After fifteen minutes, he got to his feet and instinctively brushed off his pants. “All right. I’m going back.”
To his enormous relief, nothing interfered with his return journey.
19
Edward Shaw learned of the Guest’s death two days later, when they all received a visit from Colonel Phan. After a ten-minute warning, in which time Edward quickly dressed, the curtains were drawn and all four of them faced the small, muscular brown man in his pin-neat blue uniform, standing in the central laboratory.
“How long have we got, Doc?” Minelli asked. He had been getting more and more flippant, less predictable, as the days passed. He talked often of the President and how they would soon be “outta this dump.” His speech more and more resembled a comic imitation of James Cagney. Minelli had never reacted well to overbearing authority. Edward had heard of a time, years before Minelli came to Austin, when he had been jailed on a minor dope charge, and had bloodied his face against a jailhouse door. Edward worried about him.
“You are all healthy, with no signs of contamination or illness,” Phan said. “I plan no more tests for you. You have heard from your duty officer, I believe, that the Guest is dead. I have finished the first level of autopsy, and found no microbiologicals anywhere within its system. It appears to have been a completely sterile creature. This is good news for you.”
“No bugs, m’lady,” Minelli said. Edward winced.
“I have recommended that you be released,” Phan said, staring levelly at each in turn. “Though I do not know when they will do so. As the President said, there are security concerns.”
Edward saw Stella Morgan through her window and smiled at her. She did not return the smile; perhaps the light was wrong and she did not see him; perhaps she was feeling as depressed as Reslaw, who seldom said anything now.
The combination of free interaction through the intercom and separate confinement seemed to undermine the camaraderie Edward thought was typical of prison camp inmates. They were not being abused. They had nothing really solid to fight against. Their confinement, until now at least, had not been senseless. Consequently, they were not “drawing together” as Edward thought they might. Then again, he had never before been held in long-term detention. Maybe his expectations were simply naive.
“We are preparing papers that you will sign, promising not to speak of these last few days—”
“I won’t sign anything like that,” Minelli said. “There aren’t any best-sellers if I sign that. No agents, no Hollywood.”
“Please,” Phan said patiently.
“What about Australia?” Edward asked. “Are you talking with them?”
“Conferences begin today in Washington,” Phan said.
“Why the wait? Why didn’t everybody start talking weeks ago?”
Phan did not answer. “Personally, I hope all is made public soon,” he said.
Edward tried to control a building anger. “Why can’t we get together? Take us out of here and put us in a BOQ or something.”
“Barbecue?” Minelli snorted.
“Bachelor officer’s quarters,” Edward explained, his lower lip trembling. He was beginning to cry. He checked that response immediately, putting on an air of indignant rationality. “Really. This is hell. We feel like we’re in jail.”
“Worse. We can’t make zip guns or knives,” Minelli said. “Bottom of the world, Ma!”
Phan regarded Minelli with an expression between irritation and concern. “That is all I have to tell you now. Please do not worry. I am sure you will be compensated. In the meantime, we have new infodisks.”
“Goody,” Minelli said. As Phan turned away, he shouted, “Wait! I’m not feeling well. Really. Something’s wrong.”
“What is it?” Phan asked, gesturing to a watch supervisor behind him.
“In my head. Tell them, Reslaw.”
“Minelli’s been disturbed recently,” Reslaw said slowly. “I’m not doing too well, myself. He doesn’t sound good. He’s different.”
“I’m different,” Minelli concurred. Then he began to weep. “Goddammit, just put us back out where the rocks are. Let us go in our truck. I’ll sign anything. Really. Please.”
Phan glanced at them all, then turned and left abruptly. The curtains hummed back into place. Edward’s drawer opened and he removed a newspaper and the new packet of infodisks. Hungrily, he read yesterday morning’s headline.
“Christ,” he muttered. “They know about the President. Stella!” He punched her number on the intercom. “Stella, they know the President came out here!”
“I’m reading,” she said.
“Do you think your mother got through?”
“I don’t know, really.”
“We can hope,” Edward said.
Minelli was still weeping.
20
Hicks lay back against a pillow in the Lincoln Bedroom, a foot-high stack of reports on the round draped night-stand beside him, a small glass-globed lamp glowing softly above the reports. The late Empire-period pendulum clock on the marble mantelpiece ticked softly, steadily. The large, high-ceilinged room looked haunted, in a cozy sort of way; haunted by history, by association. This had been Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet room originally; here he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
He shook his head. “I’m crazy,” he said. “I’m not here. I’m imagining all of it.” For a moment, he hoped desperately that was true; that he was dreaming in the hotel room at the Inter-Continental, and that he would soon be promoting his novel for six minutes or less on another radio show, before another young announcer…
On the other hand, what was so undesirable about being in the White House in Washington, D.C., personally chosen by the President of the United States to advise him on the biggest event in human history? “The man doesn’t listen,” he murmured.
Hicks picked up the topmost report on the stack, a thick sheaf of photocopied papers on the Death Valley site, the Guest, and all that was known about the Great Victoria Desert site.
The Guest’s interim autopsy report was third in the stack. Using a talent acquired across years of research, he skimmed the first two papers quickly, stopping only for essential details. The reports, not unexpectedly, were “safe” — hedged through and through with ambiguous language, craftily defused theories, prompt second-guessing. Only the autopsy report showed promise of being substantive.
Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, a man Hicks would like to meet, was clear and to the point. The Guest’s physiology was unlike that of any living thing on Earth. Phan could not conceive of an environment that would evolve such a physiology. There were structures that reminded him, again and again, of “engineering shortcuts,” totally unlike the more intricate, randomly evolved structures terrestrial biology exhibited. His conclusion was not hedged in the least:
“The Guest’s body does not appear to be in the same biological category as Earth life forms. Some of its features are contrary to reasonable expectations. The only explanation I can offer for this is that the Guest is an artificial being, perhaps the product of centuries of genetic manipulation combined with complex bioelectronics. Since these abilities are far beyond us, any suppositions I might make as to the actual functions of the Guest’s organs must be considered unreliable, perhaps misleading.”