The Forge of God

  "Hard on your mother, I guess."

  "Who, me or my sister?" Stella smiled.

  "I meant your sister. I suppose both of you."

  "What about your family?"

  "None to speak of. My father vanished more than twenty years ago, and my mother lives in Austin. We don't see much of each other."

  "And your connections at the university?"

  "I'm not sure I'll stay there, now."

  "No long-term plans?"

  Edward brushed at a buzzing horsefly and watched it veer across the hummocks until it vanished. "I don't see why."

  "Mother and I have been making plans for selling mineral rights. We'll redo the town's sewage line with a government loan, but this extra money—that could keep the town going for years, even if the tourists keep flocking over to Tecopa."

  "The big resort."

  She nodded. "What a disaster for us all. Tecopa used to be a bunch of shacks built over hot springs. Rowdy. Now it's plush. The desert is like that."

  "It's beautiful here. Something big could happen to Shoshone."

  "Yes, but would we want it to?" She shook her head dubiously. "I'd like to keep it the way it was when I was a girl, but I know that's not practical. The way it was when Father was alive. It seemed so permanent then. I could always come back." She shook her head slowly, looking out across the grass to a lava-covered hill beyond. "What I'm getting around to saying is, we could use a geologist here. In Shoshone. To help us work out the mineral rights and figure out what we have, exactly."

  "That would be nice," Edward agreed.

  "You'll think it over?"

  "Your tourist business should be real good for the next few months," he said.

  Stella made a face. "We're just getting the freaks now. Religious nuts. All going out to the cinder cone. Who needs them? Everybody else is going to stay at home and wait it out. Do you think it's all going to go away?"

  "I don't know." But he did know, in his gut. "That's not true, actually. I think it's all over."

  "The things inside the Earth?"

  "Maybe. Maybe something we don't even know about."

  "It makes me so goddamned mad," Stella said, her voice breaking. "Helpless."

  "Yeah."

  "But I'm going to keep on planning. Maybe the whole deal will fail through. The commodities markets are going crazy. Maybe nobody will want to buy mineral rights now. But we have to keep working."

  "I don't think I can stay," he said. "It sounds wonderful, but . . ."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Restless?"

  "I don't think I can really have a home now. Not even here, nice as this is."

  "Where will you go?"

  "I'll travel. Probably break away from Reslaw and Minelli. Go out on my own."

  "Sometimes I wish I could do that," she said wistfully. "But my roots are too deep here. I'm not enough like my sister. And I have to stay with Mother."

  "There was a place," Edward said, "where my father took my mother and me before he ran away. My last summer with him, and the best summer I've ever had. I haven't been back since. I didn't want to be disappointed. I wondered if it would have changed . . . For the worse."

  "Where was that?"

  "Yosemite," he said.

  "It's beautiful there."

  "You've been there recently?"

  "Last summer, driving through on the way to the wine country. It was really lovely, even with all the people. Without crowds, it would be wonderful."

  "Maybe I'll go there. Live on my back salary. I've dreamed about it, you know. Those peculiar dreams where I go back and it's completely different, but still something special. I think to myself, after all those years of just dreaming about being there, I'm finally back. And then I wake up . . . and it's a dream."

  Stella reached out to touch his arm. "If ... it works out, you can come back here after."

  "Thank you," Edward said. "That would be nice. My teaching position will certainly be closed by that time. I can't expect them to wait forever."

  "Let's strike a deal," Stella said. "Next summer, you come back here and help Mother and me. After you go to Yosemite, and after the world gets its act together."

  "All right," Edward said, smiling. He reached out and touched her arm, and then leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. "It's a deal."

  PERSPECTIVE

  Compunews Network,

  November 29, 1996,

  Frederick Hart reporting:

  Here in the winter desert, only a few miles from Death Valley proper, it gets bitterly cold at night, and thousands of campfires light up the grass and sand around the government-declared National Security Site. In the middle of the site, rising against the clouds of stars like a great black hump, is the so-called Bogey, the imitation extinct volcano that has burrowed into the national imagination as the Kemp objects have burrowed into the Earth ' s core, and into our nightmares. People have come here from around the world, kept back a mile from the site by barbed wire and razor-wire barricades. They seem to have come to worship, or to just sit quietly under the warm desert sun and stare. What does it mean to them, to us? Should they wish to storm the site, will the Army be able to keep them back?

  Among their numbers are approximately ten thousand Forge of Godders, with their various prophets and religious guides. The American branch of this cult has arisen in just three weeks, sown in the fertile religious ground of the American South and West by the President's blunt, uncompromising words. I have spoken with these people, and they share the President's convictions. Most are fundamentalist Christians, seeing this as the Apocalypse predicted in the Bible. But many come from other faiths, other religions, around the world. They say they will stay here until the end. As one cultist told me, "This is the center. This is where it's at. Forget Australia. The End of the World begins right here, in Death Valley."

  38

  December 1

  Lieutenant Colonel Rogers, in mufti of hunter's cap and bush jacket and denims, hands in jacket pockets, stood at the edge of the Furnace Creek airstrip. A sleek eight-passenger private LearFan Special coasted to a stop twenty yards beyond, its two in-line props swishing the air with a diminishing chop-chop-chop. The plane's landing lights were extinguished and its side door opened. Two passengers—a man and a woman—stepped down almost immediately, peering around in the darkness, then approached Rogers.

  "The President refuses to see any of us," said the man. Dressed in a recently donned and still disarrayed overcoat, black suit, and a silk shirt, he was very portly, late middle-aged, and completely bald. The woman was slender, in her forties, with large attractive eyes, a narrow jaw, and full lips. She, too, wore an overcoat and beneath that a dark pants suit.

  "What does your group plan now?" the woman asked.

  Rogers rubbed his jaw reflectively. "My group . . . hasn't fixed its plans yet," he said. "We're not used to this kind of activity."

  "Congress and the committees are really on Crocker-man's tail. They may bring him down," the man said. "We still haven't gotten McClennan and Rotterjack to join us. Loyalists to the last." The bulky bald man curled his hp. Loyalty beyond pragmatism was not something he understood. "Even so, it may be too late. Have you talked to the task force?"

  "We're going to keep them out of this, as much as possible," Rogers said. "I talked to Gordon, and he even broached this sort of plan to me, but we don't know which of them might have supported his decision covertly."

  "Do you have the sleeping bag?" the woman asked.

  "No, ma'am."

  "Do you know where you'll get it, if the time comes? Oak Ridge is in my district ..."

  "We will not get it from civilian sources," Rogers said.

  "What about the codes, the complications, the authorization you'll need ... the chain of command?" the woman persisted.

  "That's on our end. We'll take care of it. If the time comes."

  'They have the smoking gun, goddammit," the man said. "We've already been shot."

  "Yes, sir. I read
the papers."

  "The admiral should know," the man said, with the air of drawing their conversation to a conclusion, "that our group can do no more in a reasonable period of time. If we do bring the President to ground, it will take months. We can't stop or delay the swearing in. The recommendation from the House Judiciary Committee will take weeks. The trial could drag on for half a year beyond that. He's going to hold out for at least that long. That puts the ball in your court."

  Rogers nodded.

  "Do you know when you'll act?" the woman asked.

  "We don't even know if we can, or whether we will if we can. It's all up in the air."

  "Decisions have to be made soon," she reiterated. "Everybody's too upset . . . this is too extraordinary a conclave for it to stay secret long."

  Rogers agreed. The two returned to their LearFan Special and the plane's counterrotating props began to spin again, with eerie softness. Rogers returned to his truck and drove away from the airport as the plane whined into the blackness and silence of the overcast night.

  Around the bogus cinder cone, for a distance of several hundred yards, soldiers patrolled well-lighted squares of the desert in Jeeps and on foot. Beyond the patrols and the fences, a mile from the object of their interest, the civilians gathered in trucks and vans and motor homes. Even this late, almost into the morning, campfires burned in the middle of wide circles of mesmerized watchers. Raucous laughter in one area was countered by gospel singing in another. Rogers, maneuvering his truck down the fenced approach corridor to the site, wondered if they would ever sleep.

  39

  December 15

  Two o'clock in the morning, the phone beside their bed rang, and Arthur came awake immediately, leaning forward to pick up the receiver. It was Ithaca Feinman. She was calling from a hospital in Los Angeles.

  "He's going fast," she said softly.

  "So soon?"

  "I know. He says he's fighting, but . . ."

  "I'll leave ..." He looked at his watch. "This morning. I can be down there by eight or nine, maybe earlier."

  "He says he's sorry, but he wants you here," Ithaca said.

  "I'm on my way."

  He hung up and wandered into the living room to look for Francine, who said she had not been asleep, but had been sitting on the living room couch with Gauge's head in her lap, worrying about something, she wasn't sure what.

  "Harry's going, or at least Ithaca thinks so."

  "Oh, God," Francine said. "You're flying down there?"

  "Yes."

  She swallowed hard. "Go see him. Say . . . Say goodbye for me if he's really . . . Oh, Arthur." Her voice was a trembling whisper. "This is an awful time, isn't it?"

  He was nearly in tears. "We'll make it through," he said.

  As Francine folded some shirts and pants for him, he slipped his toiletries into a suitcase and called the airport to book a flight for six-thirty. For a few seconds, dithering in the yellow light of the bedside lamp, he tried to gather his wits, remember if he had left anything behind, if there was anybody else he should notify.

  Francine drove him to the airport. "Come back soon," she said, then, realizing the double implication, she shook her head. "Our love to Ithaca and Harry. I'll miss you."

  They hugged, and she drove off to get Marty ready for school.

  At this hour, the airport was almost deserted. Arthur sat in the sterile black and gray waiting area near his gate, reading a discarded newspaper. He glanced at his watch, and then looked up to see a thin, nervous-looking woman, hardly more than a girl, standing a few feet away, staring at him. "I hope you don't mind," she said.

  "Beg pardon?"

  "I followed you from your house. You're Arthur Gordon, aren't you?"

  Arthur narrowed his eyes, puzzled. He didn't answer.

  "I know you are. I've been watching your house. I know that sounds terrible, but I have. There's something I have to give you. It's very important." She opened the shopping bag and took out a cardboard box large enough to hold a baseball. "Please don't be alarmed. It's not a bomb or anything. I showed it to the airport security people. They think it's a toy, a Japanese toy for my cousin. But it's for you." She held out the box.

  Arthur looked her over carefully, then said,

  "Open it for me, please." He seemed to be operating on some automatic program, cautious and calm at once. He hadn't given much thought to assassination attempts before, but he could be a likely target for Forge of Godders or anybody tipped over the edge by the news of the last few weeks.

  "'All right." She opened the box and removed an ovoid object, steel or silver, brightly polished. She held it out to him. "Please. It's important."

  With some reluctance—it did resemble a toy more than anything sinister—he took the object. Quickly, it unfolded its legs, gripped his palm, and before he could react, nipped him on the fleshy part of the thumb. He stood up and tried to fling it away, swearing, but it would not let go. Warmth spread quickly up his arm and he sat down again, face pale, lips drawn back. The young woman retreated, shaking her head and crying. "It's important," she said. "It really is."

  "All right," Arthur said, more calm on the exterior than deep in his mind. The spider crawled into his suit coat, cut through the fabric of his shirt, and nipped him again on the abdomen.

  The woman walked off quickly. He paid her little attention.

  By boarding time, he was beginning to receive information, slowly at first. On the aircraft, as he pretended to nap, the information became more detailed, and his fear subsided.

  40

  Hicks had stayed in Washington, hoping with a kind of desperate hope that there was still something he could do. The White House did not summon him. Beyond the occasional television interviews, fewer and fewer since the fiasco on Freefire, he was woefully unoccupied. His book had sold in a fresh spurt the past few weeks, but he had refused to discuss it with anybody. His publishers had given up on him.

  He took long, cold walks in the snow, ranging a mile or more from the hotel in the gray midafternoons. The government was still paying his expenses; he was still ostensibly part of the task force, although nobody on the task force had talked with him since the President's speech. Even after the extensive reports of explosions in the asteroids, he had been approached only by the press.

  When he was not out walking, he sat in his room, dressed in an oatmeal-colored suit, his overcoat and rubbers laid out on the bed and the floor, staring at his image in the mirror above the desk. His eye tracked down slowly to the computer on the desktop, then to the blank television screen. He had never felt so useless, so between, in his fife.

  The phone rang. He stood and picked up the receiver. "Hello."

  "Is this Mr. Trevor Hicks?" a young male voice asked.

  "Yes."

  "My name is Reuben Bordes. You don't know me, but I've got a reason to see you."

  "Why? Who are you, Mr. Bordes?"

  "I'm just a kid, actually, but my reason is good. I mean, I'm not dumb or crazy. I'm in the bus station right now." The youth chuckled. "I went to a lot of trouble to find you. I went to the library and learned your publisher, and I called them, but they couldn't give your address . . . you know."

  "Yes."

  "So I called them back a couple of days later, I couldn't think of anything else to do, and said I was with the local television station, and we wanted to interview you. They wouldn't give me your address even then. So I figured you might be staying in hotels, and I started calling hotels. I've been doing that all day. I think I got lucky."

  "Why do you need to talk to me?"

  "I'm not a nut, Mr. Hicks. But I've had some odd things happen to me in the last week. I've got some information. I know somebody . . . well, who wants to get in touch with you."

  The lines in Hicks's face deepened. "I don't think it's worth the bother, do you?" He started to put the phone down.

  "Mr. Hicks, wait. Please listen and don't hang up just yet. This is important. I'd have to come out to t
he hotel and find you if you hung up."

  Oh, Christ, Hicks thought.

  "I'm being told something now, something important." The youth didn't speak for a few seconds. "All right. I got it now. The asteroids. There's a battle, there was a battle going on out there. There's this place called Europa, it's a moon but not our own, isn't it? That wasn't a battle. We have friends coming. They needed the . . . what was it, water under the ice in Europa? For power. And the rock way under the water and ice. To make more ... things. Not like the machines in Australia and Death Valley. Do you understand?"

  "No," Hicks said. A spark went off in his head. Something intuited. The boy's accent was urban, middle-western bland. His voice was resonant and he sounded convinced and rational, words crisp. "You could be a complete nut, whoever you are," Hicks said.

  "You said you'd take them home to meet your mom. Your mother. They heard you out around Europa. When they were building. Now they're here. I found one dissecting a mouse, Mr. Hicks. Learning all about it. I think they want to help, but I'm very confused. They haven't hurt me."

  Hicks remembered: he had made that statement in California, on a local radio show. It would have been very difficult for a midwestern teenager to have heard it.

  There was something earnest and truly awed and frightened in the young man's voice. Hicks glanced at the ceiling, licking his lips, realizing he had already made his decision.

  He had always been something of a romantic. To stay in journalism so long, one had to secretly believe in events full of drama and significance, key moments, points of turnaround in history. He was beginning to shake with excitement. Instincts conflicting—reporter's instincts, survival instincts.

  "Can you come out to the hotel?" he asked.

  "Yeah, I can take a cab."

  "I'll meet you in the lobby. I'd rather be careful, you know. I'll be in the middle of lots of people." He hoped the lobby was crowded. "How will I know you?"