“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 fall 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.”
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
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 Crockerman’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 lip. 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.”