“That’s going to be real hard to sell in the ’burbs.”
“Impossible, I’d guess. So we have to buy ourselves as much time as possible. Sure, we’ll announce it—either when we re ready to, or when we have to…”
So there we were. Doctor Timothy Turner confiding in me, of all people. Pouring his heart out to me. But there was never any warmth in his eyes. Just a slight smirk, like he was eliminating a nagging problem. It was spooky. Then he shot me a look.
“Kirk, I’m going to need your silence, and your help.”
I started to say something, but he rolled right on as if he didn’t even notice.
“I’ll put in a request that you be promoted. Day Shift Foreman and Special Agent for Indoctrination and Training.”
We talked about all the new security people being hired, and how best to get them with the program. Both of us were trying on our new relationship, like a new shirt—a little scratchy but a decent fit.
Then I almost blew it on the way out. I asked him where the comet was from. I figured if it was anti-matter it had to be coming from outside the Solar System.
“It’s mirror matter, and I can’t tell you that right now!”
“OK. But Doc! Don’t you see? It’s a CT ship and anti-men are coming to destroy the Earth.”
“Kirk!” He looked irritated, but I think we were both relieved to slip back into our old ways for a moment. Like putting on a comfortable old sweater—even if over the scratchy new shirt.
“Well, in any case, Doc, Comet 2097-1?”
“Yes?”
“That name will never catch on either.”
So we hired and trained and waited. We did leak control and damage control and eventually made our announcements. Hysteria boiled over and simmered. And we got bomb threats, phone threats, and editorial attacks (the pen and the sword, you see) like it was our fault, or something.
Anyway, we all just sort of held our breath as the comet approached. Past the orbit of Mars we knew it would miss Earth, so things eased up. But it was still too close for comfort. One-tenth of the way from Earth to the Moon is not far enough. I remember the feeling as the big day approached. Like when I was a kid and rode my bicycle past a dog I didn’t know.
Funny thing. Somehow Turner seemed to hold me responsible for the comet’s popular name, but I swear, it was not my idea. I would have called it “Lucifer’s Hammer,” but I gotta admit that “The Anti-Christ” has a nice ring, much as the suits around here hated it.
Now for the Michener stuff…
“What now?”
“The ‘Michener stuff’?”
“Well, you know, like in the beginning of ‘Hawaii.’ The stuff in italics. Where the islands come up out of the Pacific. No one was there to see it, but it was so important to the story he put it first. Well… I didn’t find out this next part till a lot later, but a friend of mine who’s had stories printed in fanzines says I need to put this here for the suspense, and hang the point of view problem.
“So here goes… well?”
“All right. But we’re not using Michener’s name. OK?”
CLICK * >
Fine.
Dawn came to northeastern Arizona’s painted desert on the day of the Anti-Christ’s closest approach. The biggest crapshoot since life erupted from lifeless rock was about to happen.
A beam of intense, focused, modulated energy burst from the Anti-Christ. This invisible beam knifed through our atmosphere and struck a couple of acres of desert sand, far from major roads or dwellings. The beam was so focused that it escaped the notice of astronomers and their cameras. The explosive thunderclap, as the air was torn apart, went unheard, for there was no one to hear, or to see the sand react.
The beam coruscated over rocks and loose dirt, and blackened every shrub and cactus in the area. The ground glowed electric blue. After a while the beam cut off. The Anti-Christ continued its course past Earth and out of the Solar System, to be polished smooth by the solar wind, and eventually, perhaps, dissolved away to nothing. Our Universe is no place for a chunk of anti-matter.
But hours later the desert sand was still charged from the beam strike. Bolts of electricity played over the ground where it had hit, looking like giant bluish nerve cells, crawling around, trying to sense—to feel—every grain of sand. Soon the sand began to move along these fingers of electricity. A pile began to form at the center of the area. The pile grew hot as the dendrites and axons of electricity continued to drive more of the sand inward.
At a critical point this red hot sand pile came to life (in a sense), and gave birth to “intelligent” microscopic bits of matter, which in turn created strange new molecules and materials, just as a minute molecular seed can create large complex crystals.
Soon a structure took shape and began to dig into the desert sand, and sink out of sight. Had anyone watched that spot of sand through infrared binoculars, it would have appeared to glow with the light of a small sun. Like a newborn kangaroo, the thing had crawled into the pouch of mother Earth to complete its development. Not bad, eh?
THUNK >>>*<<<
“Just get on with it, Kirk. We haven’t got all day.”
“OK! OK!”
Well anyway, about a month later I was sitting at the bar at The Trough, having a beer or two to unwind before going home to my apartment. Things were getting back to normal after the Anti-Christ. Turner must have liked the way I’d been handling security. Personally I think he got me that first promotion just to shut me up. But he got me a second promotion and raise a few weeks later. Even better, he occasionally bought me a beer after work. Can you believe it? We were drinking buddies—sort of. His heart never seemed completely in it, but the beer was good, and we had nice talks. In fact, he was just leaving on this particular night. I watched him hold the door on his way out for this beautiful brunette coming in.
She was excellent! I made a mental note and promptly filed her face away under “You Wish.” She went to a table behind me somewhere and I turned back to continue my conversation with Joe, the bartender.
He was saying, “So, now that the Anti-Christ is history, it’s going to get real lonely around here again.”
“I guess so,” I said. “But it doesn’t sound like you’re sorry.”
“You’re right, kid. We made some nice money, but I’ll be glad when things settle down again.”
“You and me both. I won’t miss all the O.T.”
“Or those press goons.”
We laughed, remembering those jerks with their quick-draw flip phones—calling first and asking questions later.
The brunette must have been in the back of my mind some—I don’t know why else I picked that moment to start clowning around.
Joe apparently decided that the huge mirror behind the bar needed cleaning. I watched, and as the two Joes reached out to one another, and as the wadded cleaning cloths got within inches of each other (and closing fast), I shouted out, “No, Joe! Don’t do it! You’ll blow us all to kingdom come!”
The astronomers, and astronomers’ gophers in the place busted up right away. It took Joe a beat to catch on, and then he laughed too—halfheartedly.
Oh, sure, we all knew I was being more silly than clever, after having the Leidenfrost effect rammed down our throats for months. Drip some water on a hot plate and it won’t last as long as a drop on a really, really hot, hot plate. That second drop will bounce and sputter and skitter around, protected by an insulating layer of steam. I’ve done it myself as a kid on my grandparents’ old wood-burning kitchen range in their cabin. By now we all know that chunks of matter and anti-matter won’t blow up in an I’ll-be-go-to-hell explosion. They’ll just sit there, protected from each other by the plasma from hell, and eat each other away slowly, creating a deadly gamma ray inferno. A lot worse than a quick, clean KABOOM!, if you ask me. But the papers and the tubers (news for couch potatoes) harped on the Leidenfrost effect and somehow convinced people not to worry. Go figure.