The Forge of God Page 9

  "Pleased to meet you, sir," Minelli said. Crockerman changed his angle. Edward realized they were all facing into the central laboratory. In the farthest window, at the opposite end of the curved wall, he could see Stella Morgan, face pale in the fluorescent lighting.

  "I'd shake your hands if I could. This has been hard on all concerned, but especially hard on you."

  Edward mumbled something in agreement. "We don't know what our situation is, Mr. President."

  "Well, I've been told you're in no danger. You don't have any . . .ah, space germs. I'll level with you, in fact—you're probably here more for security reasons than for your health."

  Edward could see why Crockerman was called the most charming of presidents since Ronald Reagan. His combination of dignified good looks and open manner—however illusory the latter was—might have made even Edward feel better.

  "We've been worried about our families," Stella said.

  "I believe they've been informed that you are safe," Crockerman said. "Haven't they, General Fulton?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Ms. Morgan's mother has been giving us fits, however," Crockerman said.

  "Good," was Stella's only comment.

  "Mr. Shaw, we've also informed the University of Texas about you and your students."

  "We're assistant professors, not students, Mr. President," Reslaw said. "I haven't received any mail from my family. Can you tell me why?"

  Crockerman looked to Fulton for an answer. "You haven't been sent any," Fulton said. "We have no control over that."

  "I just wanted to stop by and tell you that you haven't been forgotten, and you won't be locked away forever. Colonel Phan informs me that if no germs are discovered within a few more weeks, there will be no reason to keep you here. And by that time . . . well, it's difficult to say what will be secret and what won't be."

  Harry glanced at Arthur, one eyebrow lifted.

  "I have a question, sir," Edward said.

  "Yes?"

  "The creature we found—"

  "We're calling it a Guest, you know," Crockerman interrupted with a weak smile.

  "Yes, sir. It said it had bad news. What did it mean by that? Have you communicated with it?"

  Crockerman's face became ashen. "I'm afraid I'm not allowed to tell you what's happening with the Guest. That's irritating, I know, but even I have to dance to the tune when the fiddler plays. Now I have a question for you. You were the first to find the rock, the cinder cone. What first struck you as odd about it? I need impressions."

  "Edward thought it was odd before we did," Minelli said.

  "I've never seen it," Stella added.

  "Mr. Shaw, what struck you most?"

  "That it wasn't on our maps, I guess," Edward answered. "And after that, it was . . . barren. It looked new. No plants, no insects, no graffiti new or old. No beer cans."

  "No beer cans," Crockerman said, nodding. "Thank you. Ms. Morgan, I plan on seeing your mother sometime soon. May I take any personal message to her? Something uncontroversial, of course."

  "No, thank you," Stella said. Atta woman, Edward thought.

  "You've given me something to think about," Crockerman said after a moment's silence. "How strong Americans are. I hope that doesn't sound trite or political. I mean it. I need to think we're strong right now. That's very important to me. Thank you." He waved at them, and turned to leave the laboratory. The curtains hummed back into place.

  13

  October 7

  The sky over Death Valley was a leaden gray and the air still carried the chill of morning. The presidential helicopter landed at the temporary base set up by the Army three miles from the false cinder cone. Two four-wheel-drive trucks met the party and drove them slowly over the paved roads and unpaved Jeep trails, and then off the trails, lurching and growling around creosote bushes and mesquite and over salt grass, sand, chunks of lava, and desert-varnished rocks. The false cinder cone loomed a hundred yards beyond their stopping point, the edge of a bone-white desert wash that had been filled with water just ten days before. The perimeter of the mound was cordoned off by Army troops supervised by Lieutenant Colonel Albert Rogers from Army Intelligence. Rogers, short, wiry, swarthy-skinned, and gentle-eyed, met the presidential party of eight, including Gordon and Feinman, at the cordon perimeter.

  "We've had no activity," he reported. "We have our surveillance truck on the other side now, and a survey team on the top. There's been no radiation of any sort beyond the kind of signature we expect from sun-heated rock. We've inserted sensors on poles up into the hole the three geologists found, but we haven't sent anybody past the bend. Give us the order, and we will."

  "I appreciate your eagerness, Colonel," Otto Lehrman said. "I appreciate your caution and discipline more."

  The President approached the cinder cone's tall black north face, accompanied by two Secret Service agents. The Marine officer who carried the "football"— presidential wartime codes and emergency communications system in a briefcase—stayed by the truck.

  Rotterjack dropped back a few paces to snap a series of pictures with a Hasselblad. Crockerman ignored him. The President seemed to ignore everybody and everything but the rock. Arthur worried about the expression on his face; tense yet slightly dreamy. A man informed of a death in the immediate family, Arthur thought.

  "This is where the alien was found," Colonel Rogers explained, pointing to a sandy depression in the shadow of a lava overhang. Crockerman walked around a big lava boulder and knelt beside the depression. He reached out to touch the sand, still marked by the Guest's movements, but Arthur restrained him. "We're still nervous about biologicals," he explained.

  "The four civilians," Crockerman said, not completing his thought. "I met Stella Morgan's granddaddy thirty years ago in Washington," he mused. "A real country gentleman. Tough as nails, smart as a whip. I'd like to meet Bernice Morgan. Maybe I could reassure her . . . Can we arrange something for tomorrow?"

  "We go to Furnace Creek Resort, after this, and tomorrow you're meeting with General Young and Admiral Xavier." Rotterjack looked over the President's schedule. "That's going to fill most of the morning. We're to have you back at Vandenberg and aboard the Bird at two P.M."

  "Make a slot for Bernice Morgan," Crockerman ordered. "No more arguments."

  "Yes, sir," Rotterjack said, pulling out his mechanical pencil.

  "They should be here with me, those three geologists," the President said. He got to his feet and walked away from the overhang, brushing his hands on his pants. The Secret Service agents watched him closely, faces impassive. Crockerman turned to Harry, still clutching his black notebook, and then nodded at the cinder cone. "You know what my conference with Young and Xavier is all about."

  "Yes, Mr. President," Harry said, matching Crockerman's steady gaze.

  "They're going to ask me if we should nuke this whole area."

  "I'm sure that's going to be mentioned, Mr. President."

  "What do you think?"

  Harry considered for a moment, eyebrows meeting. "The entire situation is an enigma to me, sir. Things don't fit together."

  "Mr. Gordon, can we effectively retaliate against this?" He indicated the cinder cone.

  "The Guest says we cannot. I tend to accept that statement for the time being, sir."

  "We keep calling him the Guest, with a capital G," Crockerman said, coming to a halt about twenty yards from the formation, then turning to face south, examining the western curve. "How did that come about?"

  "Hollywood's absorbed just about every other name," McClennan observed.

  "Carl has been an avid watcher of television," Crockerman explained candidly to Arthur, "before his duties made that impossible. He says it lets him keep in touch with the public pulse."

  "The name obviously evolved as a way to avoid other, more highly colored words," McClennan said.

  "The Guest told me he believes in God."

  Arthur chose not to correct the President.

  "From
what I understand," Crockerman continued, his face drawn, eyes almost frantic above a forced calm, "the Guest's world was found wanting, and eliminated." He seemed to be searching the faces of Arthur and those nearest to him for sympathy or support. Arthur was too stunned to say anything. "If that's the case, then the agency of our own destruction awaits us inside this mountain."

  "We must have more cooperation from Australia," McClennan said, clenching one fist and shaking it in front of him.

  "They're telling quite a different story down there, aren't they?" The President began walking back to the trucks. "I think I've seen enough. My eyes can't squeeze truth out of rocks and sand."

  "Making tighter arrangements with Australia," Rotterjack observed, "means telling them what we have here, and we're not sure we can risk that yet."

  "There's a possibility we're not the only ones who have 'bogeys,'" Harry said, giving the last word an almost comic emphasis.

  Crockerman stopped and turned to face Harry. "Do you have any evidence for that?"

  "None, sir. But we've asked for the NSA and some of our team to check it out."

  "How?"

  "By comparing recent satellite photographs with past records."

  "More than two bogeys," Crockerman said. "That would be something, wouldn't it?"

  14

  Trevor Hicks slowed the rented white Chevrolet as he approached the small town of Shoshone—little more than a junction, according to the map. He saw a cinder-block U.S. post office flanked by tall tamarisk trees and beyond it, a stark sprawling white building housing a gas station and grocery store. On the opposite side of the highway was a coffee shop and attached to it, a spare building with neon beer advertisements in its two small square windows. A small sign spelled out "Crow Bar" in flickering light bulbs—a local tavern or pub, obviously. Hicks had always been partial to local pubs. This one, however, did not seem to be open.

  He pulled into the post office's gravel parking lot, hoping to ask someone if the coffee shop was worth a visit. He didn't trust local American eateries any more than he liked most American beer, and he did not think the appearance of the coffee shop—or café, as it styled itself on an inconspicuous sign—was very encouraging.

  It was almost five o'clock and the desert was already chilly. Twilight was an hour or so away and a mournful wind blew through the tamarisk trees beside the post office. His morning and afternoon had been frustrating— a rental car breakdown fifty miles outside Las Vegas, a ride in the tow truck, arranging for another car, and as a lagniappe, a heated conversation with his publisher's publicist when he thought to call and explain his missed interview . . . Delay after delay. He stood near the car for a moment, wondering what sort of idiot he was, then chose the glass door on his right. As it happened, that led him into the local equivalent of a branch library—two tall shelves of books in a corner, with a child-sized reading table squatting before them. A counter stood opposite the shelves, and beyond it the furniture and apparatus—so a small plaque read—of the Charles Morgan Company. The door on the left led into a separate alcove that was the post office proper. The air of the office was institutional but friendly.

  Beyond the counter, seated before an old desktop computer, was a stately woman of about seventy-five or eighty years, wearing jeans and a checked blouse, her white hair carelessly combed back. She spoke into a black phone receiver cradled between her neck and shoulder. Slowly, she swiveled on her chair to glance at Hicks, then raised one hand, requesting patience.

  Hicks turned to examine the books in the library.

  "No, Bonnie, not a word," the woman said, her warm voice cracking slightly. "Not a word since the letter. I'm just about at my wits' end, you know. Esther and Mike have quit. No. I'm doing fine, but things are kind of sliding here ..."

  The library held a fair selection of science books, including one of his own, an early popular work on communications satellites, long since out of date.

  "It's all crazy," the woman said. "We used to worry about Gas Buggy, and all the radiation from the test site, and now this. They closed down our meat locker. It's enough to scare the hell out of me. Frank came in with Tillie yesterday and they were so nice. They worried about Stella so much. Well, thank you for calling. I've got to start closing up now. Yes. Jack is in the warehouse and he'll walk me down to the trailer park. Thanks. Goodbye."

  She replaced the phone and turned to Hicks. "Can I help you?"

  "I didn't mean to interrupt. I was wondering about the coffee shop across the street. Is it recommended?"

  "I'm not the one to ask," the woman said, standing.

  "I'm sorry," Hicks said politely. "Why?"

  "Because I own the place," she answered, smiling. She approached the counter and leaned on it. "I'm prejudiced. We serve good solid food there. Emphasis sometimes on the solid. You're English, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  "On your way to Las Vegas?"

  "From, actually. Going to Furnace Creek."

  "Might as well turn back. Everything's sealed up that way. The highway's closed. They'll just turn you around."

  "I see. Any idea what's happening?"

  "What's your name?" the woman asked.

  "Hicks. Trevor Hicks."

  "I'm Bernice Morgan. I was just talking about my daughter. She's being held by the federal government. Nobody can tell me why. She writes to say she's well, but she can't say anything about where she is, and I can't talk to her. Isn't that crazy?"

  "Yes," Hicks said, his neck hair prickling again.

  "I've got lawyers all over the state and in Washington trying to find out what's going on. They might think they're tangling with some small-town yo-yos, but they're not. My husband was a county supervisor. My father was a state senator. And here I am, talking your ear off. Trevor Hicks." She paused, examining him more closely. "Are you the science writer?"

  "Yes, actually," Hicks said, pleased at being recognized twice in as many days.

  "What brings you out this way?"

  "A hunch."

  "Mind if I ask what sort of hunch?" Clearly, Bernice Morgan, for all her warm voice and hospitable manner, was a tough-minded woman.

  "I suppose it could connect with your daughter," he said, deciding to go for broke. "I'm following a very thin trail of clues to Death Valley. Something important has happened there—important enough to draw your President to Furnace Creek Resort."

  "Maybe Esther isn't hysterical," Mrs. Morgan mused.

  "I'm sorry?"

  "My store clerk. She says some men talked about a MiG crashing in the desert."

  Hicks's heart fell. Was that all it was, then? Some sort of unusual defection? No connection with the Great Victoria Desert?

  "And Mike, he's a young fellow who worked in our service station, he says some men came to the store in a Land Cruiser and talked to my daughter. They had something covered up in the back. Mike sneaked a look when they took it around the rear and he thought it was something green—dead-looking, he said. Then the government comes in here and sprays this awful stuff all over the inside of my meat locker, closes it off, and says we can't use it . . . We lost five hundred dollars in meat. They carted it away, said it was spoiled. Said the locker was contaminated with salmonella."

  Hicks's intuition made his skin crawl. "Where were you when this happened?"

  "In Baker visiting my brother."

  Bernice Morgan gave not the slightest impression of frailty, despite her years. Nor did she appear leathery or "grizzled." She was the last sort of person Hicks expected to find in a small American desert town. But for her manner of speech, she might have been the elderly wife of an English lord.

  "How long has your daughter been missing?"

  "A week and a half."

  "And you're certain she was taken by federal authorities?"

  "Air Force types, I've been told."

  Hicks frowned. "Have you heard of anything odd in the area—around Furnace Creek Inn, perhaps?"

  "Only that it's closed off tem
porarily. I called about that, and nobody knows anything. The phone service went out this afternoon."

  "Do you think that's where your daughter is?"

  "It's a possibility, isn't it?"

  He pursed his lips.

  "I don't think they're holding her so she can talk to the President about business. Do you?" She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  An old, battered primer-gray Ford truck pulled off the road and into the parking lot with a spray of dust and gravel. Two young men in straw cowboy hats jumped from the back, while a third boy and a heavy-paunched, bearded man with oversized wire-framed MacArthur sunglasses stepped down from the driver's seat. They all came through the glass door. The bearded man nodded at Hicks, then faced Mrs. Morgan. "We've been out and back. Road's still closed. George is out there, like Richard said, but he doesn't know what's going on."

  "George is one of our highway patrol boys," Mrs. Morgan explained to Hicks.

  "Ron, here, thinks his Lisa is still in Furnace Creek," the bearded man continued. A doe-eyed, thin young man nodded wearily. "We're going to take the plane and fly over. Find out what the hell's going on."

  "They've probably got the airstrip out there closed," Mrs. Morgan said. "I'm not sure that's smart, Mitch."

  "Smart, hell. I never let no government folks push me around before. Kidnaping and shutting down public roads for no good reason—it's time somebody did something." Mitch stared pointedly at Trevor Hicks, surveying his suede jacket, slacks, and running shoes. "Mister, we haven't met."

  Mrs. Morgan did the favor. "Mitch, this is Mr. Trevor Hicks. Mr. Hicks, Mitch Morris. He's our maintenance man and drives the propane truck."

  "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hicks," Morris said in a formal tone. "You're interested in this?"

  "He's a writer," Bernice said. "Pretty well known, too."

  "I have an idea something is happening near Furnace Creek, something important enough to bring the President here."

  "President like from the White House?"