Just in case the president hadn’t seen it yet, the scientist lowered the boom.
“As you can see, Mr. President, these dramatic reductions in field strength coincide exactly with two events: the NRI recovery of the stone from the Amazon and the event that took place here forty-eight hours ago. And just as incredibly, the survey data tells us that magnetic north has traveled south by over a hundred and forty miles in the past five months, ninety miles of that since November twenty-first.”
With Moore struck silent, Stecker took the spotlight.
“In one sense,” he said smoothly, “we think the NRI is actually right. The stones are drawing energy through some conduit beyond our understanding, beyond our ability to see, but I assure you, Mr. President, it ain’t coming from the future. It’s coming from right here, right now, in our current time frame. These stones are draining our magnetic field. It’s virtually collapsing before our eyes. Every time Moore’s people recover one of these stones and bring it out into the open, the situation grows a hell of a lot worse.”
“Damn,” the president said, clearly disturbed.
Stecker wasn’t done. “What really scares me is this, Mr. President. These stones are drawing all that energy to themselves, storing it perhaps, and when they release it … I don’t know about the end of the world, but it could be the end of the modern, electronic world as we know it.”
Moore felt like a lawyer who’d just been blindsided, wanting to know why this information hadn’t been disclosed. But this was no courtroom and no one cared if he was surprised. In some ways it made things worse. For the CIA to come up with something he and his team had not found made him look incompetent.
“Fine,” the president said. “Now, in practical terms what does a failing magnetic field do to us? It’s obviously happened before. Do we see any die-offs, any great extinctions like the dinosaurs?” He paused. “Arnold?”
Moore looked up, still reeling. “No, Mr. President,” he mumbled. “But our world is different than theirs. Our world depends on electrical power for absolutely everything that matters. And with no magnetic field, we are exposed to the solar wind.”
“Meaning?”
“An unending torrent of charged particles that will, over time, affect human tissue. But at a far quicker pace it will destroy the electrical grids, computers, processors, and any other device with modern circuitry. While it will not melt the earth, as some in Hollywood have suggested, a large solar flare or an event known as a coronal mass ejection could set us back to the stone ages. Or at least the late eighteen hundreds.”
The president went silent. He seemed to be mulling this over. And then he offered the drowning man an unexpected branch.
“I’m guessing you think these stones were sent back here to prevent that?”
Moore perked up. “Yes, Mr. President. Seeing this data, I would come to that conclusion.”
Stecker scowled. “Oh, Arnold, you are naïve. After all this, you think these things are a blessing?”
He pulled out a printed sheet of paper. “From your own man’s translation: ‘The children won’t learn so they must be punished. War of man and man, food no more shall grow, blood shall endless flow, disease shall take the most. The day of the Black Sun has brought the doom of man. Five Katuns, a hundred years, of endless killing, Fifty Katuns, a thousand years of disease and dying. To stop it there must be sacrifice for all.’”
Stecker dropped the paper. “Millions killed in war, billions from disease and starvation. These things are weapons, Arnold, bombs sent to destroy us quick and clean before we do it in a way that will ruin the world for them.”
Moore fumed. “It’s patently illogical to think you can go to the past, destroy a huge section of society, and not have it affect you down the line. Your argument makes no sense, Stecker, and if you were actually smart enough to understand what you are saying, you’d see that.”
Stecker bristled but he didn’t back down. “If these things are supposed to help us, then why’d they hide them?” Stecker asked. “You ever hide a first-aid kit? A fire extinguisher? Of course not, but you hide mines and booby traps and bombs. Hell, if this thing were meant to help us they would’ve dropped it in our laps, not buried it in some ancient temple three thousand years ago.”
With that statement all hell broke loose. In a minute Moore was shouting at Stecker, the two scientists were arguing, and the president was repeatedly demanding calm, like a judge in a courtroom gone wild.
“This is goddamned ridiculous!” Moore shouted. “The most incredible journey in the history of mankind, quite possibly the single greatest achievement of all time, and you think they did it to destroy their ancestors?”
“Stop deceiving yourself,” Stecker retorted. “Man’s greatest achievements are the efforts put forth in war. Countries, continents, and religions mobilize everything they have, every ounce of physical, mental, and spiritual energy in the struggle for survival.”
Moore felt himself on the defensive, wanting to shout back but having nothing intelligent to say. In the absence of any defense, Stecker pressed the case.
“And yet you have these people of yours from the future, sending something back to our time, something that seems to be affecting us negatively, and you believe they come in peace? If they wanted to help us why not just send the stones to our time? I’ll tell you why: because these things needed time to load themselves up. They sent them to a time before ours so that they can gather energy unto themselves, store it in this four-dimensional loop you keep talking about, and then unleash it on us all at once. To teach us the error of our ways.”
Moore burned with the temper of his youth, but restrained himself from physically striking out at Stecker.
He turned to the screen. “Mr. President, we’re not talking Arnold Schwarzenegger, H. G. Wells, or Star Trek here. We’re talking about an act of supreme effort, one that taxed and debilitated and mutated the men and women who undertook it. One that eventually left them here to die on what is essentially a foreign shore.”
“Suicide mission,” Stecker interjected blithely. “You ever hear of the kamikazes?”
“This isn’t a damn joke,” Moore said.
“No, and it’s not a puzzle, either,” Stecker said. “That thing is a danger. It’s a ticking bomb that we don’t know how to defuse. And your messing around with it is going to get us all killed.”
A quick study of the president’s gaze told Moore that he was losing the argument. And yet he couldn’t throttle back. He found himself railing further at the director of the CIA despite the president’s urging, despite his own realization that he must have looked like a lunatic by now.
He turned to his own scientist and then the screen with the president’s image and then across the room to where Nathanial Ahiga sat quietly, watching the whole thing like a spectator, drinking a grape soda through a straw.
“You!” Moore shouted. “Say something, damn you. The president sent you here to share your opinion, to decide who’s right. Well, it’d be nice if you opened up your goddamned mouth once in a while.”
As Moore lashed out at anyone in reach, he realized that he was now attacking the referee. He didn’t care anymore; he was beyond exhaustion, and in his current state it was all he could do to recognize his self-implosion. He was powerless to stop it.
Ahiga looked at him curiously and the whole room went quiet. Even the White House feed only buzzed with static. Perhaps realizing that the spotlight was on him, the old Gallup, New Mexico, resident took another sip from his grape soda.
“You want me to speak,” he asked, rhetorically. His voice was soft and gravelly, like smooth-sided stones rumbling together. “Of course. I can do that, as long as all the yelling and shouting is done.”