Anomaly (24 page)

There were monoliths, mysterious black slabs with transcendent consciousness observing humanity; bugs and critters, spiders the size of an SUV, crab-like creatures with disruptive camouflage attacking space marines. We've had it all, thought Teller, Tribbles, Vulcans, Klingons. Cute and cuddly aliens that just want to phone home, and those with acid for blood we'd never want to bring home. We’ve had aliens that look like giant prawns, aliens that breed and evolve at an accelerated rate, trying to take over the Earth, aliens that invade our bodies so as to blend in with society, aliens that morphed and changed into any one of a number of terrestrial creatures, mimicking them perfectly as a type of camouflage. The variations were almost endless, and most of them were monsters. And yet truth was stranger than fiction. For all our imagining, he thought, for all our speculation and extrapolations, we've missed the mark. We finally meet an alien intelligence, and it doesn't play by our rules. But does that bother us? No, we'll keep trying to fit the anomaly into one box or another, keep trying to pigeonhole another kind of intelligence, but we can't.

Teller's mind cast back to the religious debate. He wasn't sure what triggered that memory as he walked along, kicking pebbles and rocks as he scuffed his shoes on the ground. Rather than a few days ago, it seemed like the debate had happened several years before, not only in another time, but to another Teller, a different Teller, one brimming with confidence.

Lying signs and wonders, that's what the preacher had said, a strong delusion. Only the preacher was talking about the anomaly, the alien. He should have been talking about us, Teller thought.

“So many assumptions,” he mumbled to himself, “and all of them biased toward what we want the anomaly to be. But it's not going to be what we want it to be. It's not going to fit into our alien-tropes.”

The irony of that moment was not lost on Teller, not now. All the participants had gone to the Town Hall for a debate, to discuss the moral and religious implications of alien contact, but neither side was ever going to move on their initial position. Teller had felt attacked, but the reality was, so had the religious leaders, only for them the assault was through the media, through the endless speculation and posturing of specialists on TV, giving them no right of reply or rebuttal. It was no wonder they took their frustration out on him. But could he hear what they were saying? No, he was as entrenched as they were.

As critical as Teller felt about Reverend Stark and the Archbishop, their position was predictable, and they had a point. No consideration had been given to the ethical, moral or religious implications of alien contact. NASA had simply run headlong into the investigation assuming there were no other considerations beyond the scientific. But now, Teller wasn't so sure.

Cathy had struck a raw nerve, probably without realizing it. That the anomaly was empty, just a shell waiting to be filled, woke Teller to the reality of what they were dealing with, something beyond their control. That should have been obvious from the very first, with the concrete slab turning over through the night. Physically, that lack of control had always been apparent, but somehow that never translated to their own sense of hubris spiraling out of control. And it wasn't until neither he nor anyone else had any answers that he finally began to see what had troubled and upset the preacher. Oh, Teller thought, it wasn't the same concern from a religious sense, but it was the same desire for caution, for prudence, for level-headed thinking. It's ...

Teller's concentration was shattered by the sound of gunfire.

Cracks resounded through the air, echoing off the buildings. As he turned he could see a cloud of dust kicking up from the far side of the anomaly. Automatic machine gun fire ripped through the air, a staccato breaking around him. Instinctively, Teller ducked. Soldiers ran past, police swarmed in toward the anomaly as the crack of guns lashed out. On the far side of the anomaly, a bus slid to one side, stopping just shy of the anomaly, lying on its side, smoke pouring from its shattered frame. The concrete crash-barriers had been smashed aside, crushing police vehicles as they were tossed backwards by the force of the impact.

Teller wanted to see what was happening, but someone grabbed him, pulling him away, yelling something about his safety. Teller tried to wrestle free, he had to find Cathy, but the soldier's grip was too strong, propelling him headlong, back behind one of the support trailers.

“I need to ...”

“You need to stay put,” commanded the soldier, forcibly throwing him against the backside of the trailer. The soldier spoke into the radio microphone over his left shoulder, saying, “This is Bravo 4-5, I have the teacher intact. 200 meters north. Over.”

“Copy that,” came the reply. “Evacuate the area, rally point on the helipad. Over.”

Teller went to say something, but the soldier grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and ran with him over toward the helipad. It was only then he realized the soldier was bleeding, blood seeped from a wound in his left shoulder.

“We have contact heavy,” Teller heard over the radio. “Southern position is compromised.”

Two other soldiers from the helipad ran in to help them. One of them, a woman, took Teller while the other went to the aid of the injured soldier. In the blur of the moment, Teller didn't realize quite how submissive he'd become by their sense of authority.

Over the radio he heard, “Bravo 4-2, I have Director Mason. We are skirting the UN building, heading north to rally point. Over.”

“What is going on?” asked Teller, pleading with the female soldier.

“I'm sorry, sir. I do not know,” the woman replied, a sense of formality ringing in her voice. She was checking him for injuries, pulling at his clothes, looking to see if there was any bleeding.

“I'm fine. I'm fine,” Teller repeated, trying to reassure her.

A Blackhawk helicopter, some thirty feet away, lifted off the ground, kicking up a storm around them. Small stones and flecks of debris were kicked up and sent hurtling out at them. Teller grimaced as the tiny pebbles stung his arms and face. The helicopter rose swiftly, its blades thrashing at the air, thumping as it cleared the buildings. Teller could see a machine gunner leaning out the side of the helicopter opening fire.

“No,” he yelled, waving his arms. It was irrational. Somehow, he was concerned about the anomaly, afraid the gunner would strike the vast swirling mass rising up hundreds and hundreds of feet in the air. But in the chaos of the moment, there were probably dozens of others firing as well, each one just as likely to hit such a dominant target. As the chopper departed, circling around out over the river and around to the south side of the anomaly, Teller found himself huddled between a troop of soldiers, hunkered down around him with their M-16s pointing outward in all directions. He caught sight of Mason being bundled along toward him.

“What the hell happened?” Teller asked, hearing the sporadic gunfire in the distance. The shooting was subsiding, but still violent cracks jarred the air as shots rang out.

Mason fell into a heap beside him. His jacket was torn. His tie was twisted to one side, while the collar on his white shirt had been ripped, torn at the neck.

“I don't know,” cried Mason, gasping for breath. “We were attacked from the south.”

“Blue on blue,” came the cry over the airways. “Avoid engaging on East 44th, we have troops there. Concentrate on the vehicles. Over.”

There were other cries on the radio, most of them inaudible to Teller over the crack of gunfire.

“They used a bus,” said Mason. “Knocked the barricades around like they were made of balsa wood. There were two minivans following hard behind the bus, they overwhelmed us before we knew what was happening.”

“Only two,” replied one of the soldiers. “I heard reports of more vehicles.”

It was only then Teller realized Mason was talking to the soldier and not to him.

“There's not that many of them,” said Mason. “For all the shooting, I think there are less than a dozen of them. It's hard to tell.”

“A dozen of who?” asked Teller. But that was a question no one could answer.

It took fifteen minutes for the gunfire to subside. Once it became clear the attackers had hostages, a stalemate was reached. It was another two hours before anyone was able to confirm that Cathy and Anderson had been caught in the crossfire, pinned down in the research trailer. Finch had escaped, leading a group of scientists with him, but Cathy and Anderson had been taken captive.

As the afternoon wore on, Teller grew exceedingly impatient. The soldiers wanted to remove him entirely from the scene, but he stuck close to Mason, demanding that he be allowed to stay. Negotiators moved in, trying to reason with the terrorists, at least, that's what they were calling them on the television. The reality was, no one was sure what faction they represented. They were men, mainly of European descent, but a couple appeared to be Middle Eastern, or, at least, that's what the news reports were claiming. None of them were over the age of thirty, if the news reports were to be believed. At first, they made no demands. They simply hunkered down, fortifying their position, setting up a stronghold around the research trailer.

Smoke drifted on the breeze. Helicopters circled overhead. Snipers lined the rooftops of the neighboring buildings, but they had orders to hold fire.

Mason asked Teller what he thought the response of the anomaly would be to this violent incursion. Teller told him that the anomaly had to have been hit in the crossfire. It was simply too big to escape a stray round, being larger than the proverbial side of the barn. It had to have taken hits, probably multiple hits, but the thick atmospheric layer surrounding the sac probably stopped any rounds from going deeper, in much the same way a bullet fired into water never penetrates more than a few feet, while in the air it could travel for miles.

But what did it mean to the anomaly? Mason had asked. Teller had no answers. It had taken him some time to realize that, and perhaps it was too late, but he didn't know and wouldn't guess. Mason persisted, so Teller pointed out the obvious. It was still there. It undoubtedly had an awareness of what had happened, although it was unknown if it understood why. To the anomaly, this was probably some power struggle among the natives, and in that regard, it probably expected something like this sooner rather than later. What would it do from here, well, Teller didn't know. He told Mason they had to rethink their theories about the anomaly, because it simply didn't fit their stereotypes of what an alien encounter was supposed to be. And now, with this, all bets were off.

As the heat of the afternoon slowly gave way, the leader of the group appeared wearing a vest with an array of explosives attached to it. In one hand he held a handgun, identified by the police as a Glock 9mm. In the other, he held a switch, with a wire leading back to his vest.

“What is that?” Teller asked, standing beside Mason at the newly formed outer perimeter.

“It's a dead-man's trigger,” said Mason. “A positive-pressure switch. He's wired himself with enough C4 explosive to take out a city block, and there's not much we can do about it other than to try to talk him down. If a sniper was to take him out, he'd release the pressure on that switch and, boom, no more anomaly.”

Police negotiators talked with the man, pleading with him to allow them to remove the injured and dead. Most of the injured had managed to crawl behind some kind of cover, a barricade or a police vehicle on the perimeter, and from there soldiers had managed to get them to safety, but there were several lying in the open, within twenty feet of the research trailer. From their clothing, Teller could see they were NASA scientists, with their bright blue polo shirts soaked in deep red blood. A couple of them were moving, with just the odd twitch of an arm or a leg. Most of them were still. He tried to spot Cathy, but he couldn't remember what she was wearing. She had to be wearing one of the polo shirts, he figured, but he couldn't remember for sure. He'd spent that whole morning with her and Anderson, but his mind was blank, unable to recall any details.

The negotiator was a brave man, walking out with his hands raised high in the air. He was dressed in jeans and an I-love-New-York t-shirt.

“We just want to talk.”

“We just want honesty,” yelled the terrorist leader in reply. His head was shaved, with just a goatee beard reinforcing his stark features. His dark facial hair was a stark contrast to his pale skin and bald head. The faint outline of a tattoo sat low on the right side of his neck, a swastika that had faded and stretched slightly with age. Its lines were no longer crisp, its color had turned a dull blue.

He pointed his gun at the negotiator. At that distance, Teller figured, he probably wouldn't be too accurate, but that the negotiator walked out there without a bullet-proof vest on was crazy. Mason explained it was a deliberate choice, to try to appear vulnerable, to give the terrorists a sense of control. By being compliant, the negotiator would be seen as a facilitator not a roadblock. It was a big gamble, thought Teller, not sure if he'd be quite so courageous. Mason pointed out that, in this kind of scenario, a bullet-proof vest was more of a comfort blanket, as a shot to the head, neck or thigh would be fatal. Regardless, Teller figured, he'd rather have the comfort blanket.

“Listen,” said the negotiator. “I'm here to help you. I'm here to listen to you, to assist you in any way I can, but I need you to work with me. OK?”

“You see this?” cried the man, holding the trigger above his head, his hand wrapped tightly around it. “This says, fuck you, fuck all of you. If anyone tries anything stupid, I'll blow this whole fucking thing sky-high. Fuck you and your anomaly. I want the truth.”

“OK, OK,” replied the negotiator, holding his hands out, trying to calm the man. He was bending slightly at the knees, trying to make himself seem that little bit smaller as he spoke. “What do you want? What do you need?”

It was a good question, thought Teller, watching from behind a police car. Everyone needs something, and this guy’s needs drove him to this act of aggressive desperation.