The loading noises behind her ceased, and she watched a generator truck pull away. Like the helicopter itself, the truck bore no recognizable insignia. It made her reflect that a majority of the people she’d seen around the airfield wore no military uniforms.
The engines began to whine and her neighbor spoke. “What’s your specialty?”
She looked over at the bearded pink, Steve, and saw him still working at his keyboard—apparently fascinated by a multicolored sinusoidal display he’d conjured up.
Steve kept talking. “You attached to a university? Myself, I’ve only met a few nonhumans at the graduate level-talk about having to prove yourself twice over.”
Angel nodded and saw the gesture was lost on the man, who was poring over his work. “I can imagine.”
Apparently he took her remark as sarcasm. “Damn, I didn’t mean to be condescending.” He looked up for a moment. “After all, it does show some presence of mind that the ANHA would finally have a nonhuman come and look over the really nonhuman. Right?”
“Right.” Angel agreed while trying to decipher the initials ANHA—NH was almost always NonHuman in Federalese. Agency for NonHuman Affairs? How come she’d never heard of it? Was it some organ for the NHA Committee in the Senate? If so, it explained how Harper could accommodate her request so readily.
The helicopter started thrumming rhythmically as the rotors engaged and the Sikorsky took off into the night. A few wisps of fog wafted by, whipped into horizontal tornadoes by the downdraft—and suddenly they were clear of the glare from the Presidio.
San Francisco was a ghost town. Angel could see miles of streetlights illuminating empty asphalt. Then the helicopter started turning, giving her views of the park, the Pacific, and finally—as the copter aimed down the bay toward the island—the Golden Gate. Through some trick of the light, the bridge looked like it was drenched in blood.
Oh, she was in a great frame of mind.
“I’m sociology.”
“Hmm?” Angel turned away from the bridge and looked at the guy. She didn’t know if this guy was continuing some point she hadn’t been listening to, or if he had started off on some new tangent.
Angel realized that she’d never answered his original question. She never had enough time to concoct a convincing cover story. If possible, she’d like to avoid the direct questions this guy seemed to be leading up to.
So, even though she couldn’t care less, she asked, “You’re studying alien society?”
“Only indirectly.” He chuckled and looked up from his keyboard. “They classified my thesis, but they didn’t have anyone who could understand it. So they hired me.” He shrugged.
“You work for the Fed?”
He grinned. “Oh, come on. You all work for them. I don’t care what University or think tank you come from, or are you telling me you got the security clearance to be here without any grant money?”
“Ah—” Angel didn’t have a response for that since it probably wasn’t a good idea to say that she didn’t have the security clearance to be here.
He looked a little apologetic, probably misinterpreting her hesitation as anger. “Forgive me, I guess I’m a little too open about who pays the lease on my Ivory Tower.”
Angel wanted to change the subject before he asked about her ivory tower. “So what are you doing here?”
“Confirming my suspicions on when and where the Race first had a substantial effect on human society.”
“So when and where was it?”
“I don’t have a very high resolution on my data, but I put it somewhere in January 1998, central Asia.”
Angel was shocked. “Wait a minute, you’re saying that these things have been on the planet for over sixty years?”
He nodded and went back to the keyboard and his sinusoidal curves.
“How do you know that?”
“Hmm,” he stared at the graphs. “What the hell. You’ve got the clearance or you wouldn’t be here.” He slid the keyboard over to her lap, apparently so she could appreciate the graphs. “Know any sociology or economics?”
“Not my field.” Make this simple. I wait tables for a living.
“Okay, I’ll try to avoid the jargon. My main work has been on cycles. Economic cycles, battle cycles, cycles in political orientation. Especially their predictive uses.”
He tapped a few keys and all the sinusoidal curves were replaced by one jagged sawtooth graph with only a few spikes.
“For example, that is a cumulative index of economic growth over the whole planet for the last century. It looks almost random, but it can be factored out to have a number of regular cycles of differing magnitude.” He taped the keys again, and the jagged sawtooth smoothed out into a lazy sine wave whose girth was riddled with a dozen smaller waves all of higher frequency. “Add the values of all those curves for any one year, and you get the same sawtooth you saw before.”
“Okay, so? How can this tell you about aliens?”
“Well.” He smiled. “Perhaps I should show you this.”
A few more taps and another sawtooth graph spread across the screen. “Same cycles, all carried out into this century.”
Angel nodded.
“Now, overlay that with the real figures for the past fifty-nine years.” The green sawtooth was overlaid by a red graph that began in the same place, but diverged radically, skewing downward. By mid-century it had no relation to the green, which seemed almost orderly in comparison. “You can see why any hint of cycles in academia has fallen into disrepute.”
“Yes, it doesn’t work.”
He smiled even wider. “But they do. Given the data for the last century, you can use a sophisticated computer to predict the conditions backward an arbitrary distance. It’s just a matter of juggling variables and getting a handle on what the individual cycles mean.” He made a few taps and the sine waves came back. “For instance, the magnitude and frequency of this curve is an index of the speed of communication in a system.” He pointed to a dark blue curve. “That one is based on actual transport of goods.” He pointed to a much bigger curve that was a lighter blue.
Angel was beginning to get the guy’s point. “You mean that divergence is somehow related to the aliens?”
He nodded. “These cycles represent fundamental processes in human society. A radical change in how they work means one of two things. Human nature changed radically at the turn of the century . . .”
He took the keyboard back.
“Or the Earth was no longer a closed system.”
The helicopter was making the final approach to Alcatraz. Angel could see no sign of the old prison. The island was dominated now by the glowing white dome. Around the dome was a cluster of blocky outbuildings that reminded her of the white cinderblock earthquake-relief buildings that peppered the neighborhood south of Market.
“Why’d they classify your work? The aliens aren’t a secret anymore.”
He shook his head, almost sadly. “You should see it. I came up with the theory and the corrections for it before the aliens were public knowledge. I came up with a model of economic and political projections that worked. Everyone else is using guesswork. I can tell you exactly how the aliens manipulated things, from the Tibetan revolution in ’05 to the last congressional election.”
“I see.”
“I bet you do. And the stuff I’m doing for the Fed right now, predicting elections, recessions, and such, is elementary cribwork compared to what the Race developed.”
“How?” The dome was rising up and finally blocked all view out her window.
“They know how to change the numbers. They know what all the variables are and how to manipulate them. They can predict the results of their covert activity.”
“That’s scary . . .”
“I know,” he said as the Sikorsky touched ground. “But it’s fascina
ting.”
Chapter 24
Angel was ushered, along with the gaggle of academics, to one of the blocky concrete outbuildings that clustered by the edge of the massive dome. The place was run by a mixture of civilians and military. The military personnel wore a few odd badges on their uniforms. The symbol that seemed to represent the unit here was a picture of a globe overlaid with a lightning bolt.
The group was led down, through a building that housed laboratories and administration offices. As they progressed, Angel was aware of uncomfortable smells that were growing in intensity. Ammonia was the strongest, but it was also tainted by sulfur and other burning chemical smells.
The silent procession had finally reached a point where Angel was sure that they had come to the edge of the dome. They turned a corner and her suspicions were confirmed—
The group had reached some sort of waiting area that butted up against the dome. The ceiling was ten meters above them, and the room was a hundred meters long, at least. With the exception of a massive chromed air lock door that was emblazoned with red and yellow warnings—the entire far wall was a huge window.
Angel took a seat with the rest of the academics without taking her eyes off the window. The window opened up on Hell.
The inside of the dome, past that panoramic window, had to be close to a half-kilometer in diameter. Haze filled its atmosphere; the far side was invisible. A dim red light illuminated a rocky landscape from a point that must have been near the apex of the dome.
Jets of the fire shot out from gaps in the rocks at regular intervals that ranged from two seconds for the small ones, to five minutes for a massive explosion near the window that could have totally immolated the Sikorsky she’d flown here in. There were rivers in there, but Angel found it hard to believe that the viscous black fluid in there was water.
There were things in there. Things that rolled, pulsed across the rocks, things with no definite form. They were fluid, undulating creatures. Once or twice she saw one of the smaller ones stray too close to the black river and become snagged by a black tentacle and drawn under. She couldn’t tell if it was some aquatic creature that was feeding like that, or if it was the river itself.
The buildings in there were near the center of the dome, and thus barely visible. They resembled nothing so much as termite mounds constructed of rock.
There were humans in there. She saw two walking some sort of patrol around the perimeter, right past the window. They wore full environment suits in desert camo. They seemed to be armed with flamethrowers.
It was Hell. That, or the site of multiple bio/nuke strikes.
She gripped the briefcase tightly and tried to tell herself that she was still on Alcatraz and the view out the window was contained under a concrete dome. It was too easy to imagine that she was looking out, not in, and when she left this building the world out there wouldn’t be the Frisco Bay, but some volcanic landscape out of Dante’s Inferno.
Steve, the sociologist, was sitting next to her. He seemed to notice her fascination. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say.”
“First time?”
Angel nodded and tore her gaze away from the boiling netherworld beyond the huge windows.
“I was goggle-eyed, too, the first time I saw that.” His hand rose from his computer and waved at the window. “They’ve managed to recreate the Race’s home atmosphere and engineer quite a bit of the ecology. Quite a feat considering we still have no idea where their home planet really is.”
VanDyne had built this, back when the aliens controlled it. The aliens—the Race—had been making themselves at home. This was far beyond the vidcast warrens that had been unearthed from beneath the Nyogi tower in Manhattan.
What kind of places have they built in Asia, if they’ve been here for sixty years? Angel could picture entire alien cities. Suddenly. Merideth’s fear of these things didn’t seem so calculated. The national mobilization against the alien threat now seemed less politically motivated.
“I thought they were from Alpha Centauri,” she whispered.
“The Race that came to Earth almost definitely came from there. It’s almost equally certain that they didn’t evolve there. They’ve colonized about eight planets close by, Alpha Centauri just happens to be the closest.”
“How do we know that?” Angel looked back at the window. The two humans in the environment suits were heading toward the massive air lock along a nearly invisible path between the rocks.
“A combination of detective work, analysis of the Race’s genetics, and a good look at the habitats they built.” He shook his head. “Not to mention a little blackmail.”
“Blackmail?” The two suited humans stationed themselves on either side of the dome end of the air lock. On Angel’s side of the air lock, a pair of marines bearing the lightning-earth insignia stationed themselves opposite the suited pair. The marines were armed with glorified stun rods that they bore like rifles. They stood at parade rest.
“Controlling every aspect of someone’s environment can make you very persuasive—here come the interviewees.”
The sight of the “interviewees” being herded toward the air lock was the most surreal yet. The double line of aliens, flanked by suited marines, emerged out of the heat shimmering haze by the termite mounds. At first she couldn’t make out any details. The first thought to come to mind was three-hundred-kilo slugs. There were two marines for each undulating white form.
As the unearthly parade closed on the air lock, Angel could see that the aliens were highly individualistic in their method of movement. One in front seemed to gather its mass to the rear, and then roll itself forward in a wave before repeating the process. Another one, farther back, extruded a few dozen tentacles the diameter of her forearm and grabbed the ground in front of it, pulling itself along the ground. One actually walked, after a fashion, on a trio of pads that were thicker than Angel’s torso. The most disturbing image was the one alien that parodied the humanoid form with two boneless legs and arms. With each step, its flesh rippled like a blister on the verge of bursting wide open.
Angel, as well as a majority of the country, had known that the aliens were some kind of intelligent multicellular amoeba. It was another thing to see a creature that had no set physical form. It was disturbing to see a creature for whom things like its number of limbs was a matter of personal preference. She had been prepared to see a creature that was a kind of amorphous blob. What she saw was a dozen different creatures, each with a definite form, each one different.
The procession reached the other side of the air lock. Above the massive chromed door, a rotating red light started flashing. A klaxon began sounding. After a while, the door began opening slowly.
She had almost gotten used to the background smells that permeated this place. As the door opened, she was assaulted by ammonia and sulfur, bile, rotten eggs, and something akin to burning rubber. She started coughing, and her eyes began to water. She could understand why the marines in there had to wear environment suits. Even if there was enough oxygen in there, who’d want to breathe it?
The door finished opening, and two aliens and four marines walked out into the waiting room. The pulsing dead-white slug-things were only a dozen meters from Angel, and she could tell that most of the smell was coming from them. She could hear them, too. They constantly made a shuddering, bubbly sound—like a stomach rumbling, or something much thicker than water that was just reaching its boiling point.
The marines guided the aliens down one of a dozen corridors that branched off the room. Over a PA system, a bored-sounding voice called out two names, and a pair of the academics got up from their seats and followed the aliens.
Just so.
This whole process had happened a lot. Enough times that a set routine had developed. Even the vidcasts that speculated on the nature of the aliens, and on the government’s role—usua
lly through voice over video of the massive white dome that dominated Alcatraz—hadn’t come close to this.
It was easy, for a while, to forget her own problems and simply watch in awe.
Steve the sociologist left with the second pair of aliens. Even though she found his nonstop talking somewhat irritating, once he left she felt truly alone here. She was the only morey on the island, and the looks she got from the pinks ranged from the disinterest of the marines to outright hostility from most of the university people.
It went slowly. They cycled the air lock for each pair of aliens. It seemed unnecessary, the air lock was big enough to fit the whole parade at once. Angel supposed it was some sort of security measure. Angel began to worry as time went on and the party from the Sikorsky continued to be called up in pairs. Eventually, it left only her—worrying that someone had tagged her as a threat to national security.
Nearly two hours after they started marching aliens through the door, there was only one left and the PA finally called her name.
By now her nose was numbed by the constant stink that leaked through the air lock. As she fell in behind the last two marines and the single remaining alien, her sense of smell reawakened. The smell of bile and ammonia hung around the creature in a cloud. It smelled like nothing so much as urine mixed with fresh vomit. The white latexlike skin seemed to sweat moisture that was slightly more viscous than water. Angel wouldn’t want to touch it.
A procession of forklifts and golf carts carried crates from the helicopter through the open air lock. She lost sight of the parade as she followed the last alien down a new corridor.
Now that she was this close to the thing, she began to have second thoughts. This one had taken a hulking slug form, but even though it slid most of its mass along the floor, its midpoint was taller than she was. This one was bigger than most of the ones she had seen. Four hundred kilos of formless rippling flesh.
And she wanted to talk to this thing?