The Fatal Tree (8 page)

I
n Hashimoto, Japan, three school buses containing sixty-seven schoolchildren, their teachers, classroom aides, and bus drivers disappeared on a field trip to Kozuki Park Nature Reserve. The buses, operated by the Wakayam Prefecture Educational Services Co-operative, left the school at 9:30 a.m. on what had become an annual outing. So far as is known, the three vehicles were last seen by several passing motorists on Highway 24 only minutes after leaving the school.

The nine-kilometre trip should have taken no more than twenty minutes. Yet when the school party did not arrive at the designated time, park rangers called the school to enquire whether there had been a change of schedule; they were informed that the children had departed as planned. Fearing an accident, police were called in and a search rapidly mounted. When the first pass failed to locate the three buses, helicopters and additional patrol cars were deployed, along with dog handlers. The entire region was painstakingly combed. The entire Wakayama and Gojo prefectures were put on alert, and the search quickly spread outward into adjoining provinces.

No sign of the buses or their occupants was found, nor was any contact made between those missing and parents or school officials. Their disappearance was troubling – all the more so since, as Principal Kamito Kiyanaka pointed out, “All teachers carried cell phones, and most of the students too. If there had been any difficulty,
someone
would have received a call or text. There would have been multiple calls for help. But we have received no communication at all.”

Yet, on a rice farm near Nara-Ken, Japan, three school buses appeared mired up to their wheel-wells in the middle of a rice paddy. The vehicles and their occupants – a number of young children, all dressed in the same peculiar costume, and what appeared to be their adult guardians – were discovered midmorning by field hands arriving for work. The strangers were in a state of extreme confusion and hysteria. Consequently, officials were unable to arrive at a coherent account of what had happened.

No one was able to explain precisely how the large blue vehicles came to be in the paddy field, as the nearest road – an unpaved market track some distance to the north – was unsuitable for motorised vehicles. The mystery was compounded by the fact that, while the strangers appeared to be Japanese, their speech was not readily intelligible to the local, mostly rural population. Linguistic experts posit that the strangers speak an unknown variant of the Shikoku dialect.

Doctors, nurses, and staff administrators beginning their morning shift at the Georgetown Hospital were stunned and alarmed to find that the modern two-story brick-and-glass 450-bed medical facility had been replaced by a single-story clapboard building. Prompt investigation revealed that each of the 150 beds was occupied by a wounded serviceman, most of them either US Air Force or Navy.The patients, many of them officers, maintained that they had received their injuries during ongoing military actions in the Northern Pacific Theatre of Operations. Investigations continue amidst tremendous media attention, but no explanation to date has been offered.

In a somewhat related incident, five TBM Avenger aircraft landed at Up-Park Camp airfield outside Kingston, Jamaica. The planes and their crew were last seen leaving the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a training mission in lowlevel bombing. The pilots and their instructor had been in radio contact with the control tower, expressing disorientation and poor visibility, although weather conditions were reported as average for the season. All contact ceased as of 4:00 p.m., and Flight 19 was not heard from again. A thorough and exhaustive search by both surface vessels and aircraft tracing the flight path turned up no wreckage, and no bodies were ever recovered. The official explanation was that the planes were lost due to adverse weather conditions in the Caribbean, although no storms were recorded or reported.

The sudden appearance of the planes and crewmen following a seventy-year absence deepens one of the consuming mysteries of the twenty-first century. Compounding the mystery is the fact that the pilots appear not to have aged a single day and to a man believe the date is still December 5, 1945.

Fifty miles west of Socorro, New Mexico, two visitors were waiting in the small lobby of the Jansky Very Large Array Radio Telescope command centre. One of the men was Gianni Becarria, who, in the estimation of his travelling companion, was exceptional in about twenty different ways. This Tony Clarke had decided after only the second ley jump they had made together. Now, after more than a dozen leaps, Tony was convinced that
exceptional
was too small a word. “Brother Becarria,” he said, his tone approaching reverence, “you are a genuine wonder. I cannot imagine what this must be like for you.”

Momentarily puzzled, Gianni’s brow furrowed.
“Scusami?”
“Coming here… seeing all this…” Tony gestured out the observation windows at the radio telescope’s array of antennae – twenty-seven enormous, white, track-mounted satellite dishes arranged in a gigantic Y-shaped pattern – spread out across the flat, empty plain of the New Mexico desert. “For you, this is all the future. It must be a continual shock to someone born – what? Over two hundred years ago?”

“But last week I was here,” Gianni pointed out.

“Yes – but still. It must take some getting used to.”

At last, the Italian priest understood. “We are all of us travellers in time, no?” He smiled. “Some of us travel more rapidly than others, yes, but we all will inhabit the future one day.”

“Very true.” Tony turned his gaze back to the telescope and the empty desert plain sweltering beneath a crystal-blue cloudless sky. “As to that, you must have an inbuilt future-detector. I would never have believed we could return here less than a week after our first visit.” Tony shook his head with admiration. “Pure genius.”

“I may have learned a few tricks over the years,” the priest cheerfully conceded. Waving a hand at the desktop computer at the receptionist’s station, he added, “Though I admit, those machines still perplex me no end.”

Tony laughed. On their first visit, Gianni had spent almost an hour chatting with one of the techies who obligingly gave the astronomer priest a crash course in IT 101, explaining computers as one would to a five-year-old. To his credit, the techie did not appear the least perturbed by the priest’s questions, nor think it odd that someone like Gianni should demonstrate such ignorance about electronic computational capabilities of the twenty-first century. Come to think about it, Tony concluded, Gianni’s clerical collar probably helped; young Kyle was of a generation that did not expect much of priests.

Though he may not have been on the razor edge of computer technology, Gianni’s personal computational powers were supremely tuned and extremely accurate. Even including the halfday drive out from Sedona, they had managed to arrive, by Tony’s estimation, only six days and seven hours after their last visit, when they had come seeking independent confirmation of what Tony had described as an anomaly in certain calculations that might, if proven, indicate a slowing of cosmic expansion. Now, as they stood at the large picture window in the reception lobby of the Jansky VLA facility waiting for Gianni’s guest pass to materialise, Tony had a chance to marvel anew at how fluid time seemed to be when one became a ley traveller.

“They are beautiful,” said Tony, watching all twenty-seven of the gargantuan white dishes swivelling in synchronised motion to align themselves to a new trajectory. “It never fails to get the juices flowing.”

“Do you think they have had time to conclude the survey we discussed on our previous visit?” wondered Gianni.

“If not, they’ll have made a start at least – providing they got the green light from the powers that be.” Tony heard voices behind him and turned toward the reception desk. “We’ll speak to the OD right away and get a status report.”

A young man with a round face fringed in chin whiskers and wearing a green
Gravity Sucks
T-shirt and cargo trousers had just entered the lobby; he hurried over to meet them. “Dr. Clarke?” He held out his hand. “Really sorry to keep you waiting. We just found out you were here. Dr. Segler sent me to bring you up.”

“And you are… ?”

“Oh, sorry. I’m Jason – third-year graduate assistant. I have to say, this is huge for me – I love your work. Big fan.”

“Pleased to meet you, Jason,” said Tony, taking the offered hand. “And this is Fra Becarria.” The two shook hands and Tony said, “We’re anxious to see Dr. Segler, so why don’t you lead the way.”

“No problem,” replied Jason, taking a step backward. At the check-in desk, he paused. “Oh, here. I almost forgot.” He handed Gianni a blue nylon lanyard with a plastic tag bearing the word
Visitor
in red letters. Lifting the little aluminium barrier tube at the side of the desk, Jason ushered his charges into the corridor, saying, “I don’t know why it always takes so long to get a pass around here. You’d think they had to carve each one out of stone or something.”

“Do you still get tourists wandering in over here from Roswell?” wondered Tony.

“Now and then,” Jason told him. “Unless there’s a convention in town.”

“An astronomical convention?” wondered Gianni.

“Nah, a UFO convention. They’re up to two or three a year over there these days. You ever been? The place is an absolute riot, man. It’s like Mecca for all the LGM hunters who believe aliens routinely visit the planet.” He looked to Gianni. “Don’t you have UFO freaks over there in Italy?”

“Perhaps,” replied Gianni. “Italy has always been a popular tourist destination.”

Jason’s pleasant face screwed up into a puzzled frown; he could not work out if Gianni was pulling his leg or not. “Cool,” he concluded with a shrug. Pushing open a door, he led them up three flights of stairs to the third floor and across a carpeted foyer to a glassed-in office; he knocked once on the door and pushed it open without waiting for a reply. “Here they are,” he announced. “Delivered safe and sound.”

Jason stepped aside, allowing Tony and Gianni to enter. A man in a crisp white short-sleeved shirt and red bow tie jumped up from behind the desk. “Tony! You’re back. Great.” He crossed the room with quick strides, holding out his hand to shake. “Good to see you again, Gianni. Welcome.”

Before either man could reply, he waved them to seats. “Please, sit down. I’ll bring you up to speed. A lot has happened since you were here.” To Jason, who was still lingering hopefully by the door, he said, “Thanks, Jaz – get these guys some coffee, please. And one for me.”

“Sure thing, chief. I’m on it.”

Jason disappeared, and the director of operations turned his attention to his desk, which was heaped with papers and graphs – all of them covered in numbers and diagrams of bewildering incomprehensibility. He pawed through them for a moment, picked up a single page, cleared his throat, and said, “I don’t mind telling you, Tony, you’ve made my cosy little life a nightmare.”

“No need to thank me,” Tony replied. “That’s what friends are for.”

“I mean it. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since you let off your bombshell – and I
know
I haven’t had a minute’s peace. We have every man on board working overtime here, and I’ve put on extra shifts. This is big stuff. Really big. I hope you’re planning on staying around. I could use the extra help.”

“Is anything beginning to emerge?”

“Emerge! I’ll give you emerge – ” He shoved the paper in his hand at Tony. “Just look at this!”

Tony took the page and perused it briefly. “Very interesting,” he said, passing it on to Gianni, who studied it intently.

“You
are
kidding, right?” replied Segler. He thrust a finger at the paper in Gianni’s hands. “That little bit of
interesting
has the ether vibrating from here to Tokyo. The White House wants to be kept in the loop, and the NSA as well. Ten minutes ago I was informed that we’re to expect a delegation from NASA sometime tomorrow, and I don’t think they’re coming for the fifty-cent tour.”

“It might mean a little more to us if you told us what we’re looking at,” Tony suggested, tapping the page with a finger. “What is this exactly?”