Origins (Remote) (4 page)

Even Ruff, who had little to say in most meetings, had his opinions. “We’ve got to find a way to give them enough information to zero in on what we want. We know that. Otherwise we’re just going to get a lot of crap we can’t use. Or we don’t know what it is, like with the adults.” He shook his head. “There’s too much we don’t know right now. We need some questions answered first. How far can they see? Can they hear what’s going on and listen in on conversations?”

Farrow broke in. “There’s more than that. We need to know if they can actually influence events. And here’s another thing. How do we know they’re viewing something happening right now? There’s some speculation that this is a form of time travel. In other words remote viewers may actually be able to see what’s
going to happen
and not just what’s happening at the moment. We already know they’re operating beyond the boundary of normal observation. But where does it stop?”

There were so many variables Cutter was having a hard time handling them all. And then there was the problem of Thorne. Over the last few weeks Archer’s man had become increasingly involved in designing the actual testing protocol. While Cutter was determined to move step by step Thorne was pushing for speed. He wanted the kids brought on line as soon as possible. The slow pace of progress had him agitated.

“We can’t be sitting on our asses here while we’ve got something this big,” Thorne had told Cutter recently. The two were in Cutter’s office and the tension was palpable. “Every single day something is happening that we need to know. Every day. In the meantime you’re screwing around, checking and re-checking and verifying. We need results. Usable information.”

Cutter, who had been working long hours, was advocating caution. But he had to handle Thorne carefully. For one thing he was afraid of him. Not only because he represented the unknown elements behind the project but physically. Thorne was one of those men who radiated danger. It was in his eyes, the way he walked, the things he alluded to in conversation.

“I understand Mr. Thorne. But the risks of trying to act on information that you haven’t established as reliable is just too great. I’m not ready to stake my career on these kids. Believe me, I’d love to have this kind of breakthrough. But it’s too soon. We’re on track to begin cross verification with real world events very soon, probably next month. But let’s cover our bases first, Okay?

“Cover your bases,” Thorne said. “Cover your asses you mean.” He leaned back in his chair and appraised Cutter, looking him over with a wary eye. “What’s wrong with you? You’re the one who started this thing. You came up with the idea of using kids. Having second thoughts?”

“No. The idea is sound and so far it’s working. We’re on the right track.”

“Well then,” Thorne said, “let’s get this thing moving. When can we expect real data?”

Cutter sighed. Thorne wasn’t going to let up and he didn’t have the will or the pull to fight him anymore. The best he could do was to buy some time. “Give us two more weeks. Then we’ll go after hard data. Something we can act on.”

“Fine.” Thorne said. “Two weeks.”

“So what do you want from me, Thorne?” Archer was on a secure phone in his office in Washington trying to keep his agent in his place. It was late evening and he wanted to go home. As much respect as he had for his agent and his abilities he was getting a little put out. He’d assigned the man a position with the expectation that he would ride herd on the project and report back. Now he was getting the feeling that Thorne wanted to control the outcome and that was out of the question.

“I want you to tell them to move on this thing. We keep going around in circles. We’ve got a chance to get a jump on Merlin and his crew. These kids have everything we’re looking for. We need to take action. Find out if they can work in the real world.”

“And why the urgency?” Archer asked.

“Because it’s here right in front of us. Right now. The longer we wait the more the risk of exposure grows,” Thorne insisted. “Merlin can’t be that far behind us.”

“Listen to me.” Archer said. He was growing tired of the conversation. “I know exactly where Merlin is and he’s not even close. Secondly, Cutter was picked because I can depend on what he says. If he thinks we’re not ready then we’re not ready. We’ve gone without this kind of asset for years. A few more weeks won’t make any difference.”

“And the Soviets?” Thorne asked. “Do you know how far along they are?” There was an edge to his voice Archer didn’t like. It was time to shut this down

“No, and neither do you. But I think it’s safe to say that they’re not any further along than Stargate. Relax. Keep an eye on things down there and keep me informed.”

“Yes, Sir. But I think we’re missing a chance.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Archer said. “In the meantime keep your head on straight. This is easy duty and you’ve earned it. Enjoy yourself down there. New Orleans is a nice place. That’s why I gave you this assignment. You need the break. Let Cutter handle the kids. You just make sure everything is wrapped up tight and nobody gets too nosy.”

Archer hung up the phone. He had an uneasy feeling about Thorne but at the moment no way to replace him. Things were stretched thin. The man would bear watching though. New Orleans wasn’t Asia and these kids weren’t foreign assets that could be dealt with easily. For one they were American citizens. They were also kids and that part of it didn’t sit well with him. He had grandchildren of his own.

There were jumbled figures in the distance. Cassie approached them warily. She was walking down a street she didn’t recognize. Overhead the sky was cloudless, tinged in red. There was no sun but there was light. She walked on, drawing closer. As she closed the distance the forms began to take on substance, two larger figures, another smaller one between them. She willed her legs to stop working but the gap grew smaller even as she struggled. It was then she realized she wasn’t walking at all, only being drawn along, closer.

Overhead the light went bluish, darkening the figures, then rolled into yellow. The figures hardened, taking shape until she recognized the shorter figure as Farrow. He was dressed in a long coat, it was unbuttoned and the two sides of the coat were rustling in the wind that wasn’t there. Alongside him was Farrow, his lean features highlighted by eyes that were deep in blackness. He was shaking a smaller someone, a boy, and she recognized him as Ronnie Gilmore. “What do you know, Ronnie?” Farrow was saying. He would shake Ronnie and ask again, “What do you know? What do you know?” every time he did.

She tried to stop but with no working legs the distance closed to mere feet. Now Ruff turned to look at her. His face was right there, right in front of her. He squinted, ran his hand over his crew cut, “Hey there little girl,” he said and his voice was a squeak, a shrill grating of metal on metal. “We need to know,” Ruff said, “and we need to know now. Or he’ll be mad.”

“Who?” asked
Cassie, “Who needs to know?”

“The man,” Farrow said, growling out the words. “The man behind us. He wants to know. He’s not happy with you, not happy at all, Oh no, not happy at all.” He shook Ronnie viciously again.
Cassie took another step forward.

“Talk boy or the man will stick you,” Farrow said. His face was running with sweat. The light was shifting colors again, from blue to green and yellow and red and back again, rotating faster and faster.
Cassie reached out, took hold of Ronnie, pulling him to her. Farrow let go and Ronnie fell hard against her. His skin was slick with sweat but she could detect a sweet smell coming off of him, like crushed roses.

“He’s coming,” Ruff said, shading his eyes with his hands. “Oooh, he’s coming, he’s coming.” and both he and Farrow began to back away, their hands held out in front of them, as if they were fending off a stray dog who liked to bite.

Cassie turned, Ronnie alongside her. Coming at them, moving rapidly along the ground was a dark shape. She couldn’t see what it was but she didn’t have to. She took Ronnie by the hand and began to run
.

She woke up in a cold sweat, her heart pounding, to the sound of a car engine starting on the street. She looked out the small opening in the curtains over her window and watched as a dark sedan pulled away from the curb two houses down. She didn’t recognize it but for some reason it sent a chill through her in her soaked nightdress.

While
Cassie was sweating in her bed, Ronnie Gilmore was having a more direct revelation. He was up late in his mother’s kitchen. In front of him was cinnamon bread and a glass of milk. A copy of Lord of the Flies was open on the table. He’d been absorbed in the frantic chase of Piggy when a noise outside caught his attention. He lifted his head, listening. He could her the soft sound of his father snoring in his parent’s room as he slept, the clicking sound of the pendulum clock in the front parlor. Beyond that was the background hum of the refrigerator. He waited for the sound to repeat itself.

There it was again, a solid clunk somewhere outside. He got up and looked out the kitchen window, seeing nothing but the darkness of the backyard broken by a porch light mounted on the rear of his neighbor’s house. He moved into the front room, past the ticking clock, and tipped open the curtains covering the front window. A dog barked somewhere down the block. The sound sent a tingle down his back. For some reason he thought of
Cassie, felt a sudden apprehension. He returned to the kitchen, opened the back door, listening. The dog barked again.

He felt a strong urge to go back inside and get in bed. Something was telling him that he didn’t want to go outside. Fighting the instinct to flee Ronnie stepped into the night. The pavement felt cool under his feet. His father had built a patio on the rear of the house. Ronnie remembered helping, manhandling half full wheelbarrows of cement while his father walked alongside. He stepped to the edge of the house where the carport was in even deeper blackness. His eyes adjusted somewhat to the light and he walked along the wall by his mother’s car till he reached the driveway. Stopped and listened again. The night was quiet. He turned to go back inside.

As he turned he caught a flash of light out of the corner of his eye, somewhere down the street. A car was parked two houses down. Someone in it was lighting a cigarette. For the brief moment the match flared he saw two figures. Inside the house his mother’s clock chimed the half hour. Eleven thirty at night and a car with two men was sitting on his street, two houses down. Two men sitting, waiting for what? His mind flashed on Cassie again. He slipped to his knees and low crawled to the end of the porch. His mother had planted a low line of bushes across the front of the porch, providing a deep shadow. He stayed in it, settled himself in and waited. Half an hour later his mother’s clock chimed midnight and the car was still there. By the time it chimed the half hour again he was getting tired, fighting to keep his eyes open, when the headlights flared up. The car moved slowly past his house. He couldn’t see inside but he knew they were watching as the purring sound of the engine slipped away. He went back inside but it was a long time before sleep found him.

“I’m not sure what you think I can do for you, Colonel Breed,” Archer said.

“You have assets in theater, correct?” said the Colonel. He was sitting in front of Archer’s desk. His posture was ramrod straight. An Air Force officer, one of a cadre of military personnel that sometimes came to Archer for help. Most of the time Archer was unable to assist, and told them so politely. The myth that he had a finger in every pie, even the low level ones, was pervasive in this crowd. The truth was Archer rarely involved himself in anything but high level intelligence gathering. The mundane aspects of war he had left behind when he retired from the military. Still, old friends were old friends and this man had been sent here on behalf of one Archer’s oldest. The least he could do was listen.

“Well of course, but we don’t have eyes and ears everywhere,” Archer said. “Our resources tend to run a little higher than ground level and from what I understand this is a ground level problem.”

“Yes, on the face of it. But it’s a little more complex than that.” Breed leaned across the table. “You see, this pilot was involved in some very important war gaming . A couple of times a year we do exercises, mostly on paper, that involve strategic planning against Soviet air systems. We bring in some of the men who will be doing the actual operations, the pilots themselves. They’re kind of randomly chosen. This particular pilot was one of those randomly chosen men.”

“And?” Archer said.

“In order for them to give us feedback they have to know some things. Our strategy for one thing, our assessment of the enemy, our understanding of their tactics, those kinds of things. By the time we’re done these men have a complete understanding of how we think and how we’d react to certain situations. Basically, it’s our entire plan of attack.”

“And now he’s missing.”

“Yes, I hate to say it but we might be better off if he died in the crash. If he’s alive, and they can get information from him, we’re severely compromised.”

Archer was sympathetic but saw no opportunity to help. Pilots shot down in Viet Nam were the business of the Air Force. While he had people with some minimum connection to the Viet Cong and NVA, those assets would take weeks to develop anything, if they ever did. He was about to dismiss the man with a sincere apology when he thought of New Orleans.

“I can’t make any promises, Colonel Breed” Archer said, “but I’ll see what I can do. You have all the details?”

Breed nodded, handing over a thick folder. “Everything’s in here, locations, flight patterns, everything we have.” He picked his hat up off the desk and went out the door.

Archer was left alone. For the last week he’d been mulling over the situation down in New Orleans. He was torn between his two agents. Cutter was a good man, perhaps too methodical but that was the way of scientists. And despite his academic background he had been involved in some high level analysis and done well with it. Thorne on the other hand, often operated on the fly, trusting his instincts perhaps too much. But the man had also pulled off some impressive operations. Perhaps it was time to run a little test. Give these two kids two separate problems and see which one of them could produce results, if any.

When the word came down it was all Thorne could do to contain himself. The phone call from Archer had been brief and to the point. Ronnie would be given one assignment, the location of a missing pilot. The girl was given something softer but equally important. The decisions had been based on Cutter’s perception of their abilities. It had also been given against his better judgement.

“We’re pushing too hard,” Cutter had said, the tension in his voice evident to Archer. “This is too cut and dried. Suppose they don’t come up with the right results? That doesn’t mean they won’t be useful in other areas. It’
s not a pass or fail business.”

“Relax, Cutter.” Archer was working both sides of the fence. He had appeased Thorne with the assignment. Now he had to keep Cutter in line and happy. “We’re just running a little test. Let’s see what happens. What can it hurt? If it works out we’ve learned something. If it doesn’t I’ll let you call the shots for a while.”

That being decided, Farrow and Ruff were called. Plans were made. Thorne wanted to call a special session, get the kids in immediately. Cutter convinced him to wait for the regular Wednesday date, only two days away. From Archer’s point of view it was a successful exercise in management. Nobody was completely happy.

Ronnie Gilmore was in a sweat. He’d been spending one hour a week alone with Farrow for a few weeks now. Each and every Wednesday Farrow would show up with his crew cut and his briefcase and they’d spend the first half an hour just talking. The man seemed especially interested in the political world, something Ronnie paid no attention to at all, especially since it always seemed to be some foreign country where everyone had strange sounding names. The focus seemed to be on Ronnie learning geography, making him memorize the locations of different countries in Europe and Asia. Sometimes he had to learn the names of the rulers of these countries. As the weeks wore on things began to get a little stranger and an uneasy feeling crept into Ronnie, a feeling that made his stomach hurt and his heart pound a little harder.

Ronnie was thinking that Farrow himself looked the worse for wear. His tie, always perfectly aligned and clipped with a narrow gold clip to his spotless white shirt, was slightly askew. A man who kept his hair buzz-cut short and his face spotlessly shaved, he needed a trim. His face had just the vaguest trace of shadow under his chin, as if he’d been in a hurry and hadn’t had the time to look in the mirror before tossing his razor back on the shelf. His manner was brusque.

“Ronnie,” said Farrow, “It’s time we got down to brass tacks here. We think you’ve got something special and the government is very interested in you. Remember when we first met and I gave you a picture? You told me a story about a building. A very interesting story. How did you come up with that?”

“I don’t know,” Ronnie said, fidgeting in his seat. “It just came out. I’m sorry if you didn’t like it but I didn’t know what to say. I saw the building and it gave me a bad feeling and I guess I made up a bad story about it. Am I in trouble?”

Farrow waved the question away. He opened his briefcase and dug out a folder. He opened the folder and took out a sheet of paper and a photograph.

“We’re going to do it again. Except this time I want you to really concentrate. I’m going to give you a picture. It’s a picture of a man, a very important man. This man is a pilot in the Air Force and the truth is we can’t find him. I’m also going to give you a map of a place where we think he went missing. I want you to look at the picture and the map and tell me where you think he got lost and then think about where he is now. Mark it on the map. Got that?”

“How am I supposed to know all this?” Ronnie said. “I don’t even know any pilots. What if I can’t think of anything?”

James Farrow sighed and shook his head, running his hand across his less than perfect crew cut, and looked at Ronnie with an expression so tired that Ronnie felt sorry for him. Farrow had been curt with him sometimes during their sessions but for the most part he’d always seemed happy to be there. Now he just looked tired, worn out, and worried.

“Just do your best son.” He got up, locked the door, and handed Ronnie the folder. “Look at these. This could be really important. Here’s what you start with.”

Cosmos

Session Report

Classified By: Farrow, Clinton (16)

Date: 1973-3-14

Summary Analysis