Before
Spelman was quite out the door, Okun asked one last question. "I take
it
Radecker's no longer the director. He's not here at the hospital, is
he?"
Okun didn't need any more grief this morning.
Spelman
suppressed a smile. "Agent Radecker has been promoted. He's now the
Chief
of Intelligence at the CIA office in Barrow, Alaska. Just above the
Arctic
Circle."
The
next
day, Okun remembered yesterday.
Soon afterward, he
was discharged from the hospital. But not before he'd developed a
grudging
admiration and bickering friendship with the multi-talented Dr. Issacs.
No
older than Okun, he was a pathology intern at Bethesda Naval Hospital
in DC. He
held a B.S. from Cornell in astrophysics and claimed to be an expert in
ancient
mythology. Since his first days at Area 51, Okun had seen the need for
medical
expertise in the labs. Further autopsies needed to be performed on the
recovered aliens, tissue samples needed to be analyzed, and the ship
itself was
largely composed of living tissue. If he accepted the position and
became
director, Issacs was exactly the sort of man he'd seek to hire.
When
he
was discharged from the hospital, Okun went home to see his mother. He
arrived
unannounced early one morning and walked into the house. He found
Saylene
reading the paper and sipping coffee. She jumped into his arms, and
while they
were hugging, a man walked out of the bedroom to see what was going on.
His
name was Peter, and he seemed to have spent the night. Okun looked at
his mom
and knew by her expression that things had changed around the house.
She called
in sick and they went out for an all-day lunch. She told him everything
that
had happened while he was away, how much she liked his haircut, and all
about
her relationship with her new man. She knew enough not to ask what he'd
been up
to during the same time, but it was uncomfortable how lopsided the
conversation
became. It didn't help that Brackish was distracted. He glanced around
the
restaurant every few minutes like he was expecting someone. The two of
them
made a plan that Saylene would take a few days off at the end of the
month and
they'd take a trip together—just the two of them. But it was a journey
they
would never take.
Every
day
that Okun was home, he was sure they would be watching him. He
developed a
habit of glancing over his shoulders when he walked down a street. When
he
borrowed the car, he spent more time watching the rearview mirror than
the
road. He was positive the phone was tapped and the house was bugged. He
walked
around the neighborhood looking for a van with tinted windows and extra
radio antennas.
But search as he might, he could find no shred of evidence he was under
surveillance.
One
day he
received a piece of mail. Inside there was a note: "Thought you'd find
this amusing. Hope all is well. Spelman." Enclosed was a newspaper
article
from an El Paso newspaper with a headline that read:
Mythical
Monsters of Mexico, number of chupacabra sightings rise after youth
tells
story.
There
was
a photograph of Pedro standing in front of the cliffs where they'd
discovered
the hidden ship. Okun got a kick out of the article, but didn't believe
the
implication of Spelman's note.
Hope all is well. As if he doesn't know exactly
how I'm spending every minute.
The attempts he made
to reenter his old life proved futile. He called friends and visited a
few of
his old professors at Caltech, but their conversations were strained.
He found
himself growing more adept at steering the conversation away from
himself, but
as he listened to these people talk about their lives and concerns,
something
kept him from nodding. For some reason, he couldn't enjoy normal people
as he
once had. He told himself his distraction was due to being followed
around all
day. So he devised a plan to flush the spies around him out of their
hiding
places.
One
afternoon he phoned a television station and asked to speak with a
reporter. He
said he had a major news story concerning extraterrestrial visitors. Of
course,
the journalist didn't believe him, so he told her enough to show her he
was
serious. And enough to make whoever was listening in on the
conversation very nervous.
They made an appointment for the next morning. Okun hung up the phone
and
waited on the front porch for the unmarked sedans to start arriving.
But no one
came. The next morning, he dressed in a suit and drove to the station.
When he
came through the front doors, there were no federal agents waiting
there to
arrest him.
I guess they're not watching.
He sat
down in the lobby and
considered what to do next.
Although he had not
gone to the station intending to talk with anyone, he considered going
ahead
and breaking the story. He could imagine Wells's reaction if he saw the
announcement on television. He'd immediately demand that the nurse
release him
so he could assume the role of Earthly Dictator. He was crazy, but he
had a
point: didn't the people of earth deserve to know about the visitors?
Wasn't it
somehow the birthright of every human to know the truth? That's what
he'd
always been taught. He, Brackish Okun, could end a quarter-century-old
conspiracy
simply by keeping the appointment he'd made. He could give them names,
technical sketches, report numbers, and he could explain the
significance of
the trinket he was wearing around his neck. The government's public
relations
teams and CIA disinformation specialists would have a hard time
discrediting his
story.
But
now
that it was in his power to do this, he wasn't sure it was the wisest
path.
Dworkin hadn't thought so. He remembered quite clearly Sam's warning
about
society disintegrating under the strains of uncertainty and fear. He'd
felt the
effects himself, having trouble sleeping at night wondering if he
really had
been
marked
by the Tall One. Breaking the story
would certainly cause a
panic, and there was no guarantee it would produce any benefits.
Politically,
it would play right into the hands of those ugly, fascist men who
wanted to
turn America and the world into an armed camp.
In
the
end, the question of whether to tell what he knew came down to a
decision
between two very different approaches to the world. In Okun's mind, it
became a
choice between Dworkin and Wells.
He stood up, walked
out of the lobby, and climbed back into his car. Out of habit, he found
himself
glancing too often into the mirror. Every time he did this it reminded
him that
he was free. No one was looking over his shoulder anymore. He was
surprised
when this didn't make him feel any more at ease than he had since he'd
returned
home. It just made him feel disconnected. He realized why he had been
so
distracted, so unable to nod, when he was with his old friends. It
wasn't lurking
spies. It was that their hopes and dreams and daily problems,
everything that
was important to them, seemed trivial compared to the task of learning
about
the alien visitors. The whole time his mother had been describing how
she met
her boyfriend, Brackish's mind was 185 miles from earth, contemplating
the next
period of increased radioactivity of the inner Van Allen belt. As he
drove
home, he told himself,
I know too much to lead a normal life
,
and
realized how true Dworkin's words about knowing too much had been. He
didn't
need any CIA spooks to bury him; the knowledge he was carrying around
in his
head did that on its own. By the time he pulled into the driveway, he'd
decided
he was going back. He would have gone back even if they weren't
offering to
make him director. Like his older colleagues, he felt the work in the
labs was
more important than his personal destiny.
He
called
Spelman, and said, "I'm ready to come back, but I have a couple of
conditions."
"Go
ahead, I'm listening."
He spent a month at
Edwards Air Force Base working with NASA engineers on the vehicle that
would
carry him back to the facility beneath Groom Lake. The result was a
heavily
modified VW van completely covered with a gray material derived from
Teflon. A
portable power station in the rear cargo area generated a force field
of
electromagnetic energy strong enough to disrupt the radio reception of
the cars
he passed on the drive out to the desert. The engineers who helped him
build it
nicknamed the vehicle the StealthWagon and thought the military might
be able
to apply the radar-deflecting material they'd designed to the
construction of
new aircraft.
When he motored up
to the X-shaped landing strip outside of Area 51, he could see evidence
of
construction. The shantytown of wooden houses which had once housed the
lab's
staff had been torn down to make way for the construction of a giant
sliding
door, one that would allow the spaceship below to make a quick exit if
the need
ever presented itself. He drove the StealthWagon into the hangar and
rode the
new freight elevator down the six flights to the floor of the lab.
Everything
looked different. When he came into the long narrow hallway which had,
for
years, housed the chaos of the stacks, he found it freshly painted and
brilliantly
lit. A small work crew was busy organizing the files and entering their
catalogue numbers on the lab's new computer system. An elevated walkway
had
been installed down the center of the long room, which Okun planned to
make a
dust-free research area. As he walked farther along, he found a crew of
hard
hats excavating space for the new electrochemical research unit. He
came to the
huge concrete bunker that was home to the captured alien spaceship. The
room
was empty except for a giant crate seventy-by-seventy and twenty feet
tall.
Stenciled on the outside of this oversized wooden box were the words
CHEMICAL
EXPLOSIVES—NO SMOKING. He toured once around the box to make sure the
ship
within could not be seen. On his way out of the bunker, he noticed a
doorway
that hadn't been there before and went inside. It was the new medical
facility,
complete with a glass-enclosed operating room. Although the workmanship
was
marvelous, something about the room gave him the creeps.
The
door
to the kitchen was locked. After pounding on it to make himself heard
over the
noise of the construction crew, the door was opened by a young man who
stared
at him in a slightly demented way. Dr. Isaacs, his first hire.
Even
before he stepped inside the familiar room, he was getting an earful
from
Lenel. "What kind of boss are you, anyhow? Ever since you took over
it's
been so darn noisy down here we can't get any work done." The old man
was
in a body cast that went from his underarms to his kneecaps.
"You
look like a mummy in a swimsuit," Okun opined.
While
Freiling and Cibatutto stepped forward to welcome Brackish back, Lenel
tried to
sustain his grouchy demeanor. "If I do," he snapped, "I've got
you to thank for it."
"That's
right," Freiling came to Lenel's aid. "We've heard all about how Dr.
Lenel saved you from falling off that cliff."
"Saved
me?" Okun asked, flabbergasted. He turned to Lenel, who was shooting
him a
look that said
don't you dare tell
. "Oh right, saved
me." He
grinned. "By the way, Dr. Lenel, I haven't had a chance to thank you
for
that."
"All
part of the job," Lenel grumbled.
Owing
to
the presence of the construction crews, the staff was prevented from
working on
the ship for nearly three full months. During this time, they kept
themselves
busy with whatever small projects could be brought into their sleeping
quarters
or the kitchen. To everyone's dismay, Issacs turned out to be a neat
freak and
was continually chiding his coworkers to keep the place organized. "You
can't teach an old dog new tricks," was the stock reply he received
from
the trio of senior citizens. But he kept after them, and slowly they
began to
see his point.
When
the
last new rooms had been finished and the last unauthorized personnel
left the
labs, the men descended on the alien spaceship like a pack of starved
dogs.
They were eager to apply all they had learned from the undamaged craft
they'd
found in Mexico. For six full months, they rewelded, rewired,
rethought, and
rebuilt every inch of the ship. After a series of preliminary tests
they felt
it was time to invite Spelman to Area 51for a demonstration.
He arrived on a
cloudy morning in early July and brought some guests, all of them
former
members of the now-defunct Project Smudge: Jim "the Bishop" Ostrom,
Jenkins, the new chief of Domestic Collections Department, whose men
had found
Okun sleeping in the desert, and Dr. Insolo from the Science and
Technology
Directorate. Okun recognized him from Sam's funeral. After a quick
lunch, the
guests were invited into the concrete bunker to witness an experiment.
They
gathered on a newly built observation platform while the scientists
readied
their monitoring equipment. When everything was ready, Okun addressed
his
visitors.
"Several
years ago, my predecessor, Dr. Wells, developed a technique of feeding
high-voltage power into the ship's energy system and found he could
achieve low
levels of performance from the instrumentation within. Partially
because the
design function which expels energy from this system was incomplete,
excess or clogged
power generated high temperature levels." He was only at the beginning
of
his speech, but saw from the blank looks on the faces of his audience
there was
no point in continuing with the lecture. Instead, he simply said,
"Watch
this."