The Forge of God

  Silence around the table.

  "Mr. Gordon, you are free to do so, and then please come to Washington as soon as you can," Crockerman said. He put his napkin next to his plate, backed his chair away from the head of the table, and stood. He appeared very old in the dining room's subdued light. "I'm retiring early tonight. This day has been exhausting, and there is much to think about. David, Carl, please make sure Mr. Hicks is comfortable."

  "Yes, sir," McClennan said.

  "And Carl, make sure the staff here realizes how much we appreciate their service and the hardship."

  "Yes, sir."

  PERSPECTIVE

  AAP/UK Net,

  October 8, 1996;

  Woomera, Local Church of New Australia:

  The Reverend Brian Caldecott has proclaimed the Australian extraterrestrials to be "patent frauds." Caldecott, long known for his fiery harangues against all forms of government, and for leading his disciples in a return to "the Garden of Eden, " which he claims was once located near Alice Springs, came to Woomera in a caravan of thirty white Mercedes-Benzes to hold a tent rally this evening. "These 'aliens' are the Country Party's attempt to mislead the citizens of the world, and to make the Australian Government, under Prime Minister Stanley Miller, the center of a world government, which I of course deplore." Caldecott's crusade suffered a public relations setback last year when it was discovered he was married to three women. The Church of New Australia promptly declared bigamy to be a religious principle, stirring a legal stew as yet unsettled.

  AGNUS DEI

  16

  October 8, 12:15 a.m.

  Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, wearing a white helmeted suit with self-contained breathing apparatus, stood beside two assistants in similar garb in the isolation chamber once occupied by the Guest, and now by its corpse. Harry Feinman entered the chamber in his own suit, stepping with some awkwardness around the others. With four in the chamber, and equipment brought in for the autopsy, there was little room for maneuvering. Arthur sat in the laboratory beyond the glass and observed.

  The Guest lay on its back on the central table, now elevated a meter above the floor. Its long head extended full length with "chin" paralleling the tabletop. The four limbs were splayed outward, held against a natural resilience by plastic straps.

  Phan indicated with a sweep of one plastic-gloved hand the three video cameras behind their protective plastic plates. "Beginning twelve-seventeen A.M., October eighth, 1996. I am Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, and I am beginning an autopsy of the extraterrestrial biological specimen found near Death Valley, California. The specimen, also called the Guest, died at five fifty-eight P.M., October seventh, in isolation room three of the Vandenberg Emergency Retrieval Laboratory, Shuttle Launch Center Six, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

  "There is no evidence of physical injury or any apparent sign of internal trauma." Phan removed a scalpel from a tray proffered by an assistant. "I've already collected external culture samples from the Guest when it was alive. I will now take samples from sites along its limbs and on its body and head to see if terrestrial microorganisms have begun to multiply on its external tissues." Using the scalpel to abrade the skin, and swabs to pick up the samples, he carried out this task. Each swab was dropped into a tube which was then stoppered. "As you can see, the body exhibits no signs of lividity, or indeed of any decay or change, external or internal." Phan lifted a forward limb. "There is resilience, but no stiffness. Indeed, the only visible evidence of death is a lack of movement and no reaction to stimuli.

  "There is no sign of electrical activity within the Guest's cranium, or anywhere else in the body. As such activity existed before, we can only assume that this is another indicator of death. The Guest has not moved in ten hours and thirty-one minutes. Dr. Feinman, do you concur that the Guest is now dead, by any measurements we can make?"

  "I concur," Harry said. "There are no reflexes. The Guest's body previously exhibited a living tension when touched. In its present state, there is no living tension in evidence."

  "Obviously, this is more in the nature of an exploratory dissection than a true autopsy," Phan continued, his voice weary. "We have already conducted a thorough examination of the Guest through external means, including X ray, ultrasound exploratory, and NMR imaging. We have located several shapes which might be organs, a few small cavities, some fluid-filled and some apparently empty, within the Guest, and using these printouts as maps"—he pointed a scalpel at several sheets of paper hung on the outside of the viewing windows—"I will investigate the Guest's interior more directly.

  'The Guest's thoracic skeletal structure differs substantially from our own. It appears to be made of a series of spines—in the porcupine sense of the word—connected by collagenous flexible joints, all wrapped around the internal cavity. There are no hollow lungs. In fact, there are few hollows of any kind." Phan drew the scalpel along a pronounced ridge running the length of the "breast" and revealed a clean gray-green surface with the sheen of bathroom tile. The sliced edges of skin were coppery blue-green in color.

  "Here is the central breast 'bone' or 'process' we first saw in our X rays." He peeled back the skin, cutting delicately at adhering tissue, until one side of the thorax was exposed. "These joined processes provide a flexible but efficient cage around the thoracic organs. As you can see, the cage is fairly rigid in one direction"—he pushed with his finger toward the Guest's head, producing no movement—"but flexible in another." He pressed down and the cage sank slightly. "There is an obvious similarity between the Guest and ourselves at this point, with a protective cage around the thorax, but the similarity ends there."

  Phan took a small electric circular saw and cut through the processes on the Guest's left side, facing the window. Working the saw twenty centimeters across the top, then down on two sides another twenty centimeters, then across the bottom, he was able to lift free a glutinous section of the thoracic cage. Below lay a pearly membrane.

  Arthur sat rooted in his chair, fully focused on the opening to the Guest's thorax. Phan maneuvered past Feinman and the assistants around the table, pausing for a moment to glance at the printouts. He then reached for a syringe and inserted it into the pearly membrane, withdrawing a sample of fluids. Harry pushed a slender biopsy core sampler through the membrane a little lower and removed a long, slender tube of tissue.

  This he passed to an assistant, who sealed it in a glass phial and passed it with the other samples to the outside through a stainless-steel drawer.

  "The temperature is now twelve degrees centigrade. We are reducing that to several degrees above zero, to inhibit terrestrial bacterial growth. The core and fluid samples will be analyzed and the autopsy will continue at a later hour. Gentlemen, it is time I rested. My assistants are going to make further measurements and take core samples from the limbs. Later this morning we will begin on the head."

  Hicks sat at the table across from the President, smiling at the waitress as she poured him a cup of coffee. They were alone in the dining hall; it was early, just past seven in the morning. The President had called him at midnight and requested his presence at breakfast for a private discussion. "What's your pleasure, Mr. Hicks?" Crockerman asked him.

  "Toast and scrambled eggs, I think," he said. "Can you make a Denver omelet?"

  The waitress nodded.

  "The same for me," Crockerman told her. As she left, Crockerman pushed his chair back a few inches and bent to pull papers from an open valise beside him. "I'll be meeting with a distraught mother at nine o'clock, and with an admiral and a general at eleven. Then I fly back to Washington. I've been making notes all night long, trying-to put my thoughts in order. I hope you don't object to my bouncing a few ideas off you."

  "Not at all," Hicks said. "But first, I must make my situation clear. I'm a journalist. I came here for a story. All this—your request that I stay here, instead of being booted out with the others—is . . . well, it's extraordinary. I must honestly say that under the circumstances,
I ..." He ran out of words, looking into Crockerman's rich brown eyes. Lifting his hand, he gestured vaguely at the door of the dining room. "I'm not trusted here, nor should I be. I'm an outsider."

  "You're a man with imagination and insight," Crockerman said. "The others have expertise. Mr. Gordon and Mr. Feinman have imagination and expertise, and Mr. Gordon has been very close to this kind of problem, as administrator of BETC. Perhaps he's been too close, I don't know. I've been wondering whether or not we're dealing with extraterrestrials, as he would have us believe. You have a distance, a fresh perspective I could find very useful."

  "What is my official capacity, my role?" Hicks asked.

  "Obviously, you can't report this story now," Crockerman said. "Stay here, work with us until the story is about to be released. I suspect we'll have to go public soon, though Carl and David strongly disagree. If we do go public, you have your exclusive. You get first crack."

  Hicks frowned. "And our conversations?"

  "For the time being, what we say to each other is not to be discussed elsewhere. In the fullness of history, in our memoirs or whatever . . ." Crockerman nodded to the far walls. "Fine."

  "I'd like some more details," Hicks said, "especially if Mr. Rotterjack and Mr. McClennan or Mr. Lehrman have control over me or my story. But for the time being, I'll agree. I will not report what we say to each other privately."

  Crockerman put the papers on the table in front of him. "Now, here are my thoughts. Either we've been invaded twice in the last year, or somebody is lying to us."

  "The choice seems to be between doom and a hands across-space policy," Hicks said.

  The President nodded agreement. "I've made some logic diagrams." He held up the first sheet of paper. "Venn diagrams. Scant remnants of my college math days." He smiled. "Nothing complicated, just drawings to help me sort the possibilities out. I'd appreciate your criticisms."

  "All right." Hicks glanced at the piece of paper before the President. Brief notations of possible scenarios lay within nested and intersecting and separated circles.

  "If these two spacecraft have similar origins, I see several possibilities. First, the Australians are dealing with a splinter group of extraterrestrials, some kind of dissident faction. But our information is correct, and the primary aim of the overall mission is to destroy the Earth, and the Guest does indeed represent survivors of their last conquest. With me so far?"

  "Yes."

  "Second," the President continued, "we are dealing with two separate events, which by some literally astronomical chance are happening simultaneously. Two groups of aliens, unacquainted or only marginally acquainted with each other. Or third, we are not dealing with aliens at all, but with emissaries."

  Hicks raised an eyebrow. "Emissaries?"

  "I'm not completely comfortable with the vastness of the universe." Crockerman said nothing for ten or fifteen seconds, staring at the table, his face passive but his eyes darting back and forth between the candle and his cup of coffee. "I suppose that you are."

  "I'm human," Hicks said. "I'm limited, too. I accept the vastness without truly understanding it or feeling it."

  "That makes me feel better. I'm not doing too badly, then, am I?" Crockerman asked.

  "No, sir."

  "I wonder if, perhaps, in charting our universe from a scientific perspective, we haven't lost something ... an awareness of . . ." Again he paused, searching for words. "Transgressions. If we think of God as a superior intelligence, not human, but demanding certain obediences . . . Do you follow me?"

  Hicks nodded once.

  "Perhaps we are no longer satisfying this superior intelligence. He, or more accurately, It, sends Its emissaries, Its angels if you will, to brandish the kind of sword we understand. The end of the Earth." Crockerman raised his eyes to meet Hicks's.

  The waitress brought their breakfast and asked if they wanted more coffee. Crockerman refused; Kicks accepted a warm-up. When she had gone, Hicks investigated his omelet with a fork, no longer very hungry. His stomach knotted, acid. He could feel a kind of panic coming on.

  "I've never been comfortable with religious interpretations," he said.

  "Must we classify this as a religious interpretation? Couldn't this just as easily be an alternative to theories of conflicting aliens, or factionaiized invaders?"

  "I'm not sure what your theory is."

  "'The moving finger, having writ.' That."

  "Ah. 'Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,' or whatever."

  "Precisely. We've screwed up. Polluted, overarmed. The twentieth century has been a mess. The bloodiest century in human history. More needless human death than at any other time."

  "I can't argue with that," Hicks said.

  "And now, we move outward. Perhaps we've been suffered only so long as we remained on Earth. Now—"

  "It's an old idea," Hicks interrupted, his unease converting rapidly to irritation.

  "Does that mean it's invalid?"

  "I think there are better ideas," Hicks said.

  "Ah," Crockerman said, his own breakfast still untouched. "But none of them convince me. I am the only judge I can truly rely upon in this situation, am I not?"

  "No, sir. There are experts—"

  "In my political career, I have ignored the advice of experts many times, and I have prevailed. This made me different from other, more standard aspirants to high office. Now, I grant you, such a ploy has its risks."

  "I'm getting lost again, sir. What ploy?"

  "Ignoring experts." The President leaned forward, extending his hands across the table, fists clenched, his eyes moist. Crockerman's expression was a rictus of pain. "I asked the Guest one thing, and received one important answer, from all of our questions ... I asked it, 'Do you believe in God,' and it replied, ‘I believe in punishment.' " He leaned back, looking at his fists and relaxing them, rubbing the palms, where fingernails had dug deep. "That must be significant. Perhaps the Guest is from another world, another place where transgressors have been dealt with severely. That thing out there in the 'Furnace,' Death Valley of all places . . . We have been told it will render the Earth down into slag. Total destruction. We have been told we cannot destroy it. I believe in fact we cannot."

  Hicks was about to say something, but Crockerman continued, his voice low.

  "God, a superior intelligence, sculpts us all, finds us wanting, and sends our material back into the forge to be reshaped. That thing out there. The Furnace. That's the forge of God. That's what we're up against. Might be up against."

  "And the Australian artifact, the robots, the messages?"

  "I don't know," Crockerman said. "It would clearly sound insane to claim the Australians were dealing with an adversary . . . But perhaps."

  "Adversary ... a kind of Satan?"

  "Something opposed to the Creator. A force that hopes we will be allowed to continue our transgressions, to put all creation out of balance."

  "I think there are better explanations, Mr. President," Hicks said quietly.

  "Then please," Crockerman pleaded, "tell me what they are."

  "I am not qualified," Hicks said. "I know almost nothing about what's happened. Only what you've told me."

  "Then how can you be critical of my theory?"

  The way Crockerman spoke, like a child though using grown-up words, chilled Hicks to the bone. A friend had once spoken to Hicks in a similar tone in London in 1959; she had died by her own hand a month later.

  "It is not realistic," he said.

  "Is anything about this situation realistic?" Crockerman asked. Neither had done much more than push the food around on his plate.

  Hicks took a bite. The omelet was cold. He ate it anyway, and Crockerman began to eat his. Neither spoke again until the plates were empty, as if engaged in a contest of silence. The waitress took the plates away and poured more coffee into Hicks's cup.

  "I apologize," the President said, wiping his lips with the napkin and folding it on the table. "I've been rude with you. T
hat's unforgivable."

  Hicks mumbled something about the strain they were all under, and how it was understandable.

  "You give me a kind of perspective, however," Crockerman said. "I can see, just watching your reaction, how others would react. This is a very difficult time, in more ways than one. I've had to interrupt my campaign schedule. The election is less than a month away. Timing is very important. I see I need to trim the rough edges from my phrases ..."

  "Sir, it is not phrasing. It is perspective," Hicks said, his voice rising. "If you pursue these theories of cosmic recrimination, I can hardly imagine the damage you might cause."

  "Yes. I see that."

  Do you? Hicks asked himself. And then, examining Crockerman's suspicious, half-lidded expression, Yes, perhaps you do . . . but that won't stop you.

  17

  October 9

  Arthur unfolded a newspaper as the Learjet taxied across the runway. On a far apron, B-l bombers lined up, their sleek tan, gray, and green shapes obscured by a layer of early morning sea haze. It took a few seconds for him to focus on the headlines. His thoughts were still on Harry Feinman, and on the autopsy.

  The Guest had no discrete internal organ structure. Stuffed within the thoracic cage was shell-pink tissue continuous except for occasional cavities, more like a brain than anything else. The head consisted of the Lexan-like articulated bone material, arranged in large solid masses, with no discernible central nervous system. Small nodes the size of BBs interrupted the continuity of the bone; they appeared to be made of some sort of metal, perhaps silver.

  Harry would soon be undergoing his own probing and examination in Los Angeles.

  The plane completed its taxi and began to accelerate down the runway, small jets screaming thinly beyond the insulated walls.

  Arthur, focused on the newspaper. The front page headline read,

  PRESIDENT ON SECRET

  DEATH VALLEY VISIT

  Details Unclear: May Be Related to Australian Aliens

  The same unscrambled transmission that had brought Trevor Hicks to Furnace Creek had led other reporters, just hours later, to reach similar conclusions. Hicks had struck a mother lode. The others had had to make do with testimony from inhabitants of Shoshone and one phone call to Furnace Creek Inn that had gotten through to the apartment of a maid who spoke only Spanish. Bernice Morgan had not been interviewed. Perhaps Crockerman persuaded her, Arthur thought, tracking the story several times to see if he had missed any telling details.