The Inner Circle (20 page)

"Please, Mr. Peterson. I need to talk to you."

"Well maybe you should have thought of that before you fired me."

"Please, I only need a few minutes of your time," Armour pleaded.

At least he can't fire me again.

Neil released his grip on the door and allowed Armour to come into his apartment. Neil walked over and plopped on the couch, seemingly paying no attention as Armour stood next to him.

"This place looks like a bomb went off," Armour remarked, looking around at the messy apartment. "And it smells like something died in here."

"It must be my self-respect that you just killed, thanks. Besides, it's the only thing I could afford before I got fired. Imagine what the next place I'll live in will look like."

Neil still refused to look at Armour, who did not wait for an invitation to sit down on the lounge chair next to the couch.

"First, I want to tell you not to take your firing personally. I did not mean it as a personal attack on you," Armour said. "In fact, I was receiving pressure myself to get NASA back in line and you were one of the many scapegoats who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Neil asked, finally giving in and glancing towards Armour.

"No, but it is supposed to make you understand that I still value your skill as a pilot," Armour said. "So, what are you going to do with your life now? Just sit around here and drink yourself to death?"

"Not that it's any business of yours what I choose to do with my life, but no, I don't plan on staying in this area any longer. Now is as good a time as any to move someplace else, start a new life."

"What about your old life? Don't you have a family?"

"I had a family once, but my wife took my daughter and moved across the country a few years ago. I was actually planning on leaving tonight to go and find a place to live and a job near them so I can at least be a father to my little girl," Neil said, not trying to hide the guilt and shame in his voice. This would be the last time he would ever talk to anyone from NASA again, so he saw no reason why he should sugarcoat his situation.

"And what kind of job do you think you’ll be able to get?"

Neil paused and thought about this for a moment. He knew that finding a good job would be next to impossible, so he only hoped to find something to support himself and help raise Emily, maybe start a college fund for her now, while she was still young. The more he thought about finding a job though, the bleaker his future seemed to be. With the limited amount of skills he had, he might not be able to make enough money just to rent a place to live.

"I'll find something. If my back is against the wall, I'll have to find something," Neil said, wondering whether he actually believed his own words. Neil picked up a nearby whiskey bottle and saw that there was nothing left in it. Thinking about these kinds of things really made him want a drink. "Not that it's any of your business."

"I know, you said that already," the older man said. "But let's face it, your prospects for the future don't look very bright. What kind of impact do you expect to have on your daughter's life when you have no job, a thousand bucks in the bank and a drinking problem?"

Neil sat up straight and turned towards Armour, becoming very angry about how much the man was prying into his life.

How the hell does he know that I only have a thousand bucks in the bank?

"Look, I don't understand the point of all these questions. You fired me earlier today, but now you want to play twenty questions? My life obviously isn't important to you and I know you didn't come all the way over here to try and offer me guidance."

Neil was angry now and neither man said a word for a few awkward moments. If Armour had been anyone else, Neil would have thrown him out of his apartment without another word. But Armour was a legend, one of Neil’s heroes, at least until a few hours earlier…

"All I want is to see my daughter and I don't care what it takes for that to happen," Neil said, finally breaking the silence.

"Do you think your ex-wife can finally trust you? Has she ever forgiven you for hitting her?"

             
Neil got off the couch and stood directly next to Armour, towering menacingly over the older man. Neil was fuming on the inside and wondered if – like in those old cartoons – steam was pouring from his ears. Armour did not seem threatened though and just sat there normally, looking up at the angry man standing over him.

"How the hell did you know about that? Did you get a hold of the divorce proceedings? They were supposed to be kept secret."

I must look like I’m in control
, Neil thought sarcastically to himself.
Look at the way I'm acting. How can I defend what I did to my wife when it looks like I'm about to attack an old man?

Although he was still furious that Armour brought up matters from his personal life, Neil backed away, trying to show he could control his anger. He walked into the kitchen and found the last bit of alcohol that he owned, a bottle of rum that only had a few sips remaining. He put the bottle on the counter and went to look for a clean glass. When he turned around, Armour was standing there with the bottle in his hand.

"I understand that people make mistakes," he said. "I also know that when you hit your wife, it was during a rough time in your life. The booze makes you do dumb things and I'm sure you were still upset that your Mars plan was rejected."

This was the first time in nearly three years that anybody mentioned the Mars project to Neil. The members of his secret group moved on to different projects at NASA and he hadn't run into any of them since their plan was denied. When Neil mentioned his meeting with Armour earlier, the old man acted like he did not remember. But now Neil realized Armour only acted like that in front of Bill Murphy, who wasn't likely to have clearance to hear about such projects.

"You thought I forgot about you, right?" Armour asked, reading Neil’s mind.

"Yeah, you sure acted like you did. It was bad enough that you turned down the Mars proposal, but you didn't have to rub salt in the wounds by pretending like you didn't even remember it."

"Well, I certainly didn't forget about it. In fact, I was actually in favor of going through with your proposal but I was in the minority."

Whether or not Armour was telling the truth, it still felt good to Neil to hear that somebody appreciated what he tried to accomplish with the secret Mars project.

"Well, that's in the past, as is me hitting my wife," Neil said, his voice cracking when he said this. "It's still the thing in life I regret most. It was my biggest moment of weakness and I will feel ashamed of it for the rest of my life."

Neil wanted to cry again, but he didn’t allow himself to become emotional in front of another person.  Armour walked up to Neil and took the bottle out of his hand. He walked over to the sink and Neil watched in quiet acceptance as the older man poured the remaining alcohol down the drain.

"I think today is the day you get your life back in order. And I am going to help," Armour said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sweat poured down Earl Ackerman's face, but he did not know why. The temperature in the room was not hot as far as he could tell and he could not remember doing any strenuous exercise that would cause him to perspire so much. In fact, he could not even remember how he got where he was at, a place he could not identify. He was standing in the center of a dark, empty room he had never been in before.

At least he
thought
he had never been in here before. The room was dark until a single spotlight shone brightly on Earl’s face.

Is the spotlight making me sweat? It doesn't feel hot to me
.

The only part of the room Earl could see were windows that appeared to cover most of the walls on all four sides. Earl tried to see outside these windows to figure out where he was, but all he saw was blackness.

And eyes.

White, shining eyes were watching him from every window, eyes that stared at him and watched his every move. The eyes were menacing and Earl had the feeling that whoever or whatever was attached to these eyes was going to strike him down at any possible moment.

That's why I'm sweating. It's because the eyes are going to get me. Maybe if I'm real quiet and don't say a word, I’ll be safe.

Earl stood silently, trying not to move but making sure he kept watch on the eyes at all times. This was when he began to hear the whispering. The words were quiet and indistinct at first, but they gradually got louder and louder until he could hear what they were saying...

"Get up for work," a female voice said.

Earl opened his eyes a split second before a pillow came crashing down on his head. His wife stood over him, looking as annoyed as she had looked for the past few weeks.

"You're going to be late for work unless you hurry up," she said, staring down at him. "And get your head off the cushions, you're sweating again and it's going to stain the fabric."

Earl sat up on the couch and looked down at the wet spot where his face had been just moments before.

"Are you going to tell me what your dream was about this time?" his wife asked, looking down at him suspiciously, her arms folded and her once caring eyes now cold.

"I don't remember," Earl lied, not really expecting her to believe him.

"Fine, suit yourself. But I just want you to know that over this past month, you have been pushing me further and further away from you and there will come a time when I don't want to come back," she said.

Should I tell her everything?
Earl looked around the living room, wondering just where the bugs could have been set up. The government must have placed them in his home to make sure he said nothing about the comet to his wife. Over the past month, Earl had found that living life normally was impossible, as his thoughts were always consumed with the comet and with the guilt he felt about keeping the secret. If he could just tell his wife, maybe his mind could relax for once and he might get a normal night's sleep.

And maybe she would allow him back in their bed. Earl had been relegated to the couch for the past week, ever since his nightmares became so bad that he could not go one night without screaming in his sleep or waking up drenched in sweat. His wife knew that something was wrong, knew from almost the very beginning when he came home twelve hours later than usual after one of his nights of stargazing.

"Where the hell have you been?" she had yelled when he finally arrived home from Washington, D.C. Fresh off of the warnings from Mansfield about the government 'hearing and knowing all,' Earl did not dare tell her anything that resembled the truth. Instead, he made up some story about thinking he discovered something new and going to different libraries to verify his find.

"I'm sorry, honey," Earl had told her, not able to look her directly in the eyes. "I must have lost track of time."

Earl figured his wife didn’t believe the lie, but she did not push him any further about his 'supposed' discovery. Earl – who had been a heavy sleeper throughout their entire marriage – woke up screaming that same night. When he would not tell her about his dream, his wife figured something must be wrong.

Earl walked into the kitchen, where his wife was reading the morning newspaper and drinking coffee. She refused to look at him when he came into the room, which only made Earl the weight of the secret feel that much heavier.

"Do you know where that hole in the wall came from?" she asked.

Earl froze, wondering which hole she was talking about and how she had been able to find it. His mind tried to calculate the best excuse he could formulate for any of the holes she might have been talking about.

Damn, I need to make sure I hide them better.

"The one next to the couch," his wife said, still not looking away from the paper.

"Oh, I was moving the couch the other day and I must have banged it into the wall," he said, glad that she’d at least found one of the holes that were easy to explain.

"Are you sure that's how it got there?" she asked, lowering the newspaper and looking Earl in his eyes.

"Honey, I'm sorry that you don't feel like you can trust me anymore. I know I've been acting strange recently, but I love you and I want you to know that everything is just fine," Earl assured, carefully dodging the question.

"I hope so," she said and went back to her paper.

-         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -        -        -

After Earl showered and shaved, he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom when he thought he heard a strange noise. He put his toothbrush down, spat out the toothpaste and turned off the running water, trying to concentrate on the low buzzing noise that he thought he could hear. He pinpointed the sound as coming from behind the mirror. The closer he moved his ear toward the mirror, the louder the noise became.

They can’t be invading my privacy this much, could they?

Earl tried to ignore the sound and continued his daily bathroom routine as normally as possible, but he could not ignore the buzzing. When he could no longer take the noise, Earl closed the bathroom door and took the mirror off of the wall, leaning it against the bathtub. Again, he put his ear to the wall and heard the distinct buzzing sound.