The Forge of God (15 page)

From the end of the cylinder to the ornate gleaming surface below was a drop of at least thirty feet. No rappelling down; there was nothing to tie the rope onto, and he would not even try to hammer a piton into place.

"I can't go any farther," he said. "There's nothing moving. No place I'd call living quarters. No machinery visible, even. And no lights. I'm going to turn off the torches and see if anything glows afterward." He plunged himself into complete darkness. For a moment, his throat constricted and he coughed, the sound breaking into a chatter of echoes.

"I don't see anything," he said after a few minutes of darkness. "I'm going to turn the torches on to take more pictures." He reached for the switches and then paused, squinting. Directly ahead, burning dimly and steadily, was a tiny red light, no more than a star in the vastness. "Wait. I don't know if the video can pick that up. It's very weak. Just a single red light, like a pinprick."

He watched the gleam for several more minutes. All motions it made were easily explained by optical illusion; it changed neither in position nor brightness. "I don't think the ship is dead. It's just waiting." Then he shook his head. "But maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, just because of one little red light." Turning on his wrist flashlight, he mounted a telephoto lens on the Hasselblad and set the camera to a long exposure, then rested it on the lip of the cylinder, facing the red light. With a remote button, he opened the camera lens. When the exposure was complete, he reset for even longer and shot another. Then he turned on the torches and sat down to fill his memory with as much detail as he could. "It's still silent," he said.

After fifteen minutes, he got to his feet and instinctively brushed off his pants. "All right. I'm going back."

To his enormous relief, nothing interfered with his return journey.

October 10

Edward Shaw learned of the Guest's death two days later, when they all received a visit from Colonel Phan. After a ten-minute warning, in which time Edward quickly dressed, the curtains were drawn and all four of them faced the small, muscular brown man in his pin-neat blue uniform, standing in the central laboratory.

"How long have we got, Doc?" Minelli asked. He had been getting more and more flippant, less predictable, as the days passed. He talked often of the President and how they would soon be "outta this dump." His speech more and more resembled a comic imitation of James Cagney. Minelli had never reacted well to overbearing authority. Edward had heard of a time, years before Minelli came to Austin, when he had been jailed on a minor dope charge, and had bloodied his face against a jailhouse door. Edward worried about him.

"You are all healthy, with no signs of contamination or illness," Phan said. "I plan no more tests for you. You have heard from your duty officer, I believe, that the Guest is dead. I have finished the first level of autopsy, and found no microbiologicals anywhere within its system. It appears to have been a completely sterile creature. This is good news for you."

"No bugs, m'lady," Minelli said. Edward winced.

"I have recommended that you be released," Phan said, staring levelly at each in turn. "Though I do not know when they will do so. As the President said, there are security concerns."

Edward saw Stella Morgan through her window and smiled at her. She did not return the smile; perhaps the light was wrong and she did not see him; perhaps she was feeling as depressed as Reslaw, who seldom said anything now.

The combination of free interaction through the intercom and separate confinement seemed to undermine the camaraderie Edward thought was typical of prison camp inmates. They were not being abused. They had nothing really solid to fight against. Their confinement, until now at least, had not been senseless. Consequently, they were not "drawing together" as Edward thought they might. Then again, he had never before been held in long-term detention. Maybe his expectations were simply naive.

"We are preparing papers that you will sign, promising not to speak of these last few days…"

"I won't sign anything like that," Minelli said. "There aren't any best-sellers if I sign that. No agents, no Hollywood."

"Please," Phan said patiently.

"What about Australia?" Edward asked. "Are you talking with them?"

"Conferences begin today in Washington," Phan said.

"Why the wait? Why didn't everybody start talking weeks ago?"

Phan did not answer. "Personally, I hope all is made public soon," he said.

Edward tried to control a building anger. "Why can't we get together? Take us out of here and put us in a BOQ or something."

"Barbecue?" Minelli snorted.

"Bachelor officer's quarters," Edward explained, his lower lip trembling. He was beginning to cry. He checked that response immediately, putting on an air of indignant rationality. "Really. This is hell. We feel like we're in jail."

"Worse. We can't make zip guns or knives," Minelli said. "Bottom of the world, Ma!"

Phan regarded Minelli with an expression between irritation and concern. "That is all I have to tell you now. Please do not worry. I am sure you will be compensated. In the meantime, we have new infodisks."

"Goody," Minelli said. As Phan turned away, he shouted, "Wait! I'm not feeling well. Really. Something's wrong."

"What is it?" Phan asked, gesturing to a watch supervisor behind him.

"In my head. Tell them, Reslaw."

"Minelli's been disturbed recently," Reslaw said slowly. "I'm not doing too well, myself. He doesn't sound good. He's different."

"I'm different," Minelli concurred. Then he began to weep. "Goddammit, just put us back out where the rocks are. Let us go in our truck. I'll sign anything. Really. Please."

Phan glanced at them all, then turned and left abruptly. The curtains hummed back into place. Edward's drawer opened and he removed a newspaper and the new packet of infodisks. Hungrily, he read yesterday morning's headline.

"Christ," he muttered. "They know about the President. Stella!" He punched her number on the intercom. "Stella, they know the President came out here!"

"I'm reading," she said.

"Do you think your mother got through?"

"I don't know, really."

"We can hope," Edward said.

Minelli was still weeping.

Hicks lay back against a pillow in the Lincoln Bedroom, a foot-high stack of reports on the round draped night-stand beside him, a small glass-globed lamp glowing softly above the reports. The late Empire-period pendulum clock on the marble mantelpiece ticked softly, steadily. The large, high-ceilinged room looked haunted, in a cozy sort of way; haunted by history, by association. This had been Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet room originally; here he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

He shook his head. "I'm crazy," he said. "I'm not here. I'm imagining all of it." For a moment, he hoped desperately that was true; that he was dreaming in the hotel room at the Inter-Continental, and that he would soon be promoting his novel for six minutes or less on another radio show, before another young announcer…

On the other hand, what was so undesirable about being in the White House in Washington, D.C., personally chosen by the President of the United States to advise him on the biggest event in human history? "The man doesn't listen," he murmured.

Hicks picked up the topmost report on the stack, a thick sheaf of photocopied papers on the Death Valley site, the Guest, and all that was known about the Great Victoria Desert site.

The Guest's interim autopsy report was third in the stack. Using a talent acquired across years of research, he skimmed the first two papers quickly, stopping only for essential details. The reports, not unexpectedly, were "safe"—hedged through and through with ambiguous language, craftily defused theories, prompt second-guessing. Only the autopsy report showed promise of being substantive.

Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, a man Hicks would like to meet, was clear and to the point. The Guest's physiology was unlike that of any living thing on Earth. Phan could not conceive of an environment that would evolve such a physiology. There were structures that reminded him, again and again, of "engineering shortcuts," totally unlike the more intricate, randomly evolved structures terrestrial biology exhibited. His conclusion was not hedged in the least:

"The Guest's body does not appear to be in the same biological category as Earth life forms. Some of its features are contrary to reasonable expectations. The only explanation I can offer for this is that the Guest is an artificial being, perhaps the product of centuries of genetic manipulation combined with complex bioelectronics. Since these abilities are far beyond us, any suppositions I might make as to the actual functions of the Guest's organs must be considered unreliable, perhaps misleading."

A chemical analysis of the Guest's tissues followed. There was no cell structure per se in any of the tissues; rather, each area or organ in the Guest's body appeared to have a separate metabolism, which cooperated with, but was not part of, other areas or organs. There was no central waste-disposal system. Wastes appeared to build up without relief in tissues. Phan thought this might have been the cause of death. "Perhaps nutrients unavailable in an Earth environment triggered processes below the level of detail our investigation can uncover. Perhaps the Guest, in its native environment, was attached to a complex life-support system that purged its body of waste products. Perhaps the Guest was ill and certain body functions were inactive."

Buried in a footnote: "The Guest does not appear to have been designed for a long life span." The footnote was signed by Harold Feinman, who had not attended the final parts of the autopsy. There was no further elaboration.

Despite the report's clarity, Something was being left unsaid. Feinman, at least, seemed to be hinting that the Guest was not what it appeared…

In the bottom report of the stack was an Australian booklet, prepared with obvious haste and considerable deletions. This booklet began with a synopsis of statements made by the mechanical visitors that had emerged from the Great Victoria Desert rock.

Hicks rubbed his eyes. The light was poor for reading. He had leafed through this booklet once already: Yet he needed to feel completely prepared for the next morning, when he accompanied the President into the Oval Office to meet with the Australian representatives.

"The comprehensibility of the mechanical beings' statements to our investigators is astonishing. Their command of English appears to be perfect. They answer questions promptly and without obfuscation."

Hicks studied the glossy color photographs inserted into the booklet. The Australian government had just two days before provided a set of these photographs along with video disks to every news organization in the world; the images of the three silvery, gourd-shaped robots hovering near a wood-posted razor-wire fence, of the great smooth water-worn red rock, of the exit hole, were in every civilized household in the world by now.

"The robots, by their every word, convey a sense of goodwill and benevolent concern. They wish to help the inhabitants of the Earth to 'fulfill your potential, to come together in harmony and exercise your rights as potential citizens of a galaxy-wide exchange.'"

Hicks frowned. How many years of fictional paranoia had conditioned him to be dubious of extraterrestrials bearing gifts? Of all the motion pictures made about first contact, only a bare handful had treated the epochal event as benign.

How often had Hicks's eyes misted over, watching these few films, even when he tried to keep a scientific perspective? That great moment, the exchange between humans and friendly nonhuman intelligences…

It had happened in Australia. The dream was alive.

And in California, nightmares.

The Guest does not appear to have been designed for a long life span,

He put the Australian booklet on the top of the stack and reached awkwardly over the stack to turn off the light. In the darkness, he disciplined himself to take regular, shallow breaths, to blank his mind and go to sleep. Even so, sleep came late and was not restful.

October 11

Crockerman, wearing slacks and a white shirt but no coat or tie, a powdery patch of styptic pencil on his chin from a shaving cut, entered the office of his chief of staff, and nodded briefly, at those assembled there: Gordon, Hicks, Rotterjack, Fulton, Lehrman, and the chief of staff himself, plump and balding Irwin Schwartz. It was seven-thirty in the morning, though in the windowless office time hardly mattered. Arthur thought he might never get out of little rooms and the company of bureaucrats and politicians.

"I've called you in here to go over our own material on the Great Victoria Desert bogey," Crockerman said. "You've read their booklet, I presume?" Crockerman asked. All nodded. "At my request, Mr. Hicks has been sworn in, and his security clearance has been processed…"

Rotterjack looked dyspeptic.

"He's one of us now. Where's Carl?"

"Still in traffic, I think," Schwartz said. "He called a half hour ago and said he'd be a few minutes late."

"All right. We don't have much time." Crockerman stood and paced before them. "I'll play his part. We have 'one or more' agents at the Australian rock. I need not tell you all how sensitive this fact is, but take this as a reminder…"

Rotterjack threw a very pointed glance at Hicks. Hicks received it calmly.

"Ironically, the information passed on to us only confirms what the Australians have been saying in public. Everything's Pollyanna as far as they're concerned. We're about to enter a new age of discovery. The robots have already begun to explain their technology. David?"

"The Australians have passed on some of the physics information the robots have given to them," Rotterjack said. "It's quite esoteric, having to do with cosmology. A couple of Australian physicists have said the equations are relevant to superstring theory."

"Whatever that is," Fulton said.

Rotterjack grinned almost maliciously. "It's very important, General. At your request, Arthur, I've passed the equations on to Mohammed Abante at Pepperdine University. He's arranging for a team of his colleagues to examine the equations and, we hope, file a report in a few days. The robots have not been confronted with the fact of our bogey. The Australians may want to leave it to us to tell them."