Journal of a UFO Investigator (26 page)

“Rochelle,” I said at last, “you mentioned the specimens in Roswell. What did you mean by that?”

“Specimens,” she said. “It
is
an awful word, isn't it? The people from the base used it all the time, and I suppose I just fell into the habit. We really ought to come out and say ‘bodies,' shouldn't we?”

“So it's true?” I said. “There really was a UFO crash at Roswell?”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “I've known about it so long it's hard to remember most people have never heard of it. Even the UFOlogists haven't, most of them. Or it's just a rumor, which they never know quite what to do with.

“I need to tell you one thing. I never saw the bodies. To get down into the vaults, you have to do more than drink a few beers with a second lieutenant. I did see some photos, though, in the archives, that they'd taken back in '47, when they first found the wreckage. And I must say—”

“What?” I said, after I'd waited for her to finish the sentence.

“They were children, Danny.”

“Children?” I felt as though something spidery were crawling around the inside of my stomach.

“Uh-huh. You wouldn't think of them being children or even having children, would you? All this talk of little green men, or small humanoid entities, as the UFOlogists so love to say, distracts us from it. But I saw the photos, and now I've seen
her
, and it all fits together. It all makes sense—”

Again she stopped. She seemed lost in thought. “You needn't look so nervous,” she said finally. “I haven't lost track of the time. Our appointment with Dr. Talibi isn't till five thirty. We don't have to stop by the apartment either. I told Jameela to bring her to the doctor's office, meet us there.”

“I'm not nervous,” I said. And since I didn't know what I was feeling and I sure wasn't ready to talk with Rochelle about it, I asked: “And this archive?”

“Top secret, in theory. In practice, even the junior officers—some of them anyway—come and go as they please. They like to use it, actually, to show off to their girls.

“I don't know just when it was established. Probably the late forties, a year or two after the crash. Somebody had the idea there ought to be a research center on the base, right next to the vault, so people could work from the resources to the specimens—sorry, there I go again; the
bodies
—and back again. Library and lab in adjacent buildings. You see what I mean?”

“I think so,” I said.

“We'd had indications for some time that the air force was sending its most important UFO materials to the archive at Roswell. Not the Project Blue Book headquarters in Ohio. That was their official UFO project. But I think it was mostly window dressing, at least after the early fifties.

“So it seemed at least possible that the Dade County police—well, I don't know exactly what they did with Morris's book, after they took it away from me that morning. But somehow it got into the right channels and was forwarded to the archive. That was what brought me and Tom out to Roswell. That possibility, I mean. And it turned out—I was surprised; I told you that—to be true.

“If it hadn't, you and Julian and I would have gone after the book in Morris's old house in Miami. And Tom would still be alive.”

The book had been found. Tom had died for it. Thanks to me it had been lost again, forever. “Rochelle,” I said, “I'm sorry.”

“I know you are. You'll always be sorry. And it isn't really fair, because it wasn't your fault. You couldn't have done anything but drop it.”

“It was either the book or me.”

“Which would have been—”

“The book
and
me.”

“Exactly. Does it help that you know that?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

“I didn't think it would.” She looked down at my foot and mumbled a few words, something like “It never does help.” After that she was silent for a very long time.

 

“Tom and I took the car that last night,” she said, “and we drove out into the desert. And yes, we made love. The three men were telling you the truth, as far as that went. We did it outside the car, in the desert, under the stars.

“What was it you said they told you? That we'd had a blowout fuck, or something like that?”

“A blowout fuck,” I said. I didn't want to say the words again and was sorry I had repeated them to her in the first place. This was not the part of her story I was most anxious to hear. “They said you gave Tom such a blowout fuck that he was too weak to fight you off when you smothered him with the pillow.”

“Well,” she said. “They do have an imagination, don't they? But we did make love, and it was lovely. Although one pillow wasn't enough to be comfortable on. Still, it was marvelous. Under that black sky, no lights within miles, and the stars sparkling everywhere above us.

“But I need to tell you, I'm sorry we did it. Because of what happened afterward. I can't see a starry sky now without feeling the most horrible sadness. Which is why, I suppose, I spend every night indoors. By myself. Reading. Just reading.

“We got our clothes more or less straightened out and got back in the car, and we headed back to town. We were both feeling pretty wonderful. Tom had found a country and western station on the radio and turned it up full blast. We were singing along at the top of our voices. Tom always loved country and western. And I—well, I hate country and western. But that night I loved it too.

“Then all of a sudden the music went off. In the middle of a song. All we could hear was static, very loud. And Tom laughed, and said, ‘Goddamn transmitter has to go down right in the middle of “Honky-tonk Angels”!' And I laughed too, kind of sleepily—I remember I'd begun to feel sleepy—and I said, ‘Let's see if we can't find another station.' So Tom started to turn the dial. But the static was everywhere, all over the band.

“I went all cold inside when I heard that. Because I knew what it meant: that we weren't alone. That we were being watched, and not for the good. That something very bad was going to happen, very soon, though I didn't know exactly what it was going to be. Tom had no idea. Lucky for him, I guess. He thought it was a problem with the radio, and he started cursing out the damn lousy radio, and the damn lousy car, and the damn lousy rental agency. As if it were all something ordinary you could curse and laugh and joke about.

“And then I heard our brakes squeal, and I almost went flying through the windshield. And we weren't moving anymore.

“The road was blocked, Danny.

“There was this huge wooden beam dragged across the road. It was so long you couldn't see where the ends were, to drive around it. It was pretty rough terrain anyway. I wouldn't have tried leaving the road to get around the block. I don't think we'd have gotten very far.

“There were six or seven men, wearing orange reflectors, moving around behind the beam. And behind them, farther back down the road, this strange light. It was kind of like a bonfire, only you'd expect a bonfire to be yellow or maybe orange. This one was white. I'd never seen a fire like that before.

“So Tom leans out the window and yells at one of the men in the reflectors: ‘What the hell's the idea, blocking the road like this?' And the man looks at us and says, in this deep, peculiar voice: ‘Road maintenance.' Just like that—like a machine talking. No expression at all in the voice.

“He was standing in front of our headlights. And the light reflected off his eyes, just like it would off a cat's. Not like a human being's at all. And don't tell me he might have been wearing glasses, because he wasn't. It was his eyes that reflected the light.

“I don't know if Tom noticed that or not. He didn't sound scared, just mad. He yells at the man, ‘Well, how the hell are we supposed to get back into town?' And the man doesn't answer. He isn't even looking at us anymore, just moving back and forth behind that wooden beam of theirs, with all the other men, doing something or other. I couldn't for the life of me make out what.

“And then I noticed in the fire, that white fire behind the men, there were dark figures moving around. Very slender, very tall. I don't know if they were human. They seemed to be twisting and swaying, around and around and back and forth. In pain maybe. But there wasn't a sound from them. Or from the men in the orange reflectors. Or from anybody. Only that loud, horrible static from the car radio, which neither of us had thought to turn off.

“I said to him, ‘Tom, turn the car around. We've got to get out of here.'

“I expected him to argue, Danny. To say something like ‘And go where?' and I was going to say, ‘Anywhere, just back down the road; with any luck we'll reach a town before our gas runs out.' But he didn't say a word.

“And then I looked at him. I saw his mouth was open. I saw something glittering on his chin, as if saliva were drooling out. I saw his hands moving over the steering wheel.
Feeling
the wheel. Like a blind man groping his way along a wall.

“I thought,
He doesn't know anymore how to turn the car around. He's forgotten how to drive
.

“So I said, ‘Tom, honey. Take it easy. It'll be all right. I'll get out and come around to your side, and you just scoot over on the seat. OK?' He didn't answer. I don't know if he heard me. But I thought,
If only I can get us turned around, get us away from here, he'll be all right. We'll both be all right.

“I got out of the car and started to walk around to the driver's side.

“I realized then there was a light somewhere above me. I didn't look up to see what it was. I looked at all of those clumps of—what do you call that shrub?—mesquite off to the side of the road, and I could see their shadows on the ground, all crisp and clear. The ground itself looked white, like snow in the moonlight. But I knew it wasn't the moon that was shining. It was much too bright for that. But I didn't look up; I didn't dare.

“That was the last I remember. Till I woke up and found myself lying in the dark, just off the road, with the pillow in my hands and the moon risen high. And the roadblock, and the men, and the white fire all gone. And the car, and Tom, gone with them.”

“The pillow?” I said.

“Yes, the pillow. I was clutching it. Not lying on it. Holding it tight against my chest with both arms.”

“And you hadn't taken it with you out of the car?”

“Of course not. Why should I have taken the pillow? Or the purse either. But when I woke up, the pillow was there, and so was the purse.”

“But why should they have left the pillow with you?”

“I don't know. I have no idea at all. Some bizarre sort of gallantry, is the only thing I can think of. So I wouldn't have to take one of the stones of the place and put it under my head. But your guess is as good as mine.”

I thought for a few moments. No explanation I was able to come up with made any sense. None of this made any sense.

“They left your purse with you too?”

“Uh-huh. That was one of the first things I did when I woke up, looked through the purse. I could see pretty well by the moonlight. Nothing was missing, as far as I could tell. My money was there. My keys. My airline ticket. And yes, my knife was still there. That was the scariest part. I was sure I was going to find it covered with blood. But it wasn't. Everything looked completely normal. Yet I could tell that they'd been through the purse. They'd looked at everything in it. And then they'd put it all back.”

“And left the purse with you,” I said.

“That's right.”

“Why would they do that? Go through your purse and then leave everything? Not even take the money?”

“
That
one, I think I know the answer to. You'll understand too, in a minute. I had a lot of time that night to figure it out. I stood for hours by the side of that road, praying that sooner or later somebody would drive by. And shivering. I've never shivered like that.

“A little before dawn a pickup truck came by. All full of Mexican men. They worked in Roswell, in construction, I guess. I could hardly understand anything they said. They could barely speak English, and Spanish isn't one of my languages. But they were very kind. They saw how cold I was, and until they finally found a blanket for me, they were all ready to take their shirts off for me to wear. They even took me to the motel, once I managed to explain that was where I was going. It might have been miles out of their way.

“Hope is a funny thing, Danny. I'd thought it all through during the night, while I was out there hitchhiking. I knew I wasn't ever going to see Tom again. But when we got close to the motel and the buildings started looking familiar, I felt some part of me saying, ‘No, maybe it's all right after all. Maybe it was all some joke, or misunderstanding, or something.'

“I thought,
I' ll hop out of this truck, and the car' ll be right there, parked by our room. Tom'll be inside, sleeping, his arm hanging out of the covers and breathing with his mouth half open
. The way he always did. I'd even started to work myself into a rage. I thought,
That little . . . turkey is going to wake up to the pounding of his life
.
You little creep, what'd you drive off and leave me in the desert for?
That kind of thing.

“But of course there was no car, and no Tom, and nobody'd slept in the bed that night. Nothing on the bed except my suitcase, almost all packed except for my toothbrush and a few night things. And Morris's book sewn into the lining.

“I wanted to throw myself onto the bed and cry. But I couldn't do that without moving the suitcase, and I felt too exhausted to pick up anything or move anything. Or do anything else. So I flopped into the chair by the bed and closed my eyes for a few minutes. And then I sat up and turned on the radio to hear the six o'clock news.