by Ben Bova
Markov shook his head in misery. “What are we to do, Maria? What are we to do?”
* * *
WASHINGTON
Spoke privately with our lame-duck President this afternoon, after the regular Cabinet meeting. I must confess he seems stronger, surer of himself, now that he’s removed the burdens of running for re-election from his rounded shoulders.
The Party is in an uproar, of course. The organization people are terrified that he’s just handed the election to the opposition. I’ve tried to point out to them that he’s created such a fluid situation that no one has a preferred position. It all depends on what we do from here on in—that’s all that counts now.
If our scientists make real contact with this alien spaceship, whatever it is, and it all turns out well and beneficial for the world, then the President will be a saint and his halo will cast a very favorable light on whoever’s running for our Party.
If it’s benign, I can head the Party’s ticket in November and win easily. But if the alien is trouble, then all bets are off.
Private diary of the Honorable
WALDEN C. VINCENNES, Secretary
of State
* * *
CHAPTER 35
Jo sat staring at her computer terminal’s readout screen. The numbers and letters glowing at her were meaningless; her mind couldn’t concentrate on them. She got up from her desk and walked out onto the balcony outside her office. Down in the Pit the computer hummed and winked its lights in intricate patterns, too fast for any human to understand.
With a shake of her head, she stepped back into her office, grabbed her worn leather shoulder bag from the desk and headed downstairs.
She stopped in the rest room first, pushed a comb through her thick hair and checked her face. Then she marched straight to Stoner’s office.
The door was open. He was on the phone, his back to her. She waited just inside the doorway.
“Sure,” Stoner was saying. “I can take all the physical checkups they want right here at the base hospital. If NASA wants their own people to run the tests then NASA can fly them out here. Right? Good. Okay. Thanks again. See you.”
He turned his chair around to hang up the phone and saw Jo standing there.
A flicker of uncertainty crossed his face. “Hello, Jo.”
“Hi.” She stepped further into the office. It was still bare, new-looking. Voices echoed slightly off the freshly painted walls. Half the bookshelves were empty, the rest held stacks of photographs and a few thick looseleaf notebooks. Three unopened cardboard boxes rested on the carpeted floor beside the steel file cabinets. The desk was steel also, but its top was painted to look like walnut. It also was bare, except for the telephone and an incongruous coconut.
“Have a seat,” Stoner said, without getting up from his chair.
Jo took the nearest chair, chrome and plastic, cold and uncomfortable.
“You’re all right?” she asked.
He nodded slowly. “Bruised and aching, but okay. I checked the hospital a half hour ago; Schmidt’s in stable condition. No lung punctures, just some broken bones. He’ll mend.”
Clenching her hands on her lap, “I feel terrible about it.”
He said nothing.
“I mean…if I hadn’t been late for our dinner date,” Jo explained, “you wouldn’t have been at the club and Schmidt wouldn’t have found you.”
His face took on that grim, almost angry look that shut everyone else out. “He’d have found me, no matter where I was. It’s a small island, and he was looking specifically for me.”
“But why? What made him?”
“Where were you?” Stoner asked.
Jo’s heart quickened within her. He cares! It matters to him!
“I was stuck halfway across the lagoon,” she said, the beginnings of a smile curving her lips. “Markov and I took a canoe trip.”
“Kirill?”
Nodding, “We borrowed an outrigger and neither one of us could keep it from tipping over. You should have seen us! Soaked.”
“Kirill’s in love with you,” Stoner said, without hostility.
“Like Cyrano was in love with Roxane,” she replied. “I’m perfectly safe with him.”
“Unless you both get eaten by sharks.”
“We made it back okay.” She felt her smile fade into an apologetic look. “But I was late. By the time I got to the club…”
“It’s not your fault,” Stoner said quickly. “You mustn’t think that. Somebody pumped Schmidt to the gills with angel dust and sent him out to get me.”
“Who would do that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe the Russians.”
“The Russians? Do our Navy people…?”
“I haven’t told them a word, and I don’t want you to, either.” Stoner leaned across his desk, eyes fastened on hers. “If they start cloak-and-daggering each other, you can kiss this rendezvous mission good-by.”
“But if somebody tried to kill you…” Jo’s voice trailed off.
With a shrug, he answered, “I think they just wanted to knock me around so I wouldn’t be ready for the trip to Russia and the flight. Somebody doesn’t want an American to make the rendezvous mission.”
“The Russians,” she murmured.
“Not the Russian scientists,” Stoner pointed out. “Probably not the Russian Government, either. I think it’s just an element within their government. The hardliners. The KGB, most likely.”
Jo sagged back in the chair, her insides going hollow. “Then you’re in real danger.”
“Maybe. Kirill’s checking it out for me.”
“You’ve got to tell the Navy!” she urged. “Tuttle and the others, they’ve got to know about it so they can protect you.”
“No,” he said firmly. “They’ll fuck up the rendezvous mission once they start clomping around.”
“Better that than getting you killed.”
“Jo, I told you once that this is my life. I meant that, quite literally. Let me handle this my way.”
“And get killed.”
“I’ll take that risk,” he said.
“Keith…” But what can I say? she asked herself silently. That desk is between us. His work, his obsession. It’s more important to him than life itself. More important to him than I am.
“Besides,” he was saying, trying to make it sound less grim, “it was probably Cavendish’s doing. I don’t think his disappearance on the same night was a coincidence.”
She nodded slowly. “There are a lot of rumors going around about Dr. Cavendish.”
Stoner nodded back. “Yeah, I guess there are.”
“Was he really an agent for the Russians?”
“Back in New England he told me he was a double agent. I’m not sure that he knew which side he was really working for, now.”
“He was awfully sick.”
“Maybe. Maybe he was faking that.”
“Do you think any of the other scientists are working as intelligence agents for their governments?” Jo asked.
Stoner’s brows rose. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Some would, I suppose.”
“Professor McDermott would,” she said, very deliberately.
Stoner gave a bitter bark of a laugh. “Big Mac? Some spy he’d make, with that mouth of his.”
“He’s sneakier than you think,” Jo said.
He gave her a long, searching look. “Yeah, I’ll bet he is.”
“His health isn’t very good,” Jo went on. “Ever since the aurorae started, he’s been a wreck.”
“So I’ve heard. I haven’t seen him for more than a week.”
“Neither have I,” she said pointedly.
He hesitated, then said evenly, “That’s good.”
For long moments neither of them said anything. Jo waited for Stoner to speak, to come out from behind his desk and reach toward her, touch her, do something to show that he cared for her. Instead, he merely sat there, looking uncertain, un
comfortable.
“I heard,” she broke the silence at last, “that you’re in charge of picking the personnel to go to Russia with you.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I want to go. I’ve checked the personnel requirements, and you can carry me as a computer analyst. There’s an opening.”
He drummed his fingers on the bare desktop for a moment. “Jo…if there’s any danger in this trip for me, it might catch any other Americans traveling with me.”
Her chin went up a notch. “Do you think you’re the only one around here who can be a hero?”
He almost grinned. “I’m no hero, Jo. I’m a madman. I know that.”
She couldn’t help smiling at him. “Keith, I told you a long time ago that we’re two of a kind. I want to go, just as much as you do.”
“You really do?”
“Like you said—it’ll look good on my résumé.”
“Yeah,” he replied. It was nearly a sigh. “Okay, I’ll put you down for our computer analyst. Better get over to the hospital for the physical checkup.”
She got to her feet. “Thanks, Keith.”
“You’re crazy, you know.”
“I know,” she said. “Just like you.”
He stood up too, but wouldn’t come out from behind his desk. Jo went to the door and left his office, with him standing there watching her go.
“Jesus Christ, willya look at that!”
The TV newsman frowned at the helicopter pilot. “Keep a decent mouth,” he said, more into his lip microphone than across the whining roar of the turbine engine.
“We won’t be on the air for another twelve minutes,” the pilot shot back, still staring down at the mammoth throngs streaming into Anaheim Stadium. As far as the eye could see, along the freeways stretching back toward Los Angeles and out beyond Disneyland, solid masses of cars inched along bumper to bumper.
“Where’d they get all the gas?” the pilot wondered.
The TV reporter lifted his tinted eyeglasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Look,” he said to the pilot, “keep a decent mouth anyway, will ya? All we need is for a wrong word to sneak out on the air and we’ll have all of them screaming for our scalps.” He pointed downward, toward the cars.
The pilot shook his helmeted head. “I never seen a crowd like that. Where they gonna put them all?”
The reporter heard it as an awed whisper in his headset earphones. Turning in his seat, safety harness cutting into his fleshy shoulder, he looked across the early evening sky for the camera copter. It was skittering along the Orange Freeway, taping the credible traffic for the eleven o’clock news.
The reporter reached forward to click the radio dial to the frequency that connected him with the camera ship.
“Harry, this is Jack. Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, Jack.”
“How’s the equipment?”
“Everything’s A-okay here. Fine.”
“Good. Now remember, in the middle of Wilson’s spiel they’re gonna douse all the lights so everybody can see the aurora. That’s the shot I want—the stadium lit by the Lights from the Sky.”
“I know. I’ll get it.”
“You sure?”
“I got the low light level snooperscope. Don’t worry about a thing. It’ll come out terrific.”
“It better,” the reporter said.
The stadium literally pulsed with the immense crowd. It was like a vast supernatural beast, breathing and murmuring in the gathering twilight. Row upon row, tier upon tier, the crowd filled every seat, jammed the cement stairways so that vendors couldn’t get through to hawk their wares, stood shoulder to shoulder on the ramps behind the seats and down on the field surrounding the speaker’s platform.
Off at one end of the huge oval, the mammoth scoreboard used for baseball games proclaimed in fluorescent lights, HOME OF THE ANGELS. A gigantic letter A, its apex circled by a glowing halo, stood out against the darkening sky.
Outside the stadium, still more thousands milled around the parking areas. Portable TV sets flickered on the tailgates of station wagons. Families picnicked amid the carbon monoxide fumes.
The night deepened and the activities began. The many-throated crowd roared and laughed and sang as it was prompted to by evangelists, guitar players, rock groups and politicians who followed each other up onto the makeshift wooden platform at the center of the field.
A former astronaut who had become deeply involved in studies of extrasensory and paranormal experiences came to the microphone and proclaimed, “This alien ambassador is bringing us our chance to join the brotherhood of the galaxies.”
The crowd sighed with awe.
An evangelist, red-faced in the spotlight, exhorted the crowd, “This message from the Lord is a warning that we must mend our ways, atone for our sins and surrender our willful hearts to Christ Jesus, our God and our Savior.”
Thousands fell to their knees, shouting praises and screaming for forgiveness.
“Let those who have scoffed at us,” bellowed a noted UFOlogist, “come forward and admit that they were wrong! We are not alone, and we never have been!”
The crowd roared its approval.
Finally, after more hymns and clapping in time to a Gospel choir, after a deafening medley from an over-amplified rock group, after full darkness had shrouded the brilliantly lit stadium, the loudspeakers solemnly proclaimed:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the man whose voice cried out in the wilderness, the harbinger of the Great Days to Come, the Urban Evangelist himself—WILLIE WILSON!”
Like a huge animal with a hundred thousand voices the crowd surged to its feet and bellowed as Willie Wilson, slim and lithe in a sky-blue denim suit, loped down the cleared path through the crowd on the field and up the wooden steps to the microphone.
I can’t do it, he said to himself as he reached for the microphone. Feeling the power of the crowd around him, the fervent anticipation that electrified the air, he shook his head and told himself, I can’t disappoint them. I can’t let the government interfere with the Word of the Lord.
He raised both arms and turned slowly in the circle of light, soaking in the crowd’s roaring approval. The bellow shook the ground.
High overhead, unnoticed in the glare of the stadium lights, the two TV helicopters circled endlessly, photographing the dramatic moment while the news reporter spoke his impromptu commentary into his microphone.
“Thank you all and God bless you, each and every single one of you,” Willie shouted into the microphone, pulling it off its slender stand so that he could turn full circle and be seen by every part of the throng.
The crowd quieted, resumed its seats. Those on the field surrounding the platform remained standing, though.
“My message is a simple one,” Willie began. “God loves you. Each and every single individual one of you. God knows each of you personally, individually, knows what’s in your heart and in your mind. And He loves you. Each one of you. Despite your shortcomings. Despite your failures. The Lord God Jesus Christ loves you”—Willie pointed into the crowd—“and you, and you, and each and every one of you.”
They murmured and sighed. A few scattered “Amens” rippled through the night.
“And because God loves us,” Willie continued, “He has put a sign in the sky, to remind us of who He is and who we are…a sign that is at the same time a warning and a herald…a sign that is unmistakable.” He paused dramatically, and a part of his mind told him that the IRS would be on his back within twenty-four hours.
“Look to the sky!” Willie proclaimed. “And see the glory of the Lord!”
Every light in the stadium winked off on cue and the crowd gazed up into the sky. Not a sound from them. Moments ticked by in eerie silence as the huge throng stared into the darkness and the shimmering glow of the aurora slowly became visible to them.
They moaned. They gasped. They sobbed. Willie himself, watching the display from the platform, could feel the hairs on the b
ack of his neck standing on end.
Don’t drag it out too long, he reminded himself. Catch them right at the peak…
In that unnatural silence Willie heard a strange whining drone, the whicker-whicker-whicker of helicopter rotors. Turning toward the sound, he saw the blinking running lights of a low-flying chopper as it made a pass over the stadium.
“It’s them!” somebody screamed.
“They’re here!”
“They’ve come! They’ve come!”
The vast animal of the crowd surged and panicked. Before Willie understood what was happening, a human wave broke across the stadium. People shrieked and screamed and ran.
“No, wait!” Willie shouted into the microphone. “It’s nothing to be afraid of…”
But the animal was mindless with terror. People were being trampled at the jammed exits. Others jumped from ledges to get away. The wave of terrified beasts broke across the wooden platform, swarmed over it; the platform swayed, sagged, groaned and collapsed into a sea of screaming, trampling, bloody panic.
And beneath it all, among the splintered planks and thundering, stampeding feet, Willie Wilson lay inert as maddened people tripped over his prostrate form and went down on top of him.
* * *
WILSON, 126 OTHERS KILLED IN PANIC
ANAHEIM: Rev. Willie Wilson was among 127 persons killed last night when panic swept the overcrowded Anaheim Stadium. More than 3,000 were injured.
Rev. Wilson, the Urban Evangelist, was the featured speaker in the mammoth outdoor revival rally. Police said that the stadium was filled well beyond legal capacity for the meeting that brought together many of the nation’s leading fundamentalists, UFOlogists, researchers in the occult and religionists of more orthodox faiths.
The panic was apparently triggered, according to police, when a television camera helicopter swooped low over the stadium, causing some to believe that an alien UFO was about to land. The huge crowd panicked and thousands were trampled in the rush for the exits.
Rev. Wilson, who repeatedly associated the aurorae caused by the alien spacecraft now approaching the Earth with a message from God, was born…
