Overture (Earth Song) (5 page)

“
I don’t think I want to make any converts, officer. But I want an image of the Lord’s agent while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

“
Sure Victor, no problem. But let’s finish this Portal thing first.” He smiled and started talking again.

Forty-five minutes waiting in a crowded La Guardia terminal while a helicopter was made available had a precipitous decline in Mark Volant’s sense of humor. Washington D.C. was his home and rarely did he set foot from the seat of power. The last time had been nine years ago for a vacation with his wife. She’d divorced him six months after. The fact that his marriage had been a shambles and on the verge of collapse for years never entered his mind. Instead he associated that week of fun in the sun on Miami beaches with the bitter disappointment to follow, and had never taken another day off.

The
job of operating an intelligence sector took an average of eleven hours in Volant’s day. The routines of life and watching news took the rest of his day. This morning he had just arrived at his office to find none other than the director of NSA waiting in Volant’s office chair.

“
Director, what a surprise!” he said sarcastically.

“
There are lots of surprises this morning. Have you been watching the news?” Volant narrowed his eyes, wondering what he had missed. As he placed his briefcase and coat on a chair he went over the morning’s news in his mind. There was really nothing remarkable, certainly nothing that would warrant an unexpected visit from his boss. Furthermore, there had been nothing of note in his morning intelligence brief which he’d scanned as his driver took him to work.

“
Certainly, but I don’t remember anything interesting. Looks like the Indians are getting ready to launch another satellite, but we’ve been expecting that for a year.”

“
I’m talking about something much closer.” Volant looked openly confused for a moment, then he remembered a report last night about something in New York City.

“
You mean New York? Some sort of local disturbance in Central Park. I heard a snippet that an agent was preparing a briefing based on the local FBI office-”

“
I went around the FBI,” the director said with a knowing smirk and tossed a folder across Volant's desk toward him. On the cover was the unmistakable NASA logo.  “They’ve found something there we need to know more about.”

“
And this is worth diverting section assets?”

“
You know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it was necessary. In fact, I want you personally on the ground ASAP.”

“
Oh. Well, if that is your order-”

“
It is. Get there fast. My instincts have never been wrong, that’s why I’m where I am, and you are where you are.”

“
Yes, sir.” And now, seven hours later, he was riding a helicopter as it flew over the vast towers of New York with Central Park coming into view.

“
Set us down on the FBI landing pad just outside the cordon,” he instructed the pilot.

“
Sir, we’re being challenged by the FBI controlling agent over the radio. He says we are not to land or approach the cordon.”

“
Does he now? Well, tell him again who I am, and inform him I will be landing in…”

“
About two minutes,” the pilot offered, “sir, Roger that, I will inform him.”

The
helicopter swung around the park and in for a landing. As they descended Volant could see the huge crowd surrounding the FBI and NYPD cordon. “Great perimeter control,” he snorted as the helicopter pilot flared back and set them down to a smooth landing.

Instantly
a dozen FBI agents in body armor surrounded the helicopter holding their weapons at ready. Without concern, he opened the door and climbed out onto the temporary metal tarmac. Two other men climbed out to stand behind Volant's tall imposing figure and the helicopter revved up and lifted into the sky.

The
senior FBI field officer present came running up and pushed through the group of armed agents surrounding the helipad. He was an aging man in his late fifties carrying too many years of stress under his conservative black suit and tie, and too many spaghetti dinners under his belt. “Just who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded.

“
Mark L. Volant, NSA Sector Director for the North Eastern United States. Who are you?”

“
Senior Field Officer Chris Benson and I’m in charge here.”

“
Not any more, Benson.” The FBI man’s veins stood out on his neck and he growled. As he looked at Volant and the calm assurance in his demeanor the man’s eyes got wide and he began to stammer a complaint.

“
Just call your Bureau Chief. By now he’s gotten a call from the President and is being made aware of the situation here. These two men are my assistants and they will begin assessing the controls you have in effect in the area and start making changes. You will naturally afford them complete accommodations and follow their recommendations. Meanwhile, I want you to take me to this ‘Portal’ thing. I need to have a report ready for the SecDef by twenty-two hundred hours.”

The
man was stunned and taken aback, but he had risen in the hierarchy of the FBI by learning when to take an order, especially when someone in power gave one. Chris Benson, who only hours ago had stormed in and usurped control from the NYPD, turned and passively allowed Volant to assume control.

The
FBI had assembled a steel barricade around the Portal to keep prying eyes at bay. He examined the barricade as he was led through one of the four entrances, and made a mental note to consider raising the height or making it a complete dome to enclose the area if it proved necessary. Inside were dozens of lounging FBI agents, some eating and talking, others freely taking pictures of the object they were there to quarantine. He made another mental note to confiscate all the cameras and recording devices. A moment later they reached the Portal and he was stunned.

“
Shit,” was all he could finally manage on seeing the pearly construct. A meter tall, five meters wide and maybe three deep, it was a brilliant white in the brutal carbon filament lights, and looked like nothing more than a stage for a rock star or some sort of impressionist artwork carved out of pure alabaster. It certainly looked like a dais and even had low steps coming up both long sides. The grass around it was now trampled and worn. There was no other evidence of equipment that would have been needed to place such a huge structure, which no doubt weighed several tons.

“
I had a similar reaction myself the first time,” Benson said, “just wait until someone stands on the top step!”

“
What are they doing?” Volant asked and pointed to a group of people who appeared to be wearing space suits.

“
NASA, they’re here to figure out if this is some kind of ET thing, or just a refugee from the Guggenheim.”  Volant walked over confidently a short distance from the brightly suited NASA men who were waving instruments over the shining dais and gesturing animatedly at the results.

“
I’ll deal with NASA, please pull your men back,” Volant told Benson.

“
Yes sir, I’ll do that right away.” Just then one of the technicians walked to the top step and the Portal burst into brilliant life.

“
Holy shit!” Volant blurted.

“
Yeah, that was my other reaction too,” Benson chuckled and walked off. As the former agent in charge went to pull back his men, Volant watched the NASA technicians at work. There were four suited technicians staggering around with huge backpacks full of instruments and gear. Two other NASA engineers were at a portable bench with wheels, its top covered with computers that were all displaying data. Behind those two technicians was a man who had to be a scientist. His unkempt gray suit had stains and a badly mended tear, he had a two day growth of beard and it was unlikely that he owned a comb. He was jabbering about unintelligible things and running back and forth between the computers.

Volant
cleared his throat.  No one noticed so he did it again, only louder. The older scientist turned around and spotted him, then seemed to realize all the FBI agents were leaving. “What’s all this?” he asked the lone figure remaining. To the man’s credit he looked Volant up and down then quickly came to the correct conclusion, “CIA or NSA?”

“
NSA, and you would be?”

“
Dr. George Osgood, senior NASA materials engineer and fan of all things extra-terrestrial!” Volant made a face that caused some of Osgood’s smile to fade.

“
I am sector chief Mark Volant, NSA, and I’m in charge of this circus now. My boss sent me here because the unintelligible report you sent to NASA has quite a few important people worried. I need a level-headed assessment to present to the President by twenty-two hundred hours.”

“
Uhm, no can do. We’ve only just scratched the material’s surface,” he waved a hand in the direction of the Portal as he spoke, “do you have any idea of the kind of readings we’re getting from that thing? We can’t figure what it’s made out of. Its energy absorption profile is disturbing. I rather suspect a gigawatt laser wouldn’t make it warm! Look at the Portal hovering there. Is it a simple visual display, a hologram, or a physical construct that appears and disappears? We just don’t know. And, it’s giving off types of radiation we’ve never seen before!”

“
Radiation?” Volant said, taking a step backwards.

“
Oh, it’s not ionizing radiation. Mostly some sort of emissions in the terahertz band, the kinda stuff we’re experimenting with for medical imaging. I mean to say, I don’t have the proper equipment here yet. You must understand, I’ve requested a neutrino analyzer and a quantum detection array to be loaded on a C-150 from Texas and flown here at once.”

“
Why would you need that sort of thing to figure out where this comes from?”

“
We don’t,” he said with a decided air of righteous indignation. “But we need it to confirm my suspicions about the readings we’re getting.”

“
What difference do emissions and radiation make? I have a report due!”

“
What difference? You idiot, have you ever heard of a positron collider? No, I didn’t think so. It’s a huge loop of cables, several miles long, in which you allow particles, such as electrons or positrons, to race around in a circle until they smash together.”

“
Oh, you mean an atom smasher.”

“
No such thing; it’s a positron collider, or a magneto accelerator if you wish. The smallest that can get any noticeable results with is about a quarter mile across and is at the University of New York. It cost about eleven million dollars to build. When properly used it generates a handful of tiny particles known as quarks and muons.”

“
While certainly fascinating to your colleagues and a few dozen other people in this country, what exactly does it have to do with anything?”

“
Well, that fascinating object over there seems to be leaking subatomic particles that haven’t been seen freely since the formation of our universe!”

Volant
looked at the scientist and blinked. “So, can you tell me by tonight where this thing came from?”

“
I can tell you right now where it didn’t come from. It most certainly did not come from Earth.”

The district lockups in New York City were often described as Hell on Earth. Every form of human filth and predator moved through those jail cells on a daily basis. When he found himself in those cells, Victor had always been quick to find someone he had bought from or sold to. The bond of dealing was usually enough to keep him protected from the worst of the predators. This time inside, it was different.

Victor
asked to be left alone, and on the strength of newfound determination and reborn character they did just that. Like the worst of the predators, he had an inner light in which the low lives could not stand to be exposed. For the first time, he found himself in a cell corner all alone. He sat on the filthy chair and thought. Hour upon hour he thought about what had happened, what it meant to him, and where he was to go from there.

“
You all right there, son?” asked a man some time later. “Need anything?” Victor looked up into the eyes of a black man like himself. Eyes that had seen many more years than his own. Unlike himself, this old brother had lived in the time when he couldn’t stand tall next to a white man, date a white woman, or even drink from a white man’s water fountain.

“
I’m fine pops, how about yourself?”

“
Couldn’t be better.”

“
What are you in here for?”

“
Me? I’m here because I want to be. I’m here to help where I can help. And yourself?”

“
I’m here because I wanted to be, too.”