The Pandora Directive: A Tex Murphy Novel (18 page)

I confirmed with a slight nod. “You’ve seen them.”

“I had one.”

It was hard to believe that Malloy would have entrusted something important to this crackpot, but he seemed to know what he was talking about. “What do you mean you had one?”

“It was stolen, along with a disk I recorded during my interview with Malloy.”

Three or four questions came into my mind at once. First, the box. “When did this happen?”

“Six days ago.”

“Go on.”

Ellis obviously felt stupid admitting that the box had been taken from him. “I’d only gotten the box the day before. Malloy had mentioned boxes during our interview, so I assumed that he was the one who’d sent it. There was no letter with it, no return address. I hid it here in the back room. The next evening, I came in here just after I opened the shop, and someone had broken him. The only things missing were the box and one of the interview discs. I tried to contact Malloy but couldn’t get through to him. Since then, I haven’t left the shop.”

“Tell me about the interview with Malloy.”

Ellis seemed relieved to change the subject of the box. “I publish a magazine called the Cosmic Connection. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

I nodded, vaguely remembering that Fitzpatrick had mentioned it. Ellis was pleased. “Well then, you know we have feature articles, investigative reports, and interviews, all concerning the supernatural, particularly all things extraterrestrial. I have contacts throughout the field of UFOlogy, one of whom is a man named Elijah Witt. He’s a legend among those of us who study alien encounters.”

The name didn’t sound familiar.

“Mr Witt and I have corresponded for some time. Maybe six months ago, he wrote and said that a friend of his, Thomas Malloy, was coming to town and that I should hook up with him. Actually, Malloy contacted me.”

“Do you know what he was doing here?”

“Well, Mr Witt was a professor at Berkeley for decades. He still has honorary status, though he’s retired and lives in seclusion in the north-west. Anyway, he pulled some strings and got Malloy use of research lab at the University.”

“What was Malloy working on?”

Ellis shrugged. “He wouldn’t go into a lot of detail, but he did use a strange term: the Pandora Device. I have no idea what it means.”

Fitzpatrick said that he’d tracked Malloy to a nearby university. If Ellis’ information was reliable, then I could assume that Malloy was at Berkeley creating, or working on, something called the Pandora Device. I shifted in my seat.

“What else did Malloy tell you?”

“Well, he talked about Roswell, of course. Actually, I still have that part of the interview.”

“I thought you said it was stolen.”

Ellis got up and walked toward an old wooden cabinet. “It was a long interview. I filled up an entire disk. After I started a second disk, we only talked for another five minutes or so. The first disk was stolen with the box. Luckily, the other disc was still in the video recorder, which I’d taken home with me. I was going to publish a transcript of the interview in my magazine, but having the disk stolen ruined that plan.”

He looked through the cabinet for a moment, then pulled out a disk in a blind sleeve. “This is it. You want to look at it?”

It didn’t sound like there was much to see on the disk, but I wasn’t about to jump to conclusions. A laser disc player sat on a nearby shelf. Ellis clicked it on and slid in the disk. A moment later, Malloy’s face appeared on the screen. Ellis’ recorded voice came from off camera.

“Sorry for the interruption,” Ellis’ voice said. “You were saying…”

“As you know,” Malloy continued, “the Roswell Complex has been shut down for years. Most people don’t know that a tremendous amount of alien equipment and technology was, and still is, stored there.”

“What type of equipment and technology?”

“Who knows? The best minds in the military couldn’t figure them out. But I’ll tell you this: the ship that crashed in Roswell was loaded with equipment. Several of the people on the project that I talked to said that it looked more like a supply ship than an exploratory craft. There were duplicates of almost everything on board. One device looked like it functioned as some sort of power cell, and there was a second one stored on the ship. Some of the analysts speculated that once they knew how to operate everything, the second set of equipment could be used to construct another ship. Of course, this was pure conjecture. As I said, the analysts never did figure anything out. Except, of course, the particle accelerator.”

“Hypothetically speaking, do you think, with today’s technology, scientists could create their own extraterrestrial craft?”

Malloy shrugged. “It’s possible. Of course, all the alien equipment is still stored at the Roswell research complex.”

“That could be a problem.”

Malloy smiled conspiratorially. “More like impossible… if the rumours are true.”

Ellis leaned into the picture and shook Malloy’s hand. “Thank you for your time.”

“My pleasure.”

Ellis ejected the disk and returned to the wooden cabinet. “See? There’s not much there.”

“What was Malloy referring to… the rumours about Roswell?”

Ellis seemed amused by my ignorance. “You haven’t heard? That story has been around for ages. You must know that the Roswell Complex was shut down just before the war ended. The rumour is that one of the final projects turned into a major disaster. Apparently, several mysterious containers were recovered from the alien crash site. Researchers spent decades trying to figure out how to open them. After they’d stumbled onto how the particle accelerator worked, someone hit upon the bright idea of using it on the sealed containers. Well, they got the containers open, and all hell broke loose. Whatever had been stored inside was living matter. No one knows whether it was toxic or viral, but it killed off most of the researchers before anyone knew what was happening. The complex was quarantined and hasn’t been opened since.”

My tax dollars at work. From everything I’d learned over the past week, it seemed like nothing was foolproof as long as the military was involved.

Ellis broke into my thoughts. “So, what are we going to do now?”

I didn’t like the “we” reference. Archie might have been reading too many Batman comics, but I wasn’t in the market for a sidekick, especially one who drank herbal tea and preferred incense to good, clean tobacco.

“I’ve got to find out more about this Pandora Device. I probably need to contact a Elijah Witt, as well.”

Ellis’ eager expression scrunched into a defensive frown. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Well, Mr Witt’s a very important, very private person. And he doesn’t talk to outsiders.”

Archie sounded like he was talking about his pet hamster. I restrained myself from telling him that I really didn’t care what he or Mr Witt thought or did. “Oh, well. I guess that’s my hard luck.”

Ellis relaxed. “So… is there anything else I can tell you about?”

It was time to smoke. As I got up from my chair, one other question occurred to me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the There are Messages from Outer Space paperback. “You ever read this?”

Ellis looked at the book closely. “Sure. Mr Witt wrote it. It’s really good. See? The author’s name is J.I Thelwait. As an anagram for Elijah Witt.”

I slipped the book back in my pocket. Ellis kept talking, his tone becoming more anxious. He was like a fisherman about to lose the big one. “You should read Foucault’s Pendulum, too. It explains everything. The Telluric Currents, the Templar plan. It’s all in there. Umberto Eco was a prophet.”

He got up quickly and hurried around the table, placing himself between me and the door. “You should also read The Fifth Column. It’s great. It proves that there’s a giant conspiracy in the government. Aliens have been living among us for generations. It even hints that one of our presidents was alien, or at least half alien. It’s all documented. The crop circles… the alien inductions… the government knows about all it. Heck, they’re in on most of it!”

I moved past Ellis into the main room of the shop. He didn’t even pause. “If you want my advice, trust nobody! I can tell that you’re on the level, but most of the time, you never know. The aliens are everywhere!”

I stopped at the door and turned back with an exaggerated look of suspicion. “How can I be sure that you’re not an alien, Archie?”

It was like I’d slapped him. He didn’t recover for a few seconds. “Everyone knows — aliens deny their own existence. I wouldn’t talk about them if I was one.”

I smiled indulgently. “Ah… of course. Well, now that I know you can be trusted, I’d better be moving along. I’ll be sure to keep your advice in mind.”

Ellis hurried to the door and unlocked it. “It was good to meet you, Murphy. It’s always nice to meet another believer. Keep in touch.”

I stepped out of the Cosmic Connection and lit up a much-needed smoke. Leaning against my speeder, I inhaled deeply. My mind reeled, trying to sort out all the information acquired over the past few days. It was like trying to stuff a marshmallow into a piggy bank.

I tried to arrange the details chronologically. OK, first an alien spacecraft crashed at Roswell. The military moves in, confiscates the wreckage, and convinces the media that it was all a misunderstanding. Everything is taken to a secret complex near Roswell, where it’s analysed unsuccessfully for years. Malloy joins Project Blueprint and works on deciphering the alien symbols. Eventually, technology catches up, making it possible for the military to figure out some of the alien equipment, in particular an advanced particle accelerator. Our boys in the Pentagon figure out how to use it to build a better bomb, only it turns out to be a very bad bomb. We win the war, but lose the ozone. Project Blueprint is shut down; Malloy is transferred to Peking, where he spends the remainder of his career translating manuals and continuing his research on the alien symbols in his spare time.

So far, so good. Now it gets a little murkier. Malloy eventually has a breakthrough. He is now, apparently, the first and only Earth creature to read an extraterrestrial communication. So what does he do? He retires, comes back to the States, goes to Berkeley, and starts building something called the Pandora Device. He then disappears, surfacing only to give an interview to a crackpot. A short time later, he sends out at least three, earth may be more boxes, which no one seems to know how to open. Then he’s gunned down, seemingly by the NSA.

This thread got me from point A to point B Unfortunately, it didn’t really account for much of the peripherals. What was Malloy’s association with Fitzpatrick? How did Elijah Witt fit into things? How was the murder of Sandra Collins linked to Malloy?

Then, of course, there were the highest priority questions. What was the message in the alien symbols? What was in the boxes? How many boxes were sent, and where were they?

My head felt like a vid-phone booth crammed full of fraternity pledges. I needed a stiff drink and a soft mattress. I got back to the Brew & Stew just as Louie was closing up shop. “Hi, honey. I’m home.”

“Hiya, Murph’. You got in just under the wire. Gonna have a nightcap. Want a brandy?”

I slipped off my overcoat and tossed my fedora on to the counter. “I only drink brandy when I play bridge. That is to say, never.”

Louie laughed. “Okay, sue me for trying to introduce some culture into your life.”

He reached under the counter and presented me with a full bottle of bourbon and a fancy crystal sipping a glass. I grabbed the top of the bottle and twisted, hearing the faint popping sound and the sigh of virgin whisky ready to fulfil his destiny. A glass of bourbon and a well packed Lucky Strike. Throw in a good night’s sleep and a decent haircut, and I’d be in bliss.

Louie reached over and lit my cigarette. “Looks like you had a long day.”

I carefully blew a long stream of smoke away from his big, lumpy face. “How can you tell? Don’t I usually look like this?”

“Pretty much. Your eyes are just real bloodshot.”

“You think they look bad. You should see them from this side.” It must have been all the damn incense. And Ellis didn’t want me smoking in his place.

Louie and I sat drinking in silence for a few minutes. I was dog-tired. When we finished our drinks, Louie turned out the light, and we headed up to hit the hay. This time, I got to sleep in the torture device. After a surprisingly decent sleep and a double Armageddon, I went to work on Louie’s Vid-phone. Checking in with Fitzpatrick, I learned that he hadn’t had any luck opening either of the boxes. I then called Regan and arranged to meet her at the Imperial Lounge. She seemed to have recovered from our previous conversation and was back to her former self. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

I returned to my seat at the counter and picked up the first edition of the Bay City Mirror. It was still pretty early, and I really wasn’t in a hurry, so I decided to do the crossword. I took a sip of Armageddon and found the puzzle. After twenty minutes, three cigarettes, and a refill on the Joe, I filled in a grand total of five answers. I don’t know why I like puzzles. All they ever do is make me feel like an idiot.

My eyes wandered over the page. Below the crossword was an anagram puzzle. I never did those — they were too much work. Suddenly, I remembered what Ellis had said about Elijah Witt, how he always used an anagram as a pen name. I pulled out the paperbacks from my overcoat pocket. Sure enough, the author of There are Messages from Outer Space was J.I. Thelwait. The letters could be rearranged to make Elijah Witt.

Immediately I was curious. I picked up the second book, Puzzles to Amuse and Challenge, and looked in the table of contents. Finding a section devoted entirely to anagrams, I saw that Malloy had solved all of them. I flicked through the rest of the book; he’d skipped everything else.

I had a hunch. According to Ellis, Witt and Malloy were in touch with each other. Both were interested in anagrams. I opened the cover of Witt’s book. The inside title page had been torn out. I ran my finger over the first page and felt some markings. After getting a pencil from Louie, I lightly traced over the first page. Letters began to appear, some in words, others in apparently random order. When I finished, there was no complete answer, but it was obvious that Malloy had been attempting to make an anagram out of the title There are Messages from Outer Space.