Dreamcatcher

  The middle manager managed to keep his balance after the first slip, but halfway to a couple of semi trailers that had been pushed together, his feet flew out from beneath him and he went on his ass. The clipboard he'd been carrying went sliding like a toboggan for leprechauns.

  Henry held his hands out and clapped as loudly as he could. Probably not loud enough to be heard over all the motors, so he cupped them around his mouth and yelled: "Way to go shitheels! Let's look at the videotape!"

  The middle manager got up without looking at him, retrieved his clipboard, and ran on toward the two semi trailers.

  There was a group of eight or nine guys standing by the fence about twenty yards from Henry. Now one of them, a portly fellow in an orange down-filled parka that made him look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, walked over.

  "I don't think you should do that, fella." He paused, then lowered his voice. "They shot my brother-in-law."

  Yes. Henry saw it in the man's head. The portly man's brother-in-law, also portly, talking about his lawyer, his rights, his job with some investment company in Boston. The soldiers nodding, telling him it was just temporary, the situation was normalizing and would be straightened out by dawn, all the time hustling the two overweight mighty hunters toward the barn, which already held a pretty good trawl, and all at once the brother-in-law had broken away, running toward the motor-pool, and boom-boom, out go the lights.

  The portly man was telling Henry some of this, his pale face earnest in the newly erected lights, and Henry interrupted him.

  "What do you think they're going to do to the rest of us?"

  The portly man looked at Henry, shocked, then backed off a step, as if he thought Henry might have something contagious. Quite funny, when you thought about it, because they all had something contagious, or at least this team of government-funded cleaners thought they did, and in the end it would come to the same.

  "You can't be serious," the portly man said. Then, almost indulgently: "This is America, you know."

  "Is it? You seeing a lot of due process, are you?"

  "They're just . . . I'm sure they're just . . ." Henry waited, interested, but there was no more, at least not in this vein. "That was a gunshot, wasn't it?" the portly man asked. "And I think I heard some screaming."

  From the two pushed-together trailers there emerged two hurrying men with a stretcher between them. Following them with marked reluctance came the middle manager, his clipboard once more tucked firmly beneath his arm.

  "I'd say you got that right." Henry and the portly man watched as the stretcher-bearers hurried up the steps of the Winnebago. As Mr. Middle Management made his closest approach to the fence, Henry called out to him, "How's it going, shitheels? Having any fun yet?"

  The portly man winced. The guy with the clipboard gave Henry a single dour look and then trudged on toward the Winnebago.

  "This is just . . . it's just some sort of emergency situation," the portly man said. "It'll be straightened out by tomorrow morning, I'm sure."

  "Not for your brother-in-law," Henry said.

  The portly man looked at him, mouth tucked in and trembling slightly. Then he returned to the other men, whose views no doubt more closely corresponded to his own. Henry turned back to the Winnebago and resumed waiting for Underhill to come out. He had an idea that Underhill was his only hope . . . but whatever Underhill's doubts about this operation might be, the hope was a thin one. And Henry had only one card to play. The card was Jonesy. They didn't know about Jonesy.

  The question was whether or not he should tell Underhill. Henry was terribly afraid that telling the man would do no good.

  5

  About five minutes after Mr. Middle Management followed the stretcher-bearers into the 'Bago, the three of them came out again, this time with a fourth on the stretcher. Under the brilliant overhead lights, the wounded man's face was so pale it looked purple. Henry was relieved to see that it wasn't Underhill, because Underhill was different from the rest of these maniacs.

  Ten minutes passed. Underhill still hadn't come out of the command post. Henry waited in the thickening snow. There were soldiers watching the inmates (that was what they were, inmates, and it was best not to gild the lily), and eventually one of them strolled over. The men who had been stationed at the T-junction of the Deep Cut and Swanny Pond Roads had pretty well blinded Henry with their lights, and he didn't recognize this man by his face. Henry was both delighted and deeply unsettled to realize that minds also had features, every bit as distinctive as a pretty mouth, a broken nose, or a crooked eye. This was one of the guys who had been out there, the one who had hit him in the ass with the stock of his rifle when he decided Henry wasn't moving toward the truck fast enough. Whatever had happened to Henry's mind was skitzy; he couldn't pick out this guy's name, but he knew that the man's brother's name was Frankie, and that in high school Frankie had been tried and acquitted on a rape charge. There was more, as well--unconnected jumbles of stuff, like the contents of a wastebasket. Henry realized that he was looking at an actual river of consciousness, and at the flotsam and jetsam the river was carrying along. The humbling thing was how prosaic most of it was.

  "Hey there," the soldier said, amiably enough. "It's the smartass. Want a hot dog, smartass?" He laughed.

  "Already got one," Henry said, smiling himself. And Beaver popped out of his mouth, as Beaver had a way of doing. "Fuck off Freddy."

  The soldier stopped laughing. "Let's see how smart your ass is twelve hours from now," he said. The image that went floating by, borne on the river between this man's ears, was of a truck filled with bodies, white limbs all tangled together. "You growing the Ripley yet, smartass?"

  Henry thought: the byrus. That's what he means. The byrus is what it's really called. Jonesy knows.

  Henry didn't reply and the soldier started away, wearing the comfortable look of a man who has won on points. Curious, Henry summoned all his concentration and visualized a rifle--Jonesy's Garand, as a matter of fact. He thought: I have a gun. I'm going to kill you with it the second you turn your back on me, asshole.

  The soldier swung around again, the comfortable look going the way of the grin and the laughter. What replaced it was a look of doubt and suspicion. "What'd you say, smartass? You say something?"

  "Just wondering if you got your share of that girl--you know, the one Frankie broke in. Did he give you sloppy seconds?"

  For a moment, the soldier's face was idiotic with surprise. Then it filled in with black Italian rage. He raised his rifle. To Henry, its muzzle looked like a smile. He unzipped his jacket and held it open in the thickening snow. "Go on," he said, and laughed. "Go on, Rambo, do your thing."

  Frankie's brother held the gun on Henry a moment longer, and then Henry felt the man's rage pass. It had been close--he had seen the soldier trying to think of what he would say, some plausible story--but he had taken a moment too long and his forebrain had pulled the red beast back to heel. It was all so familiar. The Richie Grenadeaus never died, not really. They were the world's dragon's teeth.

  "Tomorrow," the soldier said. "Tomorrow's time enough for you, smartass."

  This time Henry let him go--no more teasing the red beast, although God knew it would have been easy enough. He had learned something, too . . . or confirmed what he'd already suspected. The soldier had heard his thought, but not clearly. If he'd heard it clearly he would have turned around a lot faster. Nor had he asked Henry how Henry knew about his brother Frankie. Because on some level the soldier knew what Henry did: they had been infected with telepathy, the whole walking bunch of them--they had caught it like an annoying low-grade virus.

  "Only I got it worse," he said, zipping his coat back up again. So had Pete and Beaver and Jonesy. But Pete and the Beav were both dead now, and Jonesy . . . Jonesy . . .

  "Jonesy got it worst of all," Henry said. And where was Jonesy now?

  South . . . Jonesy had hooked back south. These guys' precious quarantine had been breached. Henry guessed
they had foreseen that that might happen. It didn't worry them. They thought one or two breaches wouldn't matter.

  Henry thought they were wrong.

  6

  Owen stood with a mug of coffee in his hand, waiting until the guys from the infirmary were gone with their burden, Melrose's sobs mercifully reduced to mutters and moans by a shot of morphine. Pearly followed them out and then Owen was alone with Kurtz.

  Kurtz sat in his rocker, looking up at Owen Underhill with curious, head-cocked amusement. The raving crazyman was gone again, put away like a Halloween mask.

  "I'm thinking of a number," Kurtz said. "What is it?"

  "Seventeen," Owen said. "You see it in red. Like on the side of a fire engine."

  Kurtz nodded, pleased. "You try sending one to me."

  Owen visualized a speed limit sign: 60 MPH.

  "Six," Kurtz said after a moment. "Black on white."

  "Close enough, boss."

  Kurtz drank some coffee. His was in a mug with I LUV MY GRANDPA printed on the side. Owen sipped with honest pleasure. It was a dirty night and a dirty job, and Freddy's coffee wasn't bad.

  Kurtz had found time to put on his coverall. Now he reached into the inner pocket and brought out a large bandanna. He regarded it for a moment, then got to his knees with a grimace (it was no secret that the old man had arthritis) and began to wipe up the splatters of Melrose's blood. Owen, who thought himself surely unshockable at this point, was shocked.

  "Sir . . ." Oh, fuck. "Boss . . ."

  "Stow it," Kurtz said without looking up. He moved from spot to spot, as assiduous as any washerwoman. "My father always said that you should clean up your own messes. Might make you stop and think a little bit the next time. What was my father's name, buck?"

  Owen looked for it and caught just a glimpse, like a glimpse of slip under a woman's dress. "Paul?"

  "Patrick, actually . . . but close. Anderson believes it's a wave, and it's expending its force now. A telepathic wave. Do you find that an awesome concept, Owen?"

  "Yes."

  Kurtz nodded without looking up, wiping and cleaning. "More awesome in concept than in fact, however--do you also find that?"

  Owen laughed. The old man had lost none of his capacity to surprise. Not playing with a full deck, people sometimes said of unstable individuals. The trouble with Kurtz, Owen reckoned, was that he was playing with more than a full deck. A few extra aces in there. Also a few extra deuces, and everyone knew that deuces were wild.

  "Sit down, Owen. Drink your coffee on your ass like a normal person and let me do this. I need to."

  Owen thought maybe he did. He sat down and drank the coffee. Five minutes passed in this fashion, then Kurtz got painfully back to his feet. Holding the bandanna fastidiously by one corner, he carried it to the kitchen, dropped it into the trash, and returned to his rocker. He took a sip of his coffee, grimaced, and put it aside. "Cold."

  Owen rose. "I'll get you a fresh--"

  "No. Sit down. We need to talk."

  Owen sat.

  "We had a little confrontation out there at the ship, you and I, didn't we?"

  "I wouldn't say--"

  "No, I know you wouldn't, but I know what went on and so do you. When the situation's hot, tempers also get hot. But we're past that now. We have to be past it because I'm the OIC and you're my second and we've still got this job to finish. Can we work together to do that?"

  "Yes, sir." Fuck, there it was again. "Boss, I mean."

  Kurtz favored him with a wintry smile.

  "I lost control just now." Charming, frank, open-eyed and honest. This had fooled Owen for a lot of years. It did not fool him now. "I was going along, drawing the usual caricature--two parts Patton, one part Rasputin, add water, stir and serve--and I just . . . whew! I just lost it. You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

  Careful, careful. There was telepathy in this room, honest-to-God telepathy, and Owen had no idea how deeply Kurtz might be able to see into him.

  "Yes, sir. A little, sir."

  Kurtz nodded matter-of-factly. "Yes. A little. That pretty well describes it. I've been doing this for a long time--men like me are necessary but hard to find, and you have to be a little crazy to do the job and not just high-side it completely. It's a thin line, that famous thin line the armchair psychologists love to talk about, and never in the history of the world has there been a cleanup job like this one . . . assuming, that is, the story of Hercules neatening up the Augean Stables is just a myth. I am not asking for your sympathy but for your understanding. If we understand each other, we'll get through this, the hardest job we've ever had, all right. If we don't . . ." Kurtz shrugged. "If we don't, I'll have to get through it without you. Are you following me?"

  Owen doubted if he was, but he saw where Kurtz wanted him to go and nodded. He had read that there was a certain kind of bird that lived in the crocodile's mouth, at the croc's sufferance. He supposed that now he must be that kind of bird. Kurtz wanted him to believe he was forgiven for putting the alien broadcast on the common channel--heat of the moment, just as Kurtz had blown off Melrose's foot in the heat of the moment. And what had happened six years ago in Bosnia? Not a factor now. Maybe it was true. And maybe the crocodile had tired of the bird's tiresome pecking and was preparing to close its jaws. Owen got no sense of the truth from Kurtz's mind, and either way it behooved him to be very careful. Careful and ready to fly.

  Kurtz reached into his coverall again and brought out a tarnished pocket-watch. "This was my grandfather's and it works just fine," he said. "Because it winds up, I think--no electricity. My wristwatch, on the other hand, is still FUBAR."

  "Mine too."

  Kurtz's lips twitched in a smile. "See Perlmutter when you have a chance, and feel you have the stomach for him. Among his many other chores and activities, he found time to take delivery of three hundred wind-up Timexes this afternoon. Just before the snow shut down our air-ops, this was. Pearly's damned efficient. I just wish to Christ he'd get over the idea that he's living in a movie."

  "He may have made strides in that direction tonight, boss."

  "Perhaps he has at that."

  Kurtz meditated. Underhill waited.

  "Laddie-buck, we should be drinking the whiskey. It's a bit of an Irish deathwatch we're having tonight."

  "Is it?"

  "Aye. Me beloved phooka is about to keel over dead."

  Owen raised his eyebrows.

  "Yes. At which point its magical cloak of invisibility will be whisked away. Then it will become just another dead horse for folks to beat. Primarily politicians, who are best at that sort of thing."

  "I don't follow you."

  Kurtz took another look at the tarnished pocket-watch, which he'd probably picked up in a pawnshop . . . or looted off a corpse. Underhill wouldn't have doubted either.

  "It's seven o'clock. In just about forty hours, the President is going to speak before the UN General Assembly. More people are going to see and hear that speech than any previous speech in the history of the human race. It's going to be part of the biggest story in the history of the human race . . . and the biggest spin-job since God the Father Almighty created the cosmos and set the planets going round and round with the tip of his finger."

  "What's the spin?"

  "It's a beautiful tale, Owen. Like the best lies, it incorporates large swatches of the truth. The President will tell a fascinated world, a world hanging on every word with its breath caught in its throat, praise Jesus, that a ship crewed by beings from another world crashed in northern Maine on either November sixth or November seventh of this year. That's true. He will say that we were not completely surprised, as we and the heads of the other countries which constitute the UN Security Council have known for at least ten years that ET has been scoping us out. Also true, only some of us here in America have known about our pals from the void since the late nineteen-forties. We also know that Russian fighters destroyed a grayboy ship over Siberia in 1974 . . . although to this day the Russ
kies don't know we know. That one was probably a drone, a test-shot. There have been a lot of those. The grays have handled their early contacts with a care which strongly suggests that we scare them quite a lot."

  Owen listened with a sick fascination he hoped didn't show on his face or at the top level of his thoughts, where Kurtz might still have access.

  From his inner pocket, Kurtz now brought out a dented box of Marlboro cigarettes. He offered the pack to Owen, who first shook his head, then took one of the remaining four fags. Kurtz took another, then lit them up.

  "I'm getting the truth and the spin mixed in together," Kurtz said after he'd taken a deep drag and exhaled. "That may not be the most profitable way to get on. Let's stick to the spin, shall we?"

  Owen said nothing. He smoked rarely these days and the first drag made him feel light-headed, but the taste was wonderful.

  "The President will say that the United States government quarantined the crash site and the area around it for three reasons. The first was purely logistical: because of the Jefferson Tract's remote location and low population, we could quarantine it. If the grayboys had come down in Brooklyn, or even on Long Island, that would not have been the case. The second reason is that we are not clear on the aliens' intentions. The third reason, and ultimately the most persuasive, is that the aliens carry with them an infectious substance which the on-scene personnel calls 'Ripley fungus.' While the alien visitors have assured us passionately that they are not infectious, they have brought a highly infectious substance with them. The President will also tell a horrified world that the fungus may in fact be the controlling intelligence, the grayboys just a growth medium. He will show videotape of a grayboy literally exploding into the Ripley fungus. The footage has been slightly doctored to improve visibility, but is basically true."

  You're lying, Owen thought. The footage is entirely fake from beginning to end, as fake as that Alien Autopsy shit. And why are you lying? Because you can. It's as simple as that, isn't it? Because to you, a lie comes more naturally than the truth.