Ark (23 page)

“I did the drawings. I told my story.”

“Think back to that voice, Mr. Wilson. I don’t like you but I know you’re not crazy. The voice you heard may have been the same one that gave you the ark idea.”

“I didn’t hear any voice about that,” Jim argued. “I read the Bible, I did the drawings.” He paused to think for a second then continued. “Okay, I might have been guided divinely. Then again, I might not have been.”

“That’s just it, Mr. Wilson. Nobody knows. If there’s a chance that you ... well, we don’t take chances in the U.S. military. We need all the help we can get. With you on hand, there’s a chance we might get a little divine inspiration. It’s as simple as that.”

“You have clergy on hand, don’t you?” asked Jim.

“Like I said. All the help we can get.”

He turned to walk away. Then, as though his conscience was still pinging a bit, he turned back to face Jim. “That shit about your wife. I’m sorry. Not for you but for her. No need for you to know. We all make mistakes. Do stupid things. Few of us can pull ourselves out of our own shit, all by ourselves. Your wife did that. If I was you .... well, it never happened. You know? Love her, Jim. When this is all over, love her and don’t let her go. She’s a heck of a lady.”

#

In his bunk at the end of the second day at Los Alamos, with the pungent smell of acacia lingering on his clothes, Jim searched his memory for moments when he might have noticed Kas’s cocaine use, but he gave up on that train of thought quickly. He knew that anyone can hide anything if it’s important enough to them. The important thing was that Kas had triumphed. Kas was with her sister, back at the nest. What mattered now was the phenomenon unfolding before him.

That evening Gene and Jim dined at a restaurant on the surface.

“It’s good to be up top again,” said Gene.

Jim nodded as he surveyed the town from the third story dining room of a restaurant called – euphemistically, Jim presumed – The Atomic Cafe. The place was having a Tex-Mex all-you-can-eat that they just couldn’t pass up.

Los Alamos reminded Jim of a high school campus turned into a full size town. What General Wilcox had dismissed as nothing when they arrived in the rain was a normal apple pie American town, the Los Alamos that the nation boasted as a center for scientific research, an icon of Yankee technology.

Gene chose the five star chili and Jim went for the Tejas Wings. They ate and laughed, and it seemed easy to forget for a few hours the strange hidden world beneath their feet. The General had instructed them to leave the subject of the ark below, if they were going to go up top, and Gene and Jim were more than glad to do so.

Looking out the large picture window Jim thought that the place was quite beautiful. All around them the rough landscape framed the setting sun. Trees, planted back during the time of the Manhattan Project, had long since achieved grandfatherly status, and even from this height Los Alamos had none of the appearance of a dusty western town.

Now the sun was beginning to splash sheets of orange and pink light across the sky, and the sunset became so compelling that everyone in the restaurant noticed.

Back East, Jim often marveled at how people would ignore nature’s beauty even when they’d paid big money to sit near the window and admire a view. The Top of the Sixes in New York, with its wonderful view of Central Park, was just such a place. Jim had dined there a couple times with a girlfriend who lived in New York and on his first visit watched a gorgeous sunset illuminate the city. Even though the sun filled The Top of the Sixes with dazzling amber light, no one he could see appeared to notice.

Not so at Los Alamos. People rose with their coffee and walked to the window to stand and admire the sunset, and the sun seemed to reciprocate by providing a show that contained every color of the rainbow and went on for almost a half hour.

When the last rays of deepest crimson gave way to a clearing sky full of stars, Jim and Gene strolled back to their table and sat down. They’d stopped by the buffet for a bit more cake and chocolate mousse.

As they sat enjoying their dessert Jim thought back to his days in New York. He told the sunset at the Sixes story to Gene, saying that he still couldn’t figure out why no one looked at the sunset.

“It wouldn’t be cool to ooh and aah at the sunset,” said Gene. “People who dine at the Top of The Sixes are there to be seen, not to see.”

Jim raised his eyebrows. “Simple as that?”

“I’m afraid so. Places like that are full of superficiality.”

“It’s a good thing I got out of there,” said Jim. Then he remembered the voice that had advised him to “Go out from among them.” Indeed. Ever since he’d left New York Jim’s life had taken positive turns. He met Kas, the love of his life, and he’d started a viable business. Perhaps that voice was from an angel.

Jim pondered the General’s admonitions to himself and Gene. Now he was sitting with Gene in complete privacy and felt he shouldn’t talk to Gene about his thoughts, feelings or the ark project.

The General’s tactic, obviously, had been to divide and conquer, leaving him in control. The idea angered Jim a bit. The General thought Jim had special abilities as a clairvoyant, based on a story his intelligence gatherers had found about a voice Jim once said he heard. Was the man grasping at straws? Why had that even mattered?

The more he thought about it, the more Jim felt that the General might be the loony his son described him to be. There was no real need to follow his advice. All that would accomplish was more power for the General over Jim, and he felt the General was already too big for his own britches, as Jim’s mother might have put it.

“I guess the General doesn’t want us talking about the project,” said Jim, fishing for an opinion from Gene.

Gene was noncommittal as usual. “Not while we’re up here,” he said. “It isn’t a good idea, I guess, ’cause you never know who’s listening.”

“That’s not why he doesn’t want us talking,” said Jim. “You know that.”

“Why do you think it is, Jim?” asked Gene with a patronizing smile.

Jim looked around to make sure no one was overhearing them. “He doesn’t want you putting ideas in my head.”

Gene laughed. “Is that what he told you? I’m afraid he’s got you snookered, Jim. The man is just an authoritarian getting in his last digs before retirement. What exactly did he tell you?”

“He thinks I have a special line to God or something. His people told him that I once heard voices.”

“Voices? You mean like ghosts?”

“Didn’t I ever tell you?” asked Jim.

“I sure would have remembered if you did,” replied Gene with a haughty laugh.

“If you really didn’t tell him, then I don’t know where he got it.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Gene. “General Wilcox doesn’t want me to suggest things to you because it might prevent you from hearing voices?”

The way Gene put it, it sounded silly. “Something like that,” Jim admitted.

Gene laughed again, this time in a derisive way. “Wait ’til I tell John that one.”

“No, Gene,” said Jim. “You’re not telling him anything. What I said was in total confidence and against the express wishes of the General.”

“Come on, Jim, he’ll love it. We gotta tell him.”

“No!” said Jim slamming his fist on the table.

Gene looked at Jim, flabbergasted. “Okay, okay,” he said. “My lips are sealed.”

Jim lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m telling you. This is serious. You may think this is ridiculous but I assure you the General was dead serious. If the General hears anything about my talking to you I think he’ll ship us both out.”

Gene nodded. “If he’s crazy enough to believe you’re talking to ghosts, I guess he’ll believe anything.”

“Not ghosts,” said Jim. “Angels.”

In the restaurant, following this conversation, Gene seemed to shrug off what Jim told him. But later, in their apartment as they were watching the TV news, Gene suddenly looked at Jim. “You never said whether the story about the voices was true or not. Now that I’m thinking about it, lots of people hear voices. I mean all the time, in our heads.”

Jim nodded. “The internal dialogue, I think they call it.”

“Well,” said Gene, looking expectantly at Jim. “Did you hear voices?”

“Only three times. And it wasn’t my internal dialogue. It seemed very real. I didn’t understand what it meant then and I don’t today. That’s the truth.”

Jim looked at Gene, alarmed by his expression. “I don’t know how the General heard about it. It wasn’t a big deal. I only told a few folks, long ago, and I swear to you it only happened a few times and that was it. Never again. What made it weird, though, is that it happened in the middle of my day, while I was thinking about other stuff. Work stuff.”

Gene asked the circumstances. Jim, reluctantly at first, related the entire story including the part about the number 6-6-6.

“When was the third time you heard the voice?” asked Gene.

“At John’s,” said Jim. “I was alone in the rec room looking at the model of the ark complex while you were, you know, with the girls.”

“That’s why you split?”

“No. Well, only partly.” His face flushed with embarrassment.

Gene looked grave for a moment, then smiled. “I know who’s talking to you, Jim. It is either your conscience or your dick, and since it probably wasn’t your dick, that leaves only one possibility.” He laughed.

“That’s as good a guess as any,” said Jim, glad to be the brunt of a joke as long as Gene didn’t probe deeper.

Thankfully, Gene was happy to let the matter drop. Jim decided, as he tried to get to sleep, that he’d probably gone a long way toward explaining to Gene’s satisfaction the General’s bizarre ravings.

Gene was snoring righteously. His snore, rumbling through the apartment, sounded more like a bear in a cave. Jim thought to himself, “Good for you, Gene, you’ve got your explanation, so now you can sleep tight. Now, what about me?”

He rolled over, staring at the blank wall, and thought about Kas. He looked over his shoulder at the clock on the nightstand. Midnight. Way too late to call her.

#

The next day they followed the same routine as before. Gene and Jim took the tram, but this time it was just the two of them riding the ‘bumper car’, as Jim called it. The trip to the cavern seemed to take longer every time they took it. Gene tried to read a newspaper as the car slowly rolled down the tunnel. He kept shifting the paper around, trying to catch the lights as they passed overhead. Eventually, frustrated, he crumpled the paper in his lap and sat staring down the tunnel in disgust.

The car’s next lurch around a turn brought a curse from Gene.

“Damn,” he said, “what kind of commuter run is this? You can’t read. You can’t even sit up without the freakin’ car snapping your spine every five seconds!”

Jim smiled and nooded. “Not exactly the Grand Central Express, is it?”

The automatic door framed by light from the cavern beyond was a welcome sight.

“Finally.” Gene squinted as the car pushed the door open into the artificial sunlight.

Jim had thought to put on sunglasses so he wasn’t blinded as before. He was quick to notice that poles that bordered the courtyard of the temple complex were already in place. “Check it out, Gene,” he said. “We have ark sign.”

Gene looked where Jim was pointing. “Oh,” he said. “They’re starting to put in the fencing.”

They both stepped off the tram before it stopped and made a beeline for the gold room to see what progress had been made on the ark.

They door to the studio opened to a deafening noise coming from inside the room. The twin golden cherubim were on the wooden form, sitting on a low bench in the middle of the room, and Aaron was already hammering details of geometric feathers in the gold. Though he wore goggles and a bandanna to tie back his hair, his bared teeth revealed the strain of the work. Studying Aaron’s face Jim realized it wasn’t a grimace but a smile. Aaron was having the time of his life. His joy was palpable.

The meter of Aaron’s hammer and chisel were almost musical. His concentration was so intense and his effort so spirited that Jim and Gene opted to stand well out of the way and wait for a chance to say hello. But they could see for themselves how things were going. Aaron was in a state that seemed almost fearsome. Around him the assistants waited to rotate the work. Marta held a torch that blew a large yellow flame. Its warm flickering light gave the scene a magical quality.

Jim noticed that the laser had been removed. Marta, on the other hand, was definitely still close at hand. Her expression, like Aaron’s, could only be described as rapture.

Someone had piped in music. In the stone room it bounced and flowed and seemed to have no source. It came from everywhere. Jim looked for speakers but saw only piping and lights affixed to the stone ceiling. The music sounded like a blend of brass instruments and voices. It was lovely but not identifiable, and Aaron’s ringing hammer strokes made it impossible to recognize. Yet it served as a perfect tonal backdrop to the scene.

Jim wondered what a DJ might choose to accompany Operation Thunderbolt. He was about to comment on the music to Gene when Marta noticed them and motioned for them to come closer. When Jim looked back at Gene he still hadn’t moved.

Marta’s hair touched Jim’s face as she pressed close to whisper to him. “Isn’t this wonderful?” she asked in her lovely Swiss accent. “I had no idea Aaron was so familiar with work on this scale.”

Jim was perplexed. “Me either,” he said. “Well, how many arks has anyone built? As I understood it this is his first job at this scale.”

Clearly, as Jim watched Aaron’s hands move along the gleaming metal, Aaron was no novice. He worked the gold with easy, sure strokes. His movements were as efficient as any senior craftsman with decades of practice. Jim thought that John should be there to see how well his servant had embraced such an important job.

Aaron didn’t stop except to wipe sweat from his eyes. Though perspiration poured from him, soaking his shirt and even his pants, he showed no outward sign of being tired. He worked steadily until finally Jim and Gene, tired from just standing by and watching, found a place out of the way and sat down on stools.