The Forge of God (43 page)

The window afforded a fine nighttime view of the myriad lights of downtown Seattle from Queen Anne Hill. The sky was overcast, but there had been no reports of thunderstorms. Still… The cloud deck was illuminated by brilliant flashes from above. One, two… a long pause, and by the time Mrs. Jenkins was in the living room, a third milky pulse of light.

Mrs. Jenkins looked on Hicks with some alarm. "It's just lightning, isn't it, Jenks?" she asked her husband.

"It's not lightning," Hicks said. The network was sending contradictory pulses of information. If a Boss was on-line, Hicks could not pick its voice out through the welter.

Then, clear and compelling, the messages came through to Hicks and Jenkins simultaneously.

Your site and the vessel in the sound are under attack.

"Attack?" Jenkins asked out loud. "Are they starting it now?"

"Shanghai Harbor was an ark site," Hicks said, his voice full of wonder. "It's been cut from the network. Nobody can reach Shanghai."

"What… What…" Jenkins was not used to thinking about these things, whatever his value to the network as a local organizer and procurer.

"I believe—"

His own inner thoughts, not the Boss's, said before the words could come out,
They're defending us but they can't stop everything from getting through. They've never told us this before, but they must have put ships or platforms or something in orbits to watch over the Earth—

"—we're being bombarded—"

Light fell through the clouds and expanded.

this is a war after all but we haven't quite thought of it that way didn't suspect they would do this to us

"Jenks…"

Jenkins hugged his wife. Hicks saw the flash of red and white, the lifting of a wall of water and rock, and the rush of a darkening shock wave across the lights of the city and houses on the hill. The window exploded and he closed his eyes, experienced a brief instant of pain and blindness—

On the last leg of the marathon drive into San Francisco, speeding down an almost-deserted 101 at well over the speed limit, Arthur felt a severe pain in the back of his head. He gripped the wheel tightly and pulled to a halt at the side of the highway, his body rigid.

"What's wrong?" Francine asked.

He twisted around, threw his arms up on the back of the seat, and looked through the rear window of the station wagon. A hellish blue and purple glow was spreading to the north, above and beyond Santa Rosa and the wine country.

"What's wrong?" Francine repeated.

He twisted around to face forward again, and leaned over the wheel to peer up at the skies above San Francisco and the Bay Area.

"More asteroids, Dad!" Marty cried out. "More explosions!"

These were a lot closer and a lot brighter, however, as sharp as blowtorches, leaving red spots in his vision. The Bay Area was still over twenty miles away, and these flashes were high in the night sky. Some kind of action, another battle, was taking place perhaps no more than a hundred miles above San Francisco.

Francine started to get out of the car but he stopped her. She stared at him, face twisted with fear and anger, but said nothing.

Four more high flares, and then the night returned.

Arthur was almost surprised to find himself weeping. His anger was a frightening thing. "Those bastards," he said, pounding the wheel. "Those goddamn bloody fucking bastards."

"Daddy," Marty whimpered.

"Shut up, goddammit," Arthur shrieked, and then he grabbed his wife's arm with his left hand and reached for Marty in the rear seat with his right. He shook them firmly, repeating over and over again, "Don't ever forget this. If we survive, don't you ever, ever forget this."

"What happened, Art?" Francine asked, trying to keep calm. Marty was screaming now, and Arthur closed his eyes in grief and sorrow, the anger turned inward because he had lost control. He listened to a few of the voices on the network, trying to piece things together.

"Seattle's gone," he said.
Trevor Hicks, all the others.

"Where's Gauge, Dad?" Marty asked through his tears. "Is Gauge alive?"

"I think so," Arthur said, shaking violently. The enormity. "They're trying to destroy our escape ships, the arks. They want to make sure there are no humans left."

"What? Why?" Francine asked.

"Remember," he repeated. "Just remember this, if we make it."

It took him almost twenty minutes to become calm enough to pull back into the slow lane. San Francisco and the Bay Area had been adequately protected. Suddenly, and without reservation—without any persuasion whatsoever—he loved the Bosses and the network and all the forces arrayed to protect and save them. His love was fierce and primal.
This is what a partisan feels like, watching his countryside get pillaged.

"They bombed Seattle?" she asked. "The… aliens, or the Russians?"

"Not the Russians. The planet-eaters. They tried to bomb San Francisco, too."
And Cleveland, which had survived, and Shanghai, which had not, and who knows how many other ark sites?
A fresh shiver worked down from his shoulders to his sacrum. "Christ. What will the Russians do? What will
we
do?"

The car's steering wheel vibrated. Above the engine noise, they heard and felt a shuddering groan. The rock-borne vibrations of Seattle's death passed under them.

At two in the morning, Washington, D.C., time, Irwin Schwartz reached out for the urgently beeping phone from his office cot and punched the speaker button. "Yes?" Only then did he hear the powerful whuff-whuff of helicopter blades and the screaming roar of jet turbines.

It was the late night White House military staff duty officer. "Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Crockerman is being evacuated. He wishes you to join him on the helicopter."

Schwartz had duly noted the officer's reluctance to call Crockerman "President." He was now strictly "Mr. Crockerman." If you don't act the office, you don't get the title. "What sort of emergency?"

"There have been strikes on Seattle and some kind of action over Cleveland, Charleston, and San Francisco."

"Jesus. Russian?"

"Don't know, sir. Sir, you should get out on the lawn as soon as possible."

"Right." Schwartz did not even grab his coat.

On the White House lawn, dressed in the undershirt and pants he had worn as he slept, Schwartz ducked instinctively under the high, massive rotor blades and ran up the ladder, his bald head unprotected against the chill downdraft of spring night air. A Secret Service agent stood by until the hatch was closed, and then watched the helicopter lift away to take them all to Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana.

The staff officer and a Marine guard hugged Crockerman's sides, the Marine carrying the "football" and the staff officer carrying a mobile data and command center—MODACC for short-hooked up to the helicopter's communications system.

There were three Secret Service agents aboard the craft, as well as Nancy Congdon, the President's personal secretary. Had Mrs. Crockerman been in the White House, she would have been evacuated as well.

"Mr. President," the staff officer began, "the Secretary of Defense is in Colorado. State is in Miami at a governors' meeting. The Vice President is in Chicago. I believe the Speaker of the House is being airlifted from his home. I have some information regarding what our satellites and other sensors have already told us." He spoke louder than he needed to over the engine noise; the cabin was well insulated.

The President and all the others aboard listened closely.

"Seattle is gone, and Charleston is a ruin—the strike appeared to be centered at twenty klicks out in the ocean there. But our satellites show no missile launches from the Soviet Union or any fish at sea. No missiles at all were detected coming from the Earth. And apparently some sort of defensive system came into play over San Francisco and Cleveland, perhaps elsewhere as well…"

"We don't have that kind of defense," Crockerman said hoarsely, barely audible. He fixed his eyes on Schwartz. Schwartz thought he looked two days dead at least, eyes pale and lifeless. The vote to impeach had taken the last bit of starch from him. Tomorrow would be—
would have been
—the beginning of the Senate trial on whether he would stay in office or be removed.

"Correct, sir."

"It's not the Russians," observed one of the Secret Service agents, a tall black Kentuckian of middle years.

"Not the Russians," Crockerman repeated, his face taking on some color now. "Who, then?"

"The planet-eaters," Schwartz said.

"It's begun?" the young Marine lieutenant asked, gripping the briefcase as if to keep it from flying away.

"God only knows," Schwartz said, shaking his head.

The MODACC beeped and the staff officer listened intently over his sound—insulated headphones. "Mr. President, it's Premier Arbatov in Moscow."

Crockerman stared once again at Schwartz for a long moment before reaching for the mike and headphones. Schwartz knew what the stare meant.
He's still the Man, damn us all to hell.

Arthur drove the car into the driveway of Grant and Danielle's hillside home in Richmond just before midnight. He was still shaken; the memory of the network's pain and loss lingered like a bizarre, bitter-sharp taste on the tongue. He sat with hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead at the rough wood garage door, and then turned to Francine.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"I think so." He glanced over the seat at Marty. The boy sprawled on the back seat, eyes closed, his head lolling slightly over the edge, mouth open.

"Thank God he's asleep," Francine said. "You gave us both a scare."

"I gave you a scare?" Arthur asked, his weariness breaking down before a sudden upwelling of anger. "Jesus, if you could have felt what I felt—"

"Please," Francine said, face deadly grim. "We're here. There's Grant now."

She opened the car door and stepped out. Arthur stayed in the seat, confused, then closed his eyes for a moment, tentatively searching for the network, trying to learn what had happened. There had been little on the radio beyond repeated reports of some unknown disaster in—Seattle; it had been less than an hour.

He half expected the superpowers to stumble into nuclear war; perhaps members of the network were preventing that even now. But he had to go on faith. For the moment, he was cut loose from the circuit of network communications.

Arthur took a murmuring Marty into his arms. Grant showed them to a bedroom with a queen-sized bed and a folding cot. Danielle—now asleep, Grant said—had made up the beds and laid out towels for them, as well as putting a late night snack of fruit and soup on the kitchen counter. Francine tucked Marty into the cot and joined Grant and Arthur in the kitchen.

"Have you heard what happened?" she asked Grant.

"No…" Grant's shirt and slacks were wrinkled and his silver-gray hair was tousled; he had apparently nodded off on the couch, getting up as he heard their car approach.

"We saw a flash to the north," Arthur said.

"Arthur thinks it was Seattle," Francine said. Her look was almost a challenge:
Go ahead, tell us you know. Tell us how you know.

Arthur stared at her, dismayed. Then it came to him: she was suddenly amidst family. She did not have to rely completely on him. She could vent a few of her own doubts and tensions; Marty was asleep and wouldn't hear. He understood this well enough, but it still hurt. On top of the pain he had felt earlier, this small betrayal was almost more than he could stand.

"We heard on the radio," Arthur said, taking the easy way out. "Something happened in Seattle."

Francine nodded, her face bloodless, teeth clenched. "'Radio," she said.

"What, for God's sake? I have a brother in Seattle," Grant said.

The airborne sound of Seattle's death rattled the house windows. Grant glanced warily at the ceiling. Arthur checked his watch and nodded.

"It's gone," Arthur told him. "The entire metropolitan area."

"Jesus Christ!" Grant cried, jumping from his stool. He went to the wall phone at the end of the counter and fumbled at the keypad.

"We didn't hear that on the radio," Francine said softly, her shoulders slumping. She stared past her folded hands at the carpet.

"It's busy. Everything's tied up," Grant said. He loped into the den to switch on the television. "When did you hear this?"

"We saw the flash about fifty minutes ago," Francine said, glancing up guiltily at Arthur. He held out his hand, wriggling his fingers, and she grasped it, covering her face with her other hand. She shuddered, but no tears would come.

The commentator's voice came to them through Grant's expensive sound system, resonant and authoritative, but with more than a hint of fear. "—reports now from Seattle and Charleston, that the two cities have been destroyed by what appear to be nuclear explosions, but there are contradictory reports of no accompanying radiation. We still have no idea what actually happened although it is now clear that at least these two seaboard cities, on the East and West Coasts, have been leveled by unprecedented disaster. The government has issued statements that our nation is not yet in a state of war, which leads some sources to state that the explosions were not caused by nuclear missiles, at least not those of the Soviet Union. Indeed, flashes over the cities of San Francisco and Cleveland have led some to speculate that the destruction of the Earth has begun, and that we are witnessing—"

"Tell him," Francine said, keeping her voice low. "Tell him. I believe you. Really I do. They need to know."

Arthur shook his head. She brought her hands over her face again, but her trembling had stopped. "I can't tell them, and you must not," Arthur said. "It would only hurt them."

Danielle appeared in the hallway door, wearing a long silk gown with a chenille robe thrown over it. "What's happened?" she asked.

Francine embraced her and led her into the den. Arthur regarded the untouched bowls of soup, thinking,
Not yet… But it can't be much longer.