“First of all, you’re going to listen to Ballantine and go along on this trip he’s proposing. If Markwell is willing to fly him and Cornelia to Nebraska, let him. But go along with them. Keep us informed of what’s going on in Nebraska as we’re planning the second phase of this operation.”
“All right. So can I get some information about where exactly this second phase will take place? And why you think it has a chance of working?”
Knight had a rough, theoretical idea of what the “second phase” was supposed to be, but so far he couldn’t imagine why it made any more sense than all the wild-assed plans they had so far for rounding up people who heard hums, or going out into the middle of Nebraska to find one fifteen-year-old girl.
He saw Robinson take a deep breath on the screen, as if gathering all his strength to go plowing through a long, complicated story.
“You know what I told you about those old study projects,” Robinson said, “Into understanding unexplained phenomena….”
“The UFOs?”
Robinson shook his head. “The unexplained.”
Why am I not surprised after all? he thought, then said, “It figures. So you do know—”
“Oh, no!” Robinson said very emphatically. “No, we don’t. This isn’t us. We’re not behind it. It’s not back-engineered UFOs, Nazi flying saucers, any of that crap. And we don’t know why it’s happening.”
“So what do you know?”
“We think we know where it might be coming from.”
“Where?”
After a beat, looking thoroughly uncomfortable, Robinson said, “I take it you’ve heard of the Taos Hum.”
Of course Knight had heard of it. Starting in the early 1990s, a few people near the town of Taos, New Mexico, started complaining of a persistent low-frequency humming sound bothering them. Much like David Kwan and the other hum experiencers in Hawaii, they compared the sound to the vibration of a distant motor. Also like Kwan, the Taos hum-experiencers all told tales of distress and suffering from this inexplicable affliction, not to mention the skepticism of doctors they sought treatment from. Although various hypotheses tried to account for the Taos hum, everything from cell phone transmission and seismic activity to electrical power lines and high-pressure gas lines, not one had so far been conclusively proven to be the source of the hum.
“I did an article about it for a New Mexico magazine years ago,” he said.
“You went out to Taos.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hear the hum?”
“No….”
Robinson nodded again with a knowing look. “Only some people do.”
“Like these globes,” Knight said, the significance of Taos dawning on him. “People like David Kwan. And you think Taos is where all of this is coming from?”
“Maybe one of the places.”
“Yeah, there are several places like that all over the world,” Knight said. As a matter of fact, similar hum phenomena had been reported from England as well, from the towns of Bristol and Leeds, for decades now. In Scotland, some people heard the hum near the town of Largs. In Windsor, Ontario there had also been documented hum incidents, as well as in Bondi, Australia. “And these have been studied by…what? The air force? The Pentagon?”
“Both air force and NSA,” Robinson said. “But, just like the whole UFO thing, we found nothing. We had no idea what it could be. Written off by most as some sort of a psychotic episode these people had. Psychosomatic for some. Mass hysteria. They heard things because they were expecting to hear hums and vibrations. Recently, unless you wanted your career to start hitting some road bumps, you didn’t insist on having anything to do with hums and vibrations in Taos. The prevailing attitude in Washington’s been that it’s all a waste of time and money…well, until now that is.”
“So the people here in Hawaii…?”
“Like I said earlier: radar chaff. Nothing but decoys. Whatever’s doing this is playing with us. But now we have an idea for sending the bastard a message.”
Chapter 11
Alexander Dorian. Loaner. The Foster House.
Henry Roberts. Rescue. Taking Sides. The
Encounter. Clash. Confirmation. Reunion.
1.
“Now you see it,” Alexander Dorian said as he smoothly placed the red rubber ball on the glass-topped coffee table with his thumb and index finger, all to the rapt interest of his jet-black cat, “Now you don’t.” In a blink, Dorian swept his hand over the ball, seemingly making it disappear.
“Amazing!” Dorian gasped, and the cat apparently thought so, too, because it quickly started pawing the spot where the ball had been just a moment ago.
“What’s this?” he asked a second later, snapping his fingers, reaching behind the animal’s little head and producing the ball seemingly out of thin air.
Flashing a raffish stage smile, he tossed the ball to Lacy.
“We all feel like that cat, don’t we?” she asked, snatching the ball out of the air.
“And we have as much chance of figuring it out as that cat does,” Brandon Markwell said, and sipped some champagne from the flute in his hand. He took a seat on the cream-white sofa across the table from Dorian. “But the best of us soldier on despite the odds,” he added, and offered a toast with the champagne Rick’s way.
The cynicism was off-putting, Rick thought, no matter how true it was.
“I think our situation’s much worse than that,” Dan Knight said, and joined them. “You, Mr. Dorian, love that animal, I take it. As all pet owners do. He’s your companion animal, isn’t he?”
“Absolutely, Professor,” Dorian said.
“So you would never actually take pleasure in tormenting that creature. Our globe-maker, as I think it’s all too obvious by now, does.”
“Well, let’s hope that’s not the case,” Cornelia spoke up now as she walked over. “In Nebraska we do have a fifteen-year-old kid who was healed by a globe.”
“And let’s hope the healing is exactly what we think it appears to be,” Devon Markwell said, and sat next to her husband. “Can I have a sip, baby?” she said in a stage whisper, and he gave her the champagne flute.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Rick said, glancing toward one of the airplane’s windows and noting how the sky outside was fading into a burning orange twilight glow. Flying east after their refueling stop in San Diego, it felt as if time was speeding up. While Rick wouldn’t speak for anyone else on the plane, to him it felt as if they were hurtling uncontrollably into some sort of an overwhelming destiny.
They were traveling on Alexander Dorian’s private plane—or mobile home, as he liked to call it—a Boeing 737-800 that had been tricked out in every luxury accessory one would want in a home away from home.
Dorian also boasted that he had as much communication equipment on board the plane as the president had on Air Force One. On the one hand, that was helpful at the moment. They could keep abreast of world events in light of the violence in the Philippines. But, on the other, the information carried by all the news services was too depressing. A part of Rick felt that if he could wish for anything, he would want to stay aboard that plane and keep flying around the world indefinitely, cocooned in all that garish luxury, high above and removed from the rest of the craziness on the surface tens of thousands of feet below.
And thank God for high-concept seventies crime shows, Rick thought. When the air force at Hickam blew off his proposal to investigate the Nebraska miracle-kid, Brandon Markwell was able to secure their immediate passage off the island courtesy of his friend, “The Mindbending” Alexander Dorian.
Part of the 737’s luxuries included a tail end that had been converted into a garage for a bright yellow Lamborghini Huracan sports car. A hatch had been installed under the tail, able to descend into a ramp. It was his childhood fantasy, Dorian had explained, to
be able to live on a customized plane he could drive a car into. It was just like a plane owned by his childhood inspiration, a crime-fighting illusionist in the early-seventies TV show The Magician, starring Bill Bixby. Dorian had been six-years-old when he saw that show, and he had been captivated by magic since. Once he made his millions in his Vegas act, Dorian had decided this plane was his ultimate homage to his inspiration.
“Tell me, Mr. Dorian,” Cornelia said, “Did you—?”
“Please,” the magician cut her off. “It’s Alexander.”
“All right, Alexander,” Cornelia obliged, although Rick noted the embarrassed look crossing her face. He suspected he knew what she was about to ask.
Since a sly smirk crept onto the chiseled visage People magazine once referenced when declaring Dorian one of the one hundred most attractive entertainers in the world, Rick suspected that the magician knew what Cornelia was getting at as well.
“What I was wondering about,” said Cornelia, “was whether you thought the globes were a massive hoax back in the beginning.”
Dorian made another rubber ball dance around the fingers of his right hand before it seemed to vanish again. “Like my obnoxious colleague, the Astounding Pike did?” he asked, and lifted his left hand, the ball seeming to pop into existence at some point as he waved it around with a nimble flourish.
“Yeah, just like Pike,” Knight said, and sat down on one of the plane’s deep, decadently comfortable recliners. “Poor bastard. I do honestly miss those great debates we used to have.”
“I assume he was good for your work,” Dorian said, making the double meaning in his words came through loud and clear.
“Yes, he was,” Knight said very bluntly. “The villain to my hero. The rationalist wet blanket out to rob the world of its magic and wonder.”
“I’m sure it worked the other way around, too, Professor,” Dorian said, and Rick noted how that attitude, that challenging cockiness never left his voice.
“Of course it did,” Knight replied quickly. Rick was sure the old man did so to deprive Dorian of the pleasure of landing his little verbal barb. “I was one of the superstitious barbarians. Threatening a world of scientific enlightenment and progress. A real menace, I was.”
Dorian just continued smiling genially with a little tip of his head. “But to answer your question, Cornelia, yes, I did. For quite a while. And Brandon here still won’t let me forget it.”
“Oh, you bet I won’t,” Markwell said.
“And I’m not going to let him,” Devon said. “For as long as I’ve known Alex, I never imagined he could act like such an arrogant prick until these globes showed up.”
“Oh, yeah,” Dorian replied enthusiastically. “Guilty as charged. Magicians are world champion pricks.”
Rick thought the last three words out of Dorian’s mouth had the most curious, indescribable inflection. It was either Rick’s imagination, or it hinted at dimensions to the relationship between Dorian and the Markwells that he didn’t care to contemplate.
Who am I to judge people who are helping me? he told himself. After defending Brandon Markwell’s unwavering commitment to civil liberties.
“We’re party-poopers and obnoxious skeptics,” Dorian said. “There’s nothing so fantastic, otherworldly, or miraculous you can imagine that I can’t fake on a stage.”
“Except for these globes, darling,” Devon said, and took a healthy swallow of her champagne.
“In a way, I still say they’re a hoax,” Dorian insisted, with the sort of confidence that surprised Rick.
“Come on, Alex,” Markwell said. “Just give it up.”
“No, no, wait a minute!” Dorian insisted.
“What?” Lacy asked. “You’re gonna say it’s a government conspiracy or something?”
Dorian let out a dismissive, contemptuous snort of laughter. “The government? Like the military you’ve been hanging out with for the past couple of days?”
“Well…,” Lacy began, but her voice trailed off.
“No offense to a fine public servant like the senator here, but the government’s a collection of bureaucratic clowns,” Dorian said. “Just look at what they’re doing right now. Putting all their focus on the Philippines. Trying to harass those hum experiencers all over Hawaii. What a joke! So no, it’s not a conspiracy. But as Arthur C. Clarke tells us, any sufficiently advanced form of technology will be indistinguishable from magic.”
That was, Rick reflected, in fact the reason for only half of the Confirmation team going to Nebraska. Even Jerry Peretti thought the real story was in the Pacific. He even wanted most of the technical crew there to get the best footage in case anything more happened in either the Philippines or on Hawaii. He was so angry at Cornelia for going with Rick that he told her Melinda could do just as well on camera as she could.
“Meaning what?” asked Cornelia.
“That whatever’s doing all this is some kind of a flesh and blood being. Or whatever passes for flesh and blood for a being with sufficiently advanced technological capabilities.”
“Oh really, Alex?” said Devon. “But then what is really the point? What’s the difference?”
“Well, we’re not dealing with any sort of a god or spiritual being behind all this,” Knight replied quickly.
“We’re dealing with something,” said Lacy, “that’s, you know, related to us the same way Alexander relates to that cat.”
“Aha,” said Dorian.
And Rick caught the distant look in Lacy’s eyes. “Like Vince said,” she continued, “like the construction workers next to the anthill.”
Not only had Rafferty broken his ankle on the hospital roof, but the military brass had ordered him to stay put in Hawaii. Since Cornelia had told Rick about the budding relationship between Rafferty and Lacy, he felt sorry for the way she wound up having to be separated from him. But Rick was also impressed with the way she was committed enough to getting some answers to this phenomenon that she insisted on coming along after she decided those answers were in Nebraska.
“Yeah, well, like you said, Devon,” Knight replied. “I’m not sure it matters if whatever’s doing this is intent on deceiving us or intent on making us think it’s some kind of a god.”
“That’s why we have to make sure we find out the truth and tell as many people as we can,” said Dorian with a sort of earnestness that surprised Rick.
“Tell people?” Lacy asked.
When Rick glanced at her, he was taken by the surprisingly distant and hard look in her eyes.
“The truth, you mean?” she added.
Dorian nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good luck.”
An awkward silence hung over them for a moment.
Rick was wondering when a politician like Markwell would speak up and express his faith in the American people. But he wasn’t surprised when the senator sat quietly for another moment.
When Markwell did speak, it was after glancing at his watch. “We’ll find some answers to all this very soon.”
2.
Dorian’s 737 touched down in Lincoln, Nebraska, leaving its passengers in something of a predicament. The sun had already set, no one in the group knew their way around the area, and they were unable to get anything other than voice-mail at any of the phone numbers the plane’s communication center—no matter that it was supposed to rival that of Air Force One’s capabilities—was able to dig up.
“So how about you wait until tomorrow morning instead of renting cars and stumbling around in the darkness now?” Devon Markwell suggested.
“On God-knows what kind of crazy, confusing backroad these people are living on,” her husband seconded.
Rick couldn’t help smiling at that. The comment could have been construed as being elitist, he wanted to tell Markwell. Rick was sure Markwell had enough constituents in Nevada who lived on conf
using backroads.
“I ran into a globe on a backroad not that long ago,” Rick quipped.
“There you go,” said Markwell.
“Except something doesn’t feel right,” Rick had to insist.
“What do you mean it doesn’t feel right?” Dorian asked.
“Why can’t we reach any of them on any of those phone numbers? Some of those must be cell numbers.”
“I don’t know,” Cornelia said. “It’s late. Maybe they don’t believe in letting technology intrude on family time.”
That was an interesting way to grasp at straws, Rick thought. “Do you really believe that’s the case?”
Cornelia returned a rueful smile. “No.”
“I don’t think so either.”
“But here’s what I believe,” said Knight. “If we try and get a rental car right now, we might not even get one with a GPS. And I’d rather not be trying to make sense of a map in the middle of the night in…. Where the hell do these people live, anyway?”
“Between Lincoln and Palmyra,” Rick said.
“Of course,” Lacy jumped in, her sarcastic tone suggesting she was squarely in Knight’s camp. “That really narrows it down.”
“Sure,” Knight added. “Because I come to Nebraska all the time. Know this place like the back of my hand.”
“Forget the car rental,” Markwell said with an uncharacteristically hard and resolute voice. “You’ve got something right here that’ll get you in and out of any off-the-map place. Day, night, or in the middle of a snow storm.”
It took Rick a moment to catch on, but he did so by recognizing the ashen look on Dorian’s face.
“I don’t know about that,” Rick had to say, not wanting to abuse the magician’s hospitality.
“Yeah, I don’t know either,” Dorian said. “I mean off the beaten track…. That’s not quite so good….”
“Take Alex’s Lamborghini,” Markwell insisted.
Cornelia let out a thin whistle.
“Right,” Rick said. “I’ve never even laid my hands on a car that costs that much, let alone taken it out for a spin in the middle of the night.”
Confirmation Page 29
