Baedecker sat up and looked at the television. '. . . we had an eminent scientist on our last program,' the host was saying, 'a Christian and a crusader for equal time for creationism in the schools . . . where children are, I'm sure you're aware, Tom, now being taught only a single, seriously flawed, godless theory that man came from monkeys and other lower life forms . . . and this eminent and respected scientist made the point that with the number of shooting stars that hit the earth each year . . . and you must have seen a lot of them when you were in space, hey, Tom?'
'Micrometeorites were a concern to the engineers,' said Gavin.
'Well, with all those millions of little . . . like little rocks, aren't they? With millions of those striking the earth's atmosphere every year, if the earth was as old as their theory says, what? Three billion years?' Four and a half, thought Baedecker. Idiot.
'Somewhere over four billion,' said Gavin.
'Yes,' smiled the host, 'this eminent Christian scientist made the point, in fact, he showed us mathematically, that if the earth was really that old, it'd be buried several miles deep in meteorite dust!' The audience applauded wildly. The host's wife clasped her hands, praised Jesus over the noise, and rocked back and forth. Gavin smiled and had the good grace to look embarrassed. Baedecker thought of the 'orange rock' that he and Dave had brought back from Marius Hills. Argon-39 and argon-40 dating had shown the chunk of troctolite breccia to be 3.95 billion years old.
'The problem with the theory of evolution,' Gavin was saying, 'is that it goes contrary to the scientific method. There is no way, given the brief human life span, to observe the so-called evolutionary mechanisms they postulate. The geological data is just too doubtful. Gaps and contradictions show up in those theories all the time, whereas all of the biblical accounts have been confirmed time and time again.'
'Yes, yes,' said the host, nodding his head emphatically.
'Praise be to Jesus,' said his wife.
'We can't trust science to answer our questions,' said Gavin. 'The human intellect is just too fallible.'
'How true, how true,' said the host.
'Praise Jesus,' said his wife, 'God's truth be made known.'
'Amen,' said Baedecker and turned off the television.
It was just after dinner, during the last minutes of twilight, when the others entered the clearing. The first two were boys — young men of college age, Baedecker realized — carrying obviously heavy backpacks with aluminum tripods lashed atop them. They ignored Baedecker and the others and hurried to dump their packs and set up the tripods. From the packs they removed foam padding and two sixteen-millimeter movie cameras. 'God, I hope there's enough light left,' said the overweight one in shorts.
'There should be,' said the other one, a tall redhead with a wisp of beard. 'This Tri-X is fast enough if he gets here pretty quick.' They concentrated on attaching their cameras to tripods and focusing on the section of trail from which they had just emerged. High overhead a hawk circled on the last of the day's thermals and let out a lazy screech. A final ray of sunlight caught its wings for a few seconds and then the evening twilight was absolute.
'Wonder what's going on,' said Gavin. He scraped out the last of his beef stew and licked the spoon clean. 'I chose this old Cimarron Creek approach to the mountain because hardly anyone ever uses it anymore.'
'They'd better get their shot pretty soon,' said Maggie. 'It's getting dark.'
'Anyone want S'mores?' asked Deedee.
There was pale movement in the gloom under the fir trees and a man appeared, bent under a long load, moving slowly but surely up the last few yards of trail into the clearing. This man also appeared to be of college age but seemed older than the two bent behind their cameras: he was dressed in a sweat-soaked blue cotton shirt, torn khaki shorts, and solid hiking boots. On his back he carried an oversized blue climbing pack with nylon webbing attached to a long, cylindrical burden wrapped in red-and-yellow sailcloth. The poles must have been fourteen feet long, extending six feet beyond the small man's bent shoulder and dragging in the dust an equal distance behind him. The man's brown hair was long and parted in the middle, hanging down in damp folds to curl in along his sharp cheekbones. As he came closer, Baedecker noticed the deep-set eyes, the sharp nose, and the short beard. The man's posture and obvious exhaustion added to Baedecker's feeling that he was watching an actor reenacting Christ's final journey up the hill to Golgotha.
'Great, Lude, we're gettin' it!' shouted the redheaded boy. 'Come on, Maria, before the light's gone! Hurry!' A young woman emerged from the darkening trail. She had short, dark hair, a long, thin face, and was wearing shorts and a halter top that seemed several sizes too large for her. She was carrying a large pack. She moved forward quickly as the bearded hiker dropped to one knee in the meadow, loosened shoulder straps, and lowered the cloth-covered poles to the ground. Baedecker heard the sound of metal striking metal. For a second the man appeared too exhausted to rise or sit; he remained on one knee, head bowed so that his hair covered his face, one arm resting on his other knee. Then the girl named Maria came forward and touched the back of his head gently.
'Great, we got it,' shouted the heavyset boy. 'Come on, we gotta get all this shit set up.' The two boys and the girl went about setting up camp while the bearded man remained kneeling.
'How odd,' said Maggie.
'Some sort of documentary,' said Gavin. 'I wonder what it's about,'said Maggie.
'Marshmallows,' said Deedee. 'Let's whittle some marshmallow-roasting sticks before it gets too dark to find them.' Tom Jr. rolled his eyes and turned his face to the dark woods.
'I'll help,' said Baedecker and rose, stretching the cramp out of his muscles. Above the ridgeline to the east, a few faint stars were visible. It was getting cold quickly now. On the far side of the meadow, the two men and the young woman had erected two small tents and were busy gathering firewood in the dark. Farther out, barely visible in the gloom, the one called Lude sat cross-legged and silent in the tall grass.
Baedecker had arrived in Denver at five-thirty in the afternoon on a Wednesday. He knew that Tom Gavin had his office in Denver but lived in Boulder, twenty miles closer to the foothills. Baedecker found a gas station and called Tom's home number. Deedee answered, was excited to heart that he had arrived, would not hear of Baedecker staying at a hotel, and suggested that he catch Tom before he left work. She gave him the phone number and address.
Gavin's evangelical organization was called Apogee and was headquartered on the second floor of a three-story bank building on East Colfax Avenue several miles from downtown Denver. Baedecker parked his car in the lot and followed posters and signs saying ONE WAY with upwardly pointing fingers and JESUS IS THE ANSWER and WHERE WILL YOU BE WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES?
The office was large and staffed with several young people who were dressed and groomed conservatively even to Baedecker's out-of-date eye. 'Can I help you, sir?' asked a young man in a white shirt and dark tie. It was very hot in the room — either they had no air-conditioning or it was not working — but the young man's collar was buttoned, the tie firmly knotted.