The Forge of God Page 3

  "Pay phone right there," the boy drawled suspiciously.

  "Anybody got quarters?" Edward asked. Nobody did. "We need to use the store phone. This is an emergency."

  The boy saw the towel-shrouded shape through the Land Cruiser windows. "Somebody hurt?" he asked curiously.

  "Stay back," Minelli warned.

  "Shut up, Minelli," Reslaw whispered through gritted teeth.

  "Yeah."

  "Dead?" the boy asked, one cheek jumping with a nervous tic.

  Edward shrugged and entered the grocery. There, a short and very wide woman clerk in a muumuu adamantly refused to let him use the phone. "Look," he explained. "I'll pay for it with my credit card, my phone card," he said.

  "Shoa me the cahd," she said.

  A tall, slender, attractive black-haired woman came in, dressed in unfaded jeans and a white silk blouse. "What's wrong, Esther?" she asked.

  "Man's givin' us a royal payin," Esther said. "Woan use the pay phone ahtside, but sayes he's gaht a credit cahd—"

  "Jesus, thanks, you're right," Edward said, glancing between them. "Ill use my card on the pay phone."

  "Is it an emergency?" the black-haired woman asked.

  "Yeah," Edward said.

  "Well, go ahead and use the store phone."

  Esther glared at her resentfully. Edward sidled behind the counter, the clerk moving deftly out of his way, and punched a button for an open line. Then he paused.

  "Hospital?" the black-haired woman asked.

  Edward shook his head, then nodded. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe the Air Force."

  "You've seen an airplane go down?" the woman asked.

  "Yeah," Edward said, for the sake of simplicity.

  The woman gave him an emergency hospital number and suggested he use directory assistance for the Air Force. But he did not dial the emergency number first. He dithered, glancing nervously around the store, wondering why he hadn't planned a clear course of action earlier.

  Goldstone, or Edwards, or maybe even Fort Irwin?

  He asked directory assistance for the number of the base commander at Edwards. As the phone rang, Edward hunted for an excuse. Reslaw was right: telling the truth would get them nowhere.

  "General Frohlich's office, Lieutenant Blunt speaking."

  "Lieutenant, my name is Edward Shaw." He tried to be as smooth and calm as a television reporter. "I and two of my friends—colleagues—have seen a jet go down about twenty miles north of Shoshone, which is where I'm calling from—"

  The lieutenant became very interested immediately, and asked for details.

  "I don't know what kind of jet," Edward continued, unable to keep a slight quiver from his voice. "It didn't look like any I'm familiar with, except maybe . . . Well, one of us thinks it looked like a MiG we've seen in AvWeek."

  "A MiG?" The lieutenant's tone became more skeptical. Edward's culpable squint intensified. "Did you actually see the plane go down?"

  "Yessir, and the wreckage. I don't read Russian . . . But I think there were Cyrillic markings."

  "Are you positive about this? Please give me your name and proof of identity."

  Edward gave the lieutenant his name and the numbers on his license plate, driver's license, and, for good measure, his MasterCard. "We think we know where the pilot is, but we didn't find him."

  "The pilot is alive?"

  "He was dangling on the end of a chute, Lieutenant. He seemed alive, but he went down in some rocks."

  "Where are you calling from?"

  "Shoshone. The ... I don't know the name of the store."

  "Charles Morgan Company Market," the black-haired woman said.

  Edward repeated the name. "The town's grocery store."

  "Can you lead us to where you saw the aircraft?" the lieutenant asked.

  "Yessir."

  "And you realize the penalty for giving false information about an emergency of this sort?"

  "Yessir, I do."

  Both women regarded him with wide eyes.

  "A MiG?" the slim, black-haired woman asked after he hung up. She sounded incredulous.

  "Listen," Edward said. "I lied to them. But I'm not going to lie to you. We might need your meat locker."

  Esther looked as if she might faint. "What's happenin' heah?" she asked. "Stella? What's this awl abauht?" Her drawl had thickened and her face was sweaty and pasty.

  "Just you," Edward said to Stella.

  She examined him shrewdly and pointed to his belt and rock hammer, still slung in its leather holder. "You're a rock hound?"

  "A geologist," he said.

  "Where?"

  "University of Texas," he said.

  "Do you know Harvey Bridge from—"

  "U.C. Davis. Sure."

  "He comes here in the winter ..." She seemed markedly less skeptical. "Esther, go get the sheriff. He's at the café talking to Ed."

  "I don't think we should let everybody in on this," Edward suggested. Bad feeling.

  "Not even the sheriff?"

  He glanced at the ceiling. "I don't know ..."

  "Okay, then, Esther, just go home. If you don't hear from me in a half an hour, go get the sheriff and give him this man's description." She nodded at Edward.

  "You'll be okay heah?" Esther asked, short thick fingers rapping delicately on the counter.

  "I'll be fine. Go home."

  The store had only one customer, a young kid looking at the paperback and magazine rack. With both Stella and Edward staring at him, he soon moved out through the door, shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his neck.

  "Now, what's going on?" Stella asked.

  Edward instructed Minelli to drive the Land Cruiser around to the back of the store. He motioned for Stella to follow him through the rear door. "We'll need a cool dark place," he told her as they waited.

  "I'd like to know what's happening," she repeated, her jaw firm, head inclined slightly to one side. The way she stood, feet planted solidly on the linoleum and hands on her hips, told Edward as plain as words she would stand for no more evasion.

  "There's a new cinder cone out there," he said. Minelli parked the vehicle near the door. Talking rapidly to keep his story from crashing into splinters, Edward opened the Land Cruiser's back gate, pulling aside the tent and moist towels. "I mean, not fresh . . . Just new. Not on any charts. It shouldn't be there. We found this next to it."

  The miter-head lifted slightly, and the three sherry-colored eyes emerged to stare at the three of them. Reslaw stood by the store's far corner, keeping a lookout for gawkers.

  To her credit, Stella did not scream or even grow pale. She actually leaned in closer. "It's not a fake," she said, as quickly convinced as he had been.

  "No, ma'am."

  "Poor thing . . . What is it?"

  Edward suggested she stand back. They unloaded it and carried it through the delivery door into the refrigerated meat locker.

  PERSPECTIVE

  East Coast News Network interview with Terence Jacobi, lead singer for the Hardwires,

  September 30, 1996:

  ECNN: Mr. Jacobi, your group's music has consistently preached—so to speak—the coming of the Apocalypse, from a rather radical Christian perspective. With two songs in the Top 40 and three records totaling ten million sales, you've obviously hit a nerve with the younger generation. How do you explain your music's popularity?

  Jacobi (Laughing, then snorting and blowing his nose): Everybody knows, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, you've got only two best friends: your left hand and Christ. The whole world's out to get you. Maybe if the world went away, if God wiped the slate clean, we could get on with just being ourselves. God's a righteous God. He will send his angels to Earth to warn us. We believe that, and it shows in our music.

  2

  October 3

  Harry Feinman stood near the back of the boat untangling line from the spindle of his reel. Arthur let the boat drift with the slow-moving water. He dropped anchor a dozen yards south of the
big leaning pine that marked the deep, watery hollow where, it was rumored, fishermen had pulled in so many big ones the past few years. Marty played with the minnows in the bait bucket and opened the cardboard containers full of dirt and worms. The sun was a dazzle outlined by thin high clouds; the air smelled of the river, a fresh, pungent greenness^, and of coolness, of the early fall. In the calm backwater of the hollow, orange and brown leaves had collected in a flat, undulating clump.

  "Do I have to bait my own hook?" Marty asked.

  "That's part of the game," Harry said. Harry Feinman was stocky and muscular, six inches shorter than Arthur, with premature ash-gray hair receding on all fronts but his neck, where it ventured as stiff fuzz below the collar of his black leather jacket. His face was beefy, friendly, with small piercing eyes and heavy dark eyebrows. He reeled in loose nylon vigorously and propped the pole between the bait can and a tackle box. "You don't earn your fish without doing the whole thing."

  Arthur winked at Marty's dubious glance.

  "Might hurt the worms," Marty said.

  "I honestly don't know whether they feel pain or not," Harry said. "They might. But that's the way of things."

  "Is that the way of things, Dad?" Marty asked Arthur.

  "I suppose it is." In all the time they had spent living by the river, Arthur had never taken Marty fishing.

  "Your dad's here to break things easy to you, Marty. I'm not. Fishing is serious business. It's a ritual."

  Marty knew about rituals. "That means we're supposed to do something a certain way so we won't feel guilty," he said.

  "You got it," Harry said.

  Marty put on the vacant look that meant he was hatching an idea. "Peggy getting married ... is that a ritual, because they're going to have sex? And they might be guilty?"

  In the morning, Francine and Martin would drive to Eugene to attend her niece's wedding. Arthur would have accompanied them, but now there were far more important things.

  Arthur raised his eyebrows at Harry. "You've done all the talking so far," he said.

  "He's your son, fellah."

  "Getting married is celebration. It's a ritual, but it's joyous. Not at all like baiting a hook."

  Harry grinned. "Nobody's guilty about having sex anymore."

  Marty nodded, satisfied, and took a hooked line from Arthur. Arthur gingerly pulled a worm out of the carton and handed it to his son. "Twist it around and hook it several times."

  "Blecchh," Martin said, doing as he was told. "Worm blood is yellow," he added. "Squishy."

  They fished in the hollow for an hour without luck. By nine-thirty, Martin was ready to put the pole down and eat a sandwich. "All right. Wash your hands in the river," Arthur told him. "Worm juice, remember."

  "Bleechh." Marty bent over the gunwale to immerse his hands.

  Harry leaned back, letting his knees grip the pole, and locked his hands behind his neck, grinning broadly. "We haven't done this in years."

  "I don't miss fishing much," Arthur said.

  "Sissy."

  "Dad's not a sissy," Marty insisted.

  "You tell him," Arthur encouraged.

  "Fishing's gross," Marty said.

  "Like father, like son," Harry lamented.

  Harry's floppy fisherman's cap cast a shadow over his eyes. Arthur suddenly remembered the dream, with Harry's head a full moon, and shuddered. The wind rose cool and damp in the tree shadows of the hollow with a beautiful, mourning sigh.

  Marty ate his sandwich, oblivious.

  October 4

  Beyond the wide picture windows and a curtain of tall pines, the river eddied quiet and green around a slight bend. To the west, white clouds rolled inland, their bottoms heavy and gray.

  In the kitchen, amid hanging copper pots and pans, Arthur cracked eggs into an iron skillet on the broad gas stove.

  "We've known each other for thirty years," he said, bringing out two plates of scrambled eggs and sausage and laying one on the thick oak table before his friend. "We don't see nearly enough of each other."

  "That's why we've been friends for so long." Harry tapped the end of his fork lightly on the tabletop. "This air," he said. "Makes me feel like thirty years ago was when I last ate. What a refuge."

  "You're cramping my sentimentality," Arthur said, returning to the kitchen for a pitcher of orange juice.

  "The sausages ... ?"

  "Hebrew National."

  "God bless." Harry dug into the fluffy yellow pile on the round stoneware plate. Arthur sat down across from him.

  "How do you ever get any work done here? I prefer concrete cells. Helps the concentration."

  "You slept well."

  "I snore, Arthur, whether I sleep well or not."

  Arthur smiled. "And you call yourself an outdoors-man, a fisherman." He cut the tip from a sausage and lifted it to his mouth. "Between consulting and reeducating myself, I've been trying to write a book about the Hampton administration. Haven't even seriously started on chapter one. I'm not sure how to describe what happened. What a wonderful tragic comedy it all was."

  "Hampton gave science more credibility than any President since . . . Well," Harry said, "since." He lifted one hand and splayed his fingers.

  "I'm hoping Crockerman—"

  "That name. A president."

  "May not be so bad. He's part of the reason I invited you out here."

  Harry raised a bushy eyebrow. The two were as much a contrast as any classic comedy team—Arthur tall and slightly stooped, his brown hair naturally tousled; Harry of medium height and stocky to the edge of plumpness in his middle years, with a high forehead and a friendly, wide-eyed expression that made him seem older than he was. "I told Ithaca." Ithaca, the lovely, classically proportioned wife, whom Arthur hadn't seen in six years, was a decade younger than Harry.

  "What did you tell her?"

  "I told her you used the tone of voice that means you have some job for me."

  Arthur nodded. "I do. The bureau is being revived. In a way."

  "Crockerman's reviving Betsy?"

  "Not as such." The Bureau of Extraterrestrial Communication—BETC or "Betsy" for short—had been Arthur's last hurrah in Washington. He had served as science advisor and Secretary of BETC for three years under Hampton, who had appointed him after the Arecibo Incident in 1992. That had turned out to be a false alarm, but Hampton had kept Arthur on until his assassination in Mexico City in August of 1994. Vice President William Crockerman had been sworn in on a train in New Mexico, and had immediately moved to place his own stamp on the White House, replacing most of the Cabinet with his own choices. Three months after the swearing-in, the new chief of staff, Irwin Schwartz, had told Arthur, "No little green men, no lost ships off Bermuda . . . might as well go home, Mr. Gordon."

  "Is he going to make you science advisor?" Harry asked. "Kick out that idiot Rotterjack?"

  Arthur shook his head, grinning. "He's forming a special presidential task force."

  "Australia," Harry said, nodding sagely. He put down his glass of orange juice without taking a sip, braced as if for an assault, his eyes fixed on the salt and pepper shakers in the center of the table. "Great Victoria Desert."

  Arthur was not surprised. "How much do you know?" he asked.

  "I know it was found by opal prospectors and that it's not supposed to be there. I know that it could be a virtual duplicate of Ayers Rock."

  "That last part isn't quite true. It differs substantially. But you're right. It's recent, and it shouldn't be there." Arthur was relieved to know that Harry hadn't heard of the incident much closer to home.

  "What do we have to do with it?"

  "Australia is finally asking for advice. The Prime Minister is going public with a report in three days or less. He's under some pressure."

  "Little green men?"

  "I can't even comment on that until I've asked you the questions, Harry."

  "Then ask," Harry said, still braced.

  "The President has put me in charge of the
civilian science investigation team. We work with the military and with State. You're my first choice."

  "I'm a biochemist. That means ..."

  Arthur shook his head slowly. "Hear me out, Harry. I need you for biochemistry, and as my second-in-command. I'm pushing for Warren from Kent State for geology, and Abante from Malibu for physics. They've agreed, but they have to go through political examination."

  "You think I'd pass Crockerman's political pop quiz?" Harry asked.

  "You will if I insist, and I will."

  "You need a biochemist . . . really?"

  "That's the rumor," Arthur said, his grin widening.

  "It would be lovely." Harry pushed his chair back with only half his eggs and one sausage eaten. "Old friends, working together again. Ithaca would agree. Hell, even if she didn't . . . but . . ."

  "There will never be another chance like this," Arthur said, emphasizing each word as if he were putting some essential point across to a dunderhead student.

  Harry wrinkled his forehead, staring up at Arthur. "Dupres at King's College?"

  "I've asked for him. He hasn't answered yet. We may not be able to get extranationals on the team."

  "I wouldn't turn you down lightly," Harry said. Arthur saw his friend's eyes were red. He appeared close to tears. "You need somebody reliable."

  "What does that mean?"

  Harry looked out the window, hand tensing on a fork handle, relaxing. "I just told Ithaca three weeks ago."

  Arthur's face became placid, clear of all the excitement he had exhibited seconds before. "Yes?"

  "Chronic leukemia. I've got it. It has me."

  Arthur blinked twice. Harry would not look straight at him.

  "It's not good. In a few months, I'll be spending most of my time fighting this. I can't see how I'll be anything but a hindrance."

  "Terminal?" Arthur asked.

  "My doctors say perhaps not. But I've been reading." He shrugged. "These new treatments—"

  "Very promising. I have hope. But you must see . . ." Harry turned his bright gaze on Arthur. "This thing's as big as Ayers Rock, and it's been there how long?"

  "No more than six months. Survey satellites mapped that area just over six months ago and it wasn't there."