The tides will rise beyond their ken
to bite away the shores and then
the mountains will begin to roar
and earthquakes split the plain to shore.
Still emotionally unwilling to accept the situation, even if his intellect is
telling him otherwise, Danny interrupts.
Aw, come on! You can’t be serious! Do you really think
that’s going to happen?
Jane comes to the rescue, as she always does when opinions differ.
Let’s see what the cards say.
Jane pulls out her Tarot Cards and shuffles them, spreading them out in a fan
like fashion, face down on the blanket below which has been spread out over
the pine needles. She turns the top cards over, one by one. The first card is
the card of Death. Danny, eager for some reassurance at this point, raises his
eyebrows. Danny says,
Oops!
_______________________________
Colonel Cage is talking to a Zeta from the Zeta Reticuli star system. The room
is dark, lights off, as a private conversation is going on. Standing in the
shadows is a middle-aged man, fit with no signs of middle-aged spread or slack
muscles. A military man, Colonel Cage considers being fit the first bastion
of discipline. Tightly disciplined, he lives by rules both military and
personal, which often are at war with each other.
The colonel is talking to a figure taller than he, bone thin, with an enormous
head seemingly too heavy for the stick thin body. But there is grace in the
23
motions made by the long lanky arms, and the colonel seems not to notice or be
alarmed by the shape of his companion. He has long been accustomed to
conversing with this visitor from Zeta Reticuli. Where a conversation is going
on, only the voice of the colonel can be heard. Yet the intensity of his
words shows that an interchange of ideas is clearly going on.
We can't tell them. Don't think I don't want to. It's
orders, and orders are orders
Colonel Cage breaks down a bit, moving his hands in front of him in an
emotional way, as though groping for an answer, a resolution that will not
come.
My God, don't you think I want my neighbor's children
safe? They practically live at my house. But if I say
anything I'll disappear. What will my Mary and the
kids do then, for God's sake.
_______________________________
Back at the campground, the foursome has been camping together for a few days,
hitting it off. During this time the days seemed inordinately dim, as though
overcast to the point of not being able to see the Sun. Due to the cloud
cover, they took this to be an extremely cloudy day, but Frank has been
nervous. Danny as he is leaning into his car, retrieving some item with the
car door open. Frank comes up behind Danny. He says,
It’s so damn dim I can hardly make you out! I’ve never
seen it this overcast, it’s eerie. We’ve not seen the
sun for the past few days.
Danny ducks out of the car, looking around him to ensure that Daisy and Jane
are not in earshot, before replying in a low voice.
Did those prophecies you were quoting the other night
say anything about something like this? This gloom?
24
Frank raises his eyebrows, suddenly realizing something he’d forgotten. He
raises his hand.
Be right back.
Frank dashes off into his tent, rummaging around, coming out with a book he is
flipping through frantically. Finally, after pausing, he quotes.
Here it is. The Biblical three days of darkness
predicted. And in the Book of Amos ‘I will cause the
Sun to go down at noon and I will darken the Earth in
the midst of daytime.’ And the Greeks, in the
Phaethon, ‘One whole day went without the sun. But the
burning world gave light.’
Frank pauses, looking at Danny.
Damn!
_______________________________
At NASA in Houston the darkened skyline can be seen on a video, as though
stalled at the pre-dawn hour when the sky is light but no sun can be seen.
Rows of gray metal tables are placed to look forward at this wall, which has
several video screens, all currently meshed together to show the same scene,
an enlarged skyline. This is one of those high tech video screens that can
show individual shots, or can mesh together to show a large single shot.
Monitors and keyboards and various other electronic equipment are on the
tables, computer chairs that can scoot about with wheels, and some papers and
folders here and there. This is a work room, a war room, and it is filled with
men and women in business attire, ties pulled open, shirt collars unbuttoned,
some hair frazzled as hands have gone to heads now and then, the situation,
not appearance, the only concern.
A NASA employee, his hair up in the air on one side, his hair grease holding
it there, stands numbly staring at the screen, saying not a word to anyone as
though frozen in stance and speech. A second employee walks through the room
hurriedly, brushing past others as he passes, intent on talking to another
whom he stops to engage in animated conversation. Others in the room are on
the phone, shuffling papers, talking with each other, or sitting with their
heads in their hands. Yet a third employee has a mobile cell phone in his ear,
is gesturing with strong forward thrusts of his hand, an angry look on his
face. He says,
.. time to go to the bunker!
Leaning over a table and bringing his fist down now on the table, in anger,
easing himself into his chair as he is trembling with rage.
You told me when this started to happen we’d leave.
Now I want to know where the God damn bunker is! Now!
25
_______________________________
At the McGregor ranch Martha is normally up before dawn preparing breakfast for her hard working husband. Big Tom wolfs down his breakfast, slurping
coffee and shoveling in eggs and fried potatoes like there is no tomorrow,
talking between swallows about the chores he has lined up for the day.
. . found a broken fence yesterday, better get that
fixed before the cattle discover the break.
Big Tom glances up to gesture in the direction of the broken fence, and stops
mid-sentence as it is stone dark out and the dawn should have painted the
horizon with orange streaks by now. He is silent for a moment, his arm out-
stretched in mid-gesture. Then he falls back to eating, but keeps glancing