That’s what everybody keeps saying.” A sudden impatience broke open inside him as he pulled a chair up to the desk and sat down. “So far, nobody’s said anything about what I’m supposed to do about it.”
The general sighed through his pipe and folded his great hands together on the desk top. “Mr. Metric,” he said slowly, “I wish there was more time to explain this to you. Or time enough for you to rest before making a difficult decision. But you’re going to have to act on only a very sketchy knowledge of the situation.”
“That’s all right.” Ralph waved a nonchalant hand. He felt slightly giddy—his emotions seemed to have separated from events, going through their own accelerating changes. “As long as it’s a good sketchy knowledge it’ll be more than I’ve had before.”
“Are you drunk?” said the general, frowning.
“He’s all right,” said Spencer. “Just overdosed on happenings. Come on, Ralph, this is serious.”
The Dreamfields Page 15
