Contact (35 page)

“Those were the early people. If Dad is still with the … the aliens … ”
 

“ … then he’ll be worse?
More
out of his mind,
more
on edge,
more
frightening to us, like the other people who came back and frightened their families?” She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say that. I guess I’ve never been very good at the mom stuff.”
 

The ventilation alarm had ceased in the living room — surely caused by more hippies blocking intakes. Lila was already used to the sound, seeing as it went off so often and Terrence couldn’t figure a way to permanently disarm it.

She sat on the bed beside her mother, almost sitting on her feet.
 

“Sometimes,” Lila said slowly, watching her mother to survey her response, “I
dream
about Dad.”
 

“Me too,” her mother said.

Still watching Heather’s face. “The dreams I have are really
weird
.”
 

“Weird how?”
 

“Like … he’s almost talking to me.”
 

Her mother was nodding slowly. “Hmm.”
 

“You ever have dreams like that?”
 

Heather watched Lila’s eyes. It felt like a standoff. Each knew something, but neither was willing to expose their mind first. Lila had felt for a while that her mother was sensing some of the same things as her. Or rather, a sense of very,
very
strong intuition coming from the neighborhood of her uterus.

“Maybe. But dreams are always kind of funny.”
 

“Yeah,” Lila said.
 

“Not like ‘hilarious.’ Like … ‘strange.’”
 

“I know this might sound …
strange
,” Lila said, using her mother’s word, “but since we’ve been here, I’ve had some really wacked-out dreams.”
 

Heather nodded slowly. “Me, too.”
 

Oh, just go for it,
something told her.
Whether that was her own voice, the voice from below, or the voice of intuition, Lila hadn’t a clue.
 

“Mom?”
 

Heather raised her eyebrows.
 

“You’ve done drugs, right?”
 

Heather seemed to edge a knee-jerk reaction but then sighed and said, “I’ve experimented.”
 

“With Dad?”
 

“With … ?” Her aborted sentence wasn’t a no. But Lila saw confusion. Lila had never thought her father was into drugs at all. He was too straight-laced, too hard and logical, too ruthless and strong. Drugs were about a loss of control, as far as Lila’s dash of experimentation had shown. Meyer Dempsey, on the other hand, had both hands firmly on the wheel of any situation at all times.
 

“I just got a … a feeling.”
 

Actually, she’d seen it in detail. She’d had dreams, but the vision was also accessible like a memory. Maybe her baby was somehow sending her psychic messages, or maybe she was as crazy as the notion made her feel. Either way, she’d clearly seen her father and mother lying somewhere on the floor with vacant faces and far-off minds. At first, Lila had wondered why …
something
… had felt the vision important enough to impress so firmly upon her mind. But then she’d realized it was somehow connected to all that was happening. That the drugs, somehow, had mattered.

They were connected to her father’s preparation.

Connected to her father’s disappearance.
 

Connected to her mother’s odd state — her way of jumping at shadows.
 

And, Lila thought, connected to a truth: that Heather Hawthorne knew more about what was going on now and in the near future than she let on … or that she even realized she knew.

“And I got a feeling,” Lila continued, “that when you did them together, Dad felt like he wasn’t just seeing visions, but was, in fact … well …
going somewhere else.
”
 

Images she’d been shown but didn’t understand, some literal and some in metaphor:
a door. A hole in the ground, going down into forever. A plug in a socket, a connection made. Nine pillars of fire. Nine contacts on a conductive wire. Gods of the past. Gods of the future. A sense that as much as life crept forward, they were all really on the backside of a loop, replaying songs that had been played before.
 

“And somehow, I just get this idea that you and Dad,” Lila swallowed, knowing she might be lining herself up for hours of mockery at the hands of a master, “somehow
connected
to each other when you did that stuff, and maybe are still, you know …
connected
now. Like in your dreams.”

A voice inside, whispering that Lila wasn’t the only person in the bunker holding a bouquet of possible answers.
 

Heather nodded slowly then looked at Lila’s six-months-pregnant belly.

“I’ve had feelings about you too,” she said.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Cameron found Benjamin in his office. He nodded hello, standing beside Piper, thinking of how even after three months in Moab, he still defaulted to calling this man “Benjamin” instead of “Dad.” It was old, leftover distance he’d once built between himself and the crazy UFO nut who’d embarrassed him into leaving home all those years ago. But Benjamin —
his father
— had been right all along. And so Cameron kept trying, now that they were finally reunited, to have a true father again.
 

“Well,” he said, looking up at Cameron and Piper’s arrival. “Good morning!”
 

“Is Charlie around?” Piper asked.
 

“
Good morning
, Piper,” Benjamin repeated, smiling slightly behind his dark, messy beard.

“Good morning, Ben.” Pause. “Is Charlie around?”
 

Benjamin twirled his chair in a circle like a kid playing, deliberately wasting a few seconds to slow Piper down. “Nobody ever asks for Charlie,” he finally said. “Charlie’s insufferable.”
 

A thin man approached, a curly gray-and-brown beard on his face, walking like a robot or a person with a stick up his butt. Benjamin rotated his chair halfway, a
Boy am I in trouble now
look on his face.
 

“Who’s insufferable?”
 

“You,” Benjamin replied.
 

Charlie turned to Piper and Cameron. “What are you doing here?”
 

“He says good morning,” Benjamin translated.
 

“Good morning. What are you doing here?”
 

Cameron bit back a retort. Charlie wasn’t rude so much as incredibly efficient. When he asked why they were there, he meant it literally. There was little point to pleasantries. They’d come directly into the lab earlier than usual then asked for Charlie. Benjamin was right; nobody asked for Charlie unless they had to. Cameron sometimes thought Charlie was like a vulture. He wasn’t fun to be around at all, but his function at the lab was essential, and you’d want him on your side when dying time came.
 

“Piper wanted to talk to you.”
 

Charlie’s head snapped toward Piper. “What?”
 

“Can we sit?”
 

“I have,” he looked down at his watch, “three minutes left on an enzymatic reaction on my bench. Come with me if you want to talk for longer than that.”
 

Piper was looking at the chair beside Benjamin with a sense of longing. Cameron had learned, after all the time they’d spent together, that she wasn’t her best in the mornings. She preferred easing into them as she would a hot bath. She’d want to sit, get a cup of coffee, and shake off the last of her sleep with light banter before delving into anything heavy. Charlie was the opposite. He didn’t yawn for fear of wasted oxygen.
 

“Go finish what you’ve got, and come back, Charlie,” Benjamin said.
 

Charlie’s head snapped toward Piper, Cameron, then the elevated gantry where the incubators were stored — “Charlie’s Nest” Benjamin sometimes called it — before he bustled away.
 

“Not used to him yet, are you, Piper?” said Benjamin.
 

“No.” She sat.
 

Cameron pulled a wooden chair from beneath a second desk and sat beside her. “It’s okay. I’ve known him my whole life, and I’m still not used to him.”
 

“And I’ve known him for five years longer than that.” Benjamin reached for a Mr. Coffee and an empty cup then poured Piper her morning routine. “It’s actually a great endorsement. You know how Smuckers jelly used to have that slogan, ‘With a name like Smuckers, it’s gotta be good’? Well, that’s how it is with Charlie. With a personality like that, my working with him this long must mean he’s outstanding at what he does.”
 

Piper smiled and accepted Benjamin’s coffee, soothed by his manner in the exact opposite way she was bristled by Charlie’s. Cameron had seen it before. He’d traveled the world with this man, granted access to the most forbidden and sacred of places in the unfriendliest nations, bought by that charm. When Cameron had finally grown sick of all the crazy Ancient Astronauts/UFO conspiracy bullshit and left to make his fortune with a guitar on his back, it had been hard to break away. He’d felt like he was wounding someone who couldn’t defend himself, hurting a man who loved him. But
enough
, teenage Cameron had thought,
was
enough
. And hadn’t his face been red when the ships had come to prove Dad’s wacko theories true?
 

“So,” said Benjamin. “Not to use Charlie’s expression, but why
are
you here? So early, I mean. Usually, you take your walk, I thought. And believe me, it’s so much nicer now that you don’t run across as many cattle mutilations and spectral green lights. Although there is the giant floating ball.” He pointed upward and smiled again.
 

Cameron watched Piper squirm, unsure how to start.
 

Still too early. Still too crazy a thing to say.

“What’s Charlie working on?” he said, diverting the conversation.
 

Benjamin waved a hand. “Oh, I don’t know. Something extremely competent but vaguely annoying, I’m sure. Charlie can’t help but pick at loose ends.”
 

Cameron raised his eyebrows. His father loved nothing more than to discuss his work, but these days Cameron had to goad him. A bit gun shy, probably, considering the way that fringe work had bulldozed one marriage, many friendships, and a fatherhood in his past.

“Still looking for evidence of panspermia,” Benjamin said.
 

“Any luck?”
 

“The problem with the whole panspermia theory is that it’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Did aliens seed life throughout the galaxy, including here on Earth? Maybe. There’s certainly evidence. But at the same time, life on Earth is what it is, and we don’t exactly have a lot of other life, away from this planet, to compare it to so we can say, ‘A-ha! This life is like that life! Therefore, aliens did it!’” Benjamin shrugged. “Now, with the appearance of these monolith lines everywhere — ”

Piper raised a hand. “Everywhere?”
 

Benjamin nodded, wiping a stray drip of coffee from his upper lip after setting down his mug. “Mmm-hmm. Our sources under the government’s skin are sending us evidence of more and more. There seem to be two basic configurations. There are lines, like the ones you walked through. Then there are henges.” He waved the jargon away and elaborated. “Circles. Like Stonehenge: stone
henge
, stone
circle
. Get it? Well, anyway. Large circles. Charlie’s still working on the scraping you brought us, but we’ve had others too. Seems like normal moss and lichens to me, probably because they’re Earth rocks. But Charlie’s relentless, as you might have noticed.”
 

“Might,” said Cameron.
 

“I’m much more interested in the network,” Benjamin said.

“Network?” Piper asked.

Benjamin rotated his monitor. He zoomed out of the displayed map of Utah to show the entire American West. They’d discussed this before — keeping it from Piper until the right moment, which apparently was now.
 

Benjamin looked over at Piper then continued using his screen as a visual aid.
 

“This is the line you crossed.” He pointed at a horizontal white line superimposed on the map, east of the Utah/Colorado border. The line exited Colorado at the top and bottom of the state, so it was good they hadn’t tried to go around for long. “This is us here.” He tapped a dot, which seemed to represent a circle. Cameron assumed so anyway; he’d seen the enormous monoliths around the ranch on their walks, keeping a healthy distance. The house and lab, so far as he could tell, were near the henge’s middle. Well, not
exactly
in the middle. The cavern below the arch was in the precise center.

“So last time I showed you this, Cameron, it was a scattering of lines.”
Lines converging on Vail,
Cameron thought but didn’t say, watching Piper from the corner of his eye. “But now, see how it’s fleshed out, with our new intel?”