Authors: David DeBatto
The hallway was lined with metal shelving overflowing with books and tapes and paperwork, with a light coming from a room
at the end of the hall. There, he saw an empty office, one wall to the office a large glass window, and beyond that, the broadcast
booth, where a sixtyish gentleman in a white cowboy hat was talking into a vintage microphone, earphones covering his ears,
which was why he hadn’t heard when DeLuca knocked. When DeLuca waved to him, the man held up a single finger and continued
talking into the microphone. The radio feed was playing over a loudspeaker, a commercial Clark was reading for an Indian art
gallery in downtown Roswell. When he was finished, he plugged a tape cartridge into the player. DeLuca heard a conversation
going on between Clark and a caller. The man in the cowboy hat rose from his chair and opened the door to the office. He was
wearing a khaki safari jacket over a denim shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots.
“Ed Clark,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
DeLuca noticed that the man had a small pistol in a holster that snapped onto his belt, the weapon worn at the hip. He could
understand why someone might want protection, working all alone in the middle of nowhere.
“I thought your show was live,” DeLuca said. “I don’t know why, but I guess I’m surprised.”
“If Garrison Keillor can do reruns, why can’t I?” Clark said.
“I’m David DeLuca,” DeLuca said. “I left you a message.”
“Ah yes,” Clark said gruffly. “Mr. DeLuca. I know who you are, and I know who you work for.”
DeLuca had worked with deluded people before, particularly in his capacity investigating crimes in eldercare homes when he
was attached to the state police in Massachusetts. Sometimes you could get more useful information from them if you just played
along. Antagonism, on the other hand, rarely got you anywhere.
“Well in that case, you know why I’m here,” he said.
“I think I do, but why don’t you tell me?” Clark said.
“Why don’t you tell me?” DeLuca said. “I told them if anybody was going to know about this, it would be Ed Clark. They said
you’re just guessing.”
“And what’d you say to that?” Clark asked.
“I said if he’s guessing, then I wanted to know who was doing the math because the odds of being right so many times had to
be astronomical.”
Ed Clark eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then took a briar pipe from one of his jacket pockets and a plastic pouch of
tobacco from the other, filling the pipe with coarsely cut tobacco and tamping it in with his finger.
“This is about the robots, isn’t it?” he said. DeLuca nodded solemnly. “Let’s talk outside.”
DeLuca followed him. Under the carport, Clark struck a kitchen match against the cinderblock wall of the station and lit his
pipe, exhaling several large clouds of smoke before drawing one he could savor. He gazed at the sky.
“See anything interesting up there?” DeLuca asked him.
“If I did, I wouldn’t have to tell you, now would I?” Clark said.
“I suppose not,” DeLuca said.
“Is it what I think it is?” Clark said. “One got loose, didn’t it?”
“I think you know why I can neither confirm nor deny that,” DeLuca said.
“And you’re the animal catcher,” Clark said. “Is that it?”
“I can’t confirm that either,” DeLuca said, “but if I was, and you were in a position to help me, would you?”
“Hypothetically?” Clark said.
“Hypothetically,” DeLuca said.
“And why would I help you?” Clark asked.
“I think you know why,” DeLuca said. “There’s always a quid pro quo, isn’t there? And it’s not like it’s the first time, is
it?”
“No, it isn’t,” Clark said. “What can I do for you?”
DeLuca stared up into the sky.
“Just supposing I was the ‘animal catcher’?”
“Just supposing,” Clark said, drawing thoughtfully on his pipe.
“We were monitoring your show the other night,” he said. “As we always do.”
Clark nodded, saying nothing.
“We think he called you. He identified himself as ‘Bartleby.’ By now you must have developed a sixth sense about whether your
callers are human or not.”
“I’m pretty good,” Clark said. “Though I suppose every now and then somebody slips past me. Mostly it’s in the diction and
the word choice. Some people still think androids can’t use contractions.”
DeLuca laughed.
“I thought he sounded pretty darn smart for a human,” Clark said. “Not that aliens aren’t free to call my show. Or robots.
I just like them to identify themselves. I don’t like getting jacked around.”
“Of course. No one does,” DeLuca said. “The problem is that he rerouted the matrix so that we couldn’t trace the call.”
“As you programmed him to do,” Clark said. “And now the chickens are coming home to roost.”
“Go ahead and tell me you told me so,” DeLuca said. “But when you’re done, I need your call logs from the show. Or was that
a tape, too?”
“That was live,” Clark said. “I’ll get you the logs. Just answer me one question.”
“What is it?”
“How’d he get loose?”
“If we knew that, I probably wouldn’t be here,” DeLuca said. “Right now he’s fighting his homing program. We think he learned
the budget was being cut, so he acted out of pure self-preservation and ran off. If he manages to recode his homing program,
there’s no telling where he’ll go.”
“I’ll tell you where he’ll go,” Clark said.
“Where?” DeLuca said.
“Where else? Washington, D.C. To blend in with all the other robots. And maybe to take down the president. Or whoever is cutting
his budget.”
“If you’re right,” DeLuca said, “then that’s a chance we can’t afford to take.”
Clark ambled back into the station, limping slightly, favoring his right side. When he returned, he handed DeLuca a pink phone
message memo with the name Bartleby written on it and a number. DeLuca looked at it.
“That number’s from Chloride, New Mexico,” Ed Clark said, pointing with his pipe stem. “’Bout two hundred miles due west.
But you gotta go around White Sands.”
“I know where Chloride is,” DeLuca said. “And I think I know where Bartleby is. Thanks for all your help.”
The old man looked at him expectantly. DeLuca wondered what he could possibly be expecting.
“Well?” the old man said at last.
“Well what?” DeLuca said.
“Aren’t you going to wipe my memory?”
“Oh, that,” DeLuca said. “Not until the mission is over. Until then, this conversation never took place. There’s a chance
he’ll call back or even… pay you a visit, in which case that pea gun on your hip isn’t going to do a damn thing. If he
calls again or if you see anything, I want you to be fully aware, and I want you to call me.” He gave Clark his phone number,
but for his personal satellite phone and not for the encrypted one. It was just a hunch.
“What do you mean, if I see anything?” Clark said. “You don’t think he’d come here, do you?”
“Hey—this is just a hypothetical conversation, Ed,” DeLuca said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“But as long as I carry the memory of it,” Clark said, “I’m not safe, am I? Because now I’m a threat. And you guys are just
going to leave me here for bait, aren’t you?”
“Oh, come on, Ed,” DeLuca said with an exaggerated wink as he headed for his car. “You know we don’t work that way.”
At the intersection of Routes 380 and 70, DeLuca stopped to look at the map. It was too late to head back to Albuquerque,
and he was tired, and Chloride wasn’t exactly on the way but it wasn’t entirely out of the way either, so he headed west on
70. As he drove, he called Peggy Romano and had her reverse-search the phone number Ed Clark had given him. She told him it
was for a Circle K convenience store on Route 52, at the edge of the Gila Wilderness. He also asked her to set up another
appointment for him with General Koenig—it was time for another visit, but this time, he had enough information to make the
conversation interesting. “What am I—your receptionist, now?” Romano asked him. “By the way, Ben Yutahay called. He didn’t
say what it was about but I gave him your direct number, so check your voice mail.”
When he checked, Yutahay sounded hoarse.
“Hello, David,” he said. “Listen, I was wondering if you could do me a favor. My son, Marvin, was supposed to come to dinner
two days ago, but he never showed up and he didn’t call and I can’t seem to reach him on his phone. He usually checks in,
but not always. I know you can find out if he’s used his phone and things like that, so I was hoping you could look into it,
if you have time. It’s probably nothing, but he’s all I’ve got, so I guess I get a little more worried than I probably should.
Thanks.”
DeLuca called Peggy Romano back and asked her to run an electronic search for Marvin Yutahay. If he’d used his phone or a
credit card or an ATM card in the last forty-eight hours, she’d know.
He drove into the darkness of the high desert, the sky above him an enormous canopy of stars, and no moon anywhere to wash
them out. The night was beautiful, and yet after a few minutes, driving into utter nowhere, the landscape a big blank as far
as the eye could see, he started to feel just a bit paranoid—maybe it was the coffee he’d drunk, but he caught himself wishing
he had more than just his police .38 and his Army-issue Beretta. He wished he had somebody in the car with him, or somebody
to talk to on the phone. He kept thinking that he was being watched, followed, tracked, measured, analyzed, and that at any
moment or second, in a flash of light so sudden he’d never even see it, he could vanish without a trace, like the sailor who
gets knocked overboard and sinks into the middle of the wine-dark sea.
Marvin Yutahay was probably camped out somewhere beyond the reach of cell phones and satellite dishes, but he was a big boy
who could take care of himself. Maybe he’d had car trouble, or maybe he’d met a girl who’d taken him back to her place and
wasn’t finished with him yet.
DeLuca turned on the radio, just for company, and found 1190 on the dial.
“I had an interesting visitor tonight,” Ed Clark was saying calmly. “Of course I can’t tell you who it was or what planet
he was from, but in case anything should happen to me, I’ve written…”
He turned the radio off—he’d given Ed Clark all the time and attention he intended to give him for one night.
The weather turned as he headed into the high country, the sky clouding over, which made him feel no more secure—the best
surveillance satellites had been able to image through clouds for some time. When it started to snow, he turned on his wipers
and let up on the gas, slowing down when the road began to slip beneath his wheels. He was dog-tired. He wondered if a town
the size of Chloride even had a motel. He considered calling Peggy Romano and asking her to find out, but he knew she’d probably
chew his head off for using her as a travel agent. He hoped he was close, because a quick check of the gas gauge told him
he was down to a quarter of a tank. He’d just stifled his third prolonged yawn in a row when something suddenly loomed in
his headlights.
He slammed on his brakes, but his tires failed to bite, the car fishtailing, the shape directly ahead of him motionless, an
image caught in his headlights for a split second, two large eyes reflecting back the light from his headlights, before he
struck it with his right front fender just as it appeared to leap, the thing flying over the hood of the car and bouncing
off the windshield to land somewhere behind him.
He stopped.
He got out, leaving the car idling by the side of the road.
About twenty feet behind the car, illuminated in the red of the Taurus’s taillights, he found a large female mule deer lying
on its side, breathing heavily, its big brown eyes full of fear as it lifted its head. It tried to move but couldn’t. DeLuca
knelt next to it. It was a doe, her antlers having molted, in their place only soft fuzzy stubs. He felt her legs for broken
bones, but she didn’t seem to feel pain when he touched her. He felt her ribs and noticed something else—she was pregnant,
her belly distended, with something kicking inside.
“Shhh,” he said in a soothing voice, trying to quiet the animal. “You’re going to be all right. I don’t know any first aid
for deer, but I’m going to call somebody who does.”
His words seemed to have an effect. For a moment, all seemed calm. He heard only the car running, and the delicate sibilance
of snowflakes falling on pine needles.
Using his personal SATphone, he was dialing directory assistance with the intention of calling the state police when he noticed
something odd, a disturbance in the air overhead, as if he were looking at the northern lights shimmering, but closer—and
how was it that the aurora borealis might penetrate the cloud cover?
He heard a buzzing sound, and then a disk of brilliant white light descended from the clouds, the ship (for there was really
no other way to describe it) perhaps fifty feet across, hovering above the road, maybe two hundred yards in front of the car.
In brief bursts, beams of light shot from the saucer to the ground, scanned a moment, then stopped, as if the ship were searching
for something with a spotlight. It was moving away, at first, then reversed direction, moving toward him, just as the deer
struggled to its feet. DeLuca held it tight, his arms around the animal’s neck.
The ship continued its search. DeLuca had no time to think of a better plan, so he took the chain bearing his dog tags from
around his neck, used the strap attached to his cell phone to tie the phone to the chain, dialed the first number from his
contact list and looped the chain around the deer’s neck. As the ship drew closer, he dived under his car, concealing as much
of his body as possible beneath the still-running engine, even though it was a tight fit and the exhaust manifold burned his
leg. The heat from the engine would mask his infrared signature, and the electrical field would mask his own. The deer stood
fixed in the roadway.
“Go!” DeLuca shouted.
The animal didn’t move.
He grabbed a handful of snow and gravel and threw it at the animal. This time it took off, running into the woods, limping
heavily on its right front leg. It had gotten perhaps thirty or forty yards from the road when a beam of light caught it,
and then, in a flash, the animal was gone, leaving behind only a cloud of steam that quickly dissipated. DeLuca was reminded
of the old magician acts where the guy would throw down a smoke bomb and vanish into thin air.