He quit the surf and stalked back to the beach chair, not caring if the woman followed him. Gulls shrieked their annoyance at his passage. Chaney dropped into the chair with another muttered imprecation of stiffnecked bureaucrats, a scurrilous declaration couched in Hebraic terms the woman wouldn’t understand. It commented on her employer’s relations with jackasses and Philistines.
TDV. A furious stimulant to the imagination.
The gulls, the tide, the salt spray, the descending sun were all ignored while his racing imagination toyed with the information she had given him. He saw the possibilities — some of them — and began to appreciate the interest his Indic report had aroused in those people possessing the vehicle. A man could peer forward — no, leap forward into the future and check out his theories, his projections of events to come. A man could see for himself the validity of a forewarning, the eventual result of a prefiguration, the final course of a trend. Would sixteen-year-olds marry and vote? Would city and county governments be abolished, relinquishing authority to local state districts? Would the Eastern seaboard complex break down and fail to support life?
TDV. A vehicle to determine answers.
Chaney said aloud: “I’m not interested. Find another demographer, Miss van Hise. I object to being ambushed and sold across the river.”
A man could inspect — personally inspect — the Great Lakes to determine if they had been saved or if the Lake Reconstruction program had come too late. A man could study the census figures for a hundred years to come and then compare them to the present tables and projections to find the honesty of those projections. A man could discover if the recently inaugurated trialmarriage program was a success or failure — and learn first-hand what effect it was having on the birth rate, if any. It would be good to know the validity of earlier predictions concerning the population shifts and the expected concentration of human mass along the central waterways. A man could -
Chaney said aloud: “Give the team my regards, Miss van Hise. And tell them to watch out for traffic cops. I’ll read about their adventures in the newspapers.”
Kathryn van Hise had left him.
He saw her tracks in the sand, glanced up and saw her putting on the shoes near the weedy border of the beach. The delta pants stretched with her as she bent over. The mail Jeep was again visible in the distance, now coming toward him and servicing the boxes on the other side of the beach road. The interview had been completed in less than an hour.
Chaney felt the weight of the book in his lap. He hadn’t been aware of the woman placing it there.
The legend on the red dustjacket was as familiar as the back of his hand. From the Qumran Caves: Past, Present, and Future. The line of type next below omitted the word by and read only: Dr. Brian Chaney. The bright jacket was an abomination created by the sales department over the inert body of a conservative editor; it was designed to appeal to the lunatic fringe. He detested it. Despite his careful explanations, despite his scholarly translation of a suspect scroll, the book had stirred up twice the storm he’d expected and aroused the ire of righteous citizens everywhere. String up the blasphemer!
A small card protruded from the middle pages.
Chaney opened the volume with curiosity and found a calling card with her name imprinted on one side, and the address of a government laboratory in Illinois written on the other. He supposed that the ten fifty-dollar bills tucked between the pages represented travel money. Or a shameless bribe added to the blouse, the pants, and the perfume worn on her breast.
“I’m not going!” he shouted after the woman. “The computer lied — I’m a charlatan. The Bureau can go play with its weights!”
She didn’t turn around, didn’t look back.
“That woman is too damned sure of herself.”
Elwood National Research Station
Joliet, Illinois
12 June 1978
TWO
Two steps ahead, the military policeman who had escorted him from the front gate opened a door and said: “This is your briefing room, sir.”
Brian Chaney thanked him and went through the door.
He found the young woman critically eyeing him, assessing him, expecting him. Two men in the room were playing cards. An oversized steel table — the standard government issue — was positioned in the center of the room under bright lights. Three bulky brown envelopes were stacked on the table near the woman, while the men and their time-killing game occupied the far end of it. Kathryn van Hise had been watching the door as it opened, anticipating him, but only now did the players glance up from their game to look at the newcomer.
He nodded to the men and said: “My name is Chaney. I’ve been—”
The hurtful sound stopped him, cut off his words.
The sound was something like a massive rubber band snapped against his eardrums, something like a hammer or a mallet smashing into a block of compressed air. It made a noise of impact, followed by a reluctant sigh as if the hammer was rebounding in slow motion through an oily fluid. The sound hurt. The lights dimmed.
The three people in the briefing room were staring at something behind him, above him.
Chaney spun around but found nothing more than a wall clock above the door. They were watching the red sweep hand. He turned back to the trio with a question on his lips, but the woman made a little motion to silence him. She and her male companions continued to watch, the clock with a fixed intensity.
The newcomer waited them out.
He saw nothing in the room to cause the sound, nothing to explain their concentrated interest; there was only the usual furniture of a government-appointed briefing room and the four people who now occupied it. The walls were bare of maps, and that was a bit unusual; there were three telephones of different colors on a stand near the door, and that was a bit unusual; but otherwise it was no more than a windowless, guarded briefing room located on an equally well-guarded military reservation forty-five minutes by armored train from Chicago.
He had entered through the customary guarded gate of a restricted installation encompassing about five square miles, had been examined and identified with the customary thoroughness of military personnel, and had been escorted to the room with no explanation and little delay. Massive outer doors on a structure that appeared earthquake-proof stirred his wonder. There were several widely scattered buildings on the tract — but none as substantial as this one — which led him to believe it had once been a munitions factory. Now, the presence of a number of people of both sexes moving about the grounds suggested a less hazardous installation. No outward hint or sign indicated the present activity, and Chaney wondered if knowledge of the vehicle was shared with station personnel.
He held his silence, again studying the woman. She was sitting down, and he mentally speculated on the length of the skirt she was wearing today, as compared to the delta pants of the beach.
The younger of the two men suddenly pointed to the clock. “Hold onto your hat, mister!”
Chaney glanced at the clock then back to the speaker. He judged the fellow at about thirty, only a few years younger than himself, but having the same lanky height. He was sandy haired, muscular, and something about the set of his eyes suggested a seafarer; the skin was deeply bronzed, as opposed to the girl’s new tan, and now his open mouth revealed a silver filling in a front tooth. Like his companions, he was dressed in casual summer clothing, his sportshirt half unbuttoned down the front. His finger pointed at the clock dropped, as if in signal.