His grin grew broader as he reached for the knob. “No, ma’am. And all flirtations aside, I do hope you’ll accept our offer. We’ve busted our asses getting this place ready. It would be a shame if the only teacher on our list stayed behind.”
When Forrest arrived back at the silo, Dr. Sean West and his wife Taylor were standing on the porch talking with Dr. Price Wilmington, DDS, and his wife Lynette. Both doctors and their wives were old friends, and they had been in on Forrest’s plan from its inception; the doctors were former military men as well.
“Good to see you, Jack,” Dr. West said, shaking hands. He was a thick, barrel-chested man with dark eyes and hair, and stood beside his slender wife Taylor, who had short blond hair and a kind face.
Forrest shook his hand and turned to Dr. Wilmington. “Price, how was the trip?”
Dr. Wilmington was African American, a little shorter in stature than the other men, and had short-cropped hair. His wife Lynette was white and taller than her husband, with long blond hair and bright blue eyes. She was a gossip with an innate sense of bad timing.
“When’s Monica getting here?” she asked before her husband could even respond to Forrest’s question.
“She’s not,” Forrest said, not quite blowing her off, though almost. “How was the drive, Price?”
“Long!” Price said with a smile. “And you know, Jack, I’m not sure we’d have made it all the way across if we had waited another couple days. They’re imposing travel restrictions now.”
“See how the bastards talk from both sides of their mouth?” Ulrich said, stepping onto the porch. “If NASA’s going to stop the rock, why the travel restrictions?”
“I think NASA’s story is losing credibility pretty quickly now,” West said. “Those astronomers from Hawaii were on CNN again last night. They said unequivocally that NASA’s crazy if they think they can stop this thing. Even the B612 Foundation is finally speaking out against the attempt.”
The B612 Foundation had been founded by a group of former astronauts years earlier, dedicated to protecting the planet from near Earth objects. To this point they had been strangely silent on the subject of the shoot-down plan, and it was suspected the government had threatened them.
“The European Space Agency has announced they’re going to fire their kinetic impactor at it,” Price volunteered with a dry smile, sipping from a glass of wine.
“Which will be about as effective as throwing an iPod at a speeding truck,” Ulrich remarked.
Forrest excused himself and slipped inside to get out of his uniform and find a beer. Taylor West followed him, asking, “Jack, why isn’t Monica coming?”
He turned and frowned. “She’s committing suicide without committing suicide.”
Taylor’s eyes filled with tears. “There’s no way… ?”
Forrest shook his head and went below, pretending not to notice Veronica watching him from the kitchen doorway.
Back outside, Lynette said to Ulrich, “Wayne, why isn’t Monica here?”
“She doesn’t want to live underground,” Ulrich said. “And it’s probably best not to bring her up around Jack.”
“Well, he should have kidnapped her if that’s what it took,” Lynette insisted. “My God!”
“I hardly think that would have been appropriate,” Price told her, knowing that Ulrich was not Lynette’s greatest fan.
“Price, you’d never leave me to die. It’s Jack’s responsibility to save that woman from herself!”
Ulrich had never cared for Lynette, having always secretly suspected she had married Price for his money. And there was no time like the present to set her straight on Monica. “Lynette…” he said, noticeably stern.
All eyes went to Ulrich.
“Whatever you’ve got to say on the subject, get it said before Jack comes back upstairs. After that, I don’t want to hear another word about Monica for the next two years.”
Lynette grew red in the face. She had always been a little afraid of Ulrich, because unlike most men, he wasn’t dazzled by her fake tits and long legs. “Wayne, I was only saying—”
“I don’t care what you were you saying,” he said, cutting her off. “You’ve got no idea what the hell you’re even talking about.”
“Jesus Christ, Wayne. Relax!”
Ulrich took a step forward, his gaze cutting into her. “Did you understand what I just said?”
The tension in the air was suddenly thick enough to cut with a knife, and Ulrich could see Lynette looking to her husband for support, but Ulrich didn’t care. He wasn’t about to have their hegemony challenged by this cunt while there was still time to find another pair of doctors.
To his surprise, neither doctor said a word. Apparently, Lynette was on her own.
“Yes,” she said, trying to appear dignified. “I understood you very well.”
He turned to go inside, muttering, “Excuse me,” as he slipped between the pair of doctors.
“Price, you didn’t even try to defend me!” Lynette hissed.
“Honey, I’ve told you before that Wayne’s no one to trifle with,” Price said. “He and Jack are polar opposites. And I warned you about the arrangements here.”
Inside the house, Ulrich saw that Veronica had heard the exchange through the screen door. She was grinning as she followed him into the basement.
“I take it you were nipping that flower in the bud?” she asked.
“Price should have divorced her ass years ago,” Ulrich said. “She’s a fourteen carat bitch. All I can figure is that she’s a dynamo in the rack.”
Veronica smiled. “There’s one in every group, Wayne. If we got rid of her, another would just pop up in her place. Sometimes it’s best to keep the devil you know.”
Fifteen
Ester Thorn stood leaning against her cane, her tired eyes fixed on the television screen at the Hotel Sheraton in Hawaii where she and a number of other astronomers were staying. Harold Shipman stood beside her, teething the stem of a pipe. Their colleagues were seated around them in the conference hall, everyone nervously awaiting the results of the imminent atomic blast meant to push the asteroid off course.
In the preceding weeks, a few halfhearted attempts had been made by the federal government to muzzle Ester and her colleagues, but the Hawaiian governor intervened on their behalf.
“Damn fools,” Ester muttered. “Why don’t they just let it alone? They’re going to push it into the Pacific, Harold. You wait and see. Then there’s going to be some real devastation.”
“Not the least of which will be to the Hawaiian Islands,” Shipman said. “The mega-tsunami will wash every one of us out sea. My God, the wave will be thousands of feet high. Can you imagine it?”
“I half expect them to lie and tell us it worked.”
“No, there are too many watching now. The time for lies has passed.”
Wolf Blitzer was adroitly explaining the many facets of rocket guidance and atomic yield, seemingly detached from the reality that he, along with everyone else at CNN, would likely be dead in the near future.
“The very fate of our world hangs in the balance,” he commented gravely, determined to remain theatrical to the last.
“Which species do you suppose will take over?” Shipman wondered.
“Oh, it’ll likely be the rodents again,” Ester said with a sigh. “I wonder if we’ll do a better job next time around.”
“Wouldn’t it be something if we humans evolved all over again?” he said with a cynical laugh.
“I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” she said. “In some form or another. Nature will be starting over from nearly the same slate as sixty-five million years ago. Primates are bound to reevolve at some point down the line.”