Last Call For Caviar (7 page)

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CHAPTER 8

T
HE
H
ERALD

The rutted lane that led to the Astrarama from the Grande Corniche was partially buried under a small landslide of dirt and stones that washed down the hillside after the winter storms. Even if you dared to explore, potholes and debris would be hell on tires and the undercarriage of anything less than a four-wheel drive.

Built on high ground above the Grande Corniche, isolated from any habitation and the distortion of city lights, the Astrarama was the perfect spot to stargaze.

I remember summer nights, the warm air caressing my skin and my hair streaming in the wind, as I rode behind Julian on his Ducati, my arms tight around his waist, my head resting on his broad shoulder as we leaned into the curves that led towards the sky. The echo of remembered laughter and shared bottles of sweet wine, while we peered through a telescope at nebulas and star clusters light years away; this place held the fading impressions of those memories still.

Walking down the rutted lane towards the Astrarama, I remember that it was here last summer I saw Sawaka Sahur, the Herald, as it passed through our solar system. For months, the whole world watched in fascination as the luminous oval of Sawaka Sahur—a glowing blue comet extending twenty light years in its wake—blazed across our skies. In the day, it burned almost as bright as the sun.

The Hopi Prophecies foretell that when the Blue Star Kachina—Sawaka Sahur—appears in our skies, it heralds the imminent arrival of the Red Star Kachina, whom they call the Purifier. The Hopi Elders say that the Red Star has come to judge if we’ve been good custodians of the Earth and have kept to the sacred ways. The Purifier is the instrument that will bring about the destruction of the Fourth World—our present-day world.

The Hopi Elders say the Purification will last seven years, and we will know the Purification has begun when one morning the whole world awakes to the Red Dawn. The sky will be the color of blood.

I was fascinated by the histories of the North and Central American Indian tribes, ever since I first read
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
in high school, when I was growing up in California. After that first class, I read extensively, intrigued by their history, mythology and beliefs. Many of these tribes, like the Olmecs, who built the pyramids of Teotihuacan in a mathematically precise model of our solar system, were master astronomers. The legends and belief systems of Mayan, Aztec, Hopi, Pueblo, Anasazi Indians, among others, spoke of visitors from the stars and their influence on the fate of mankind.

Though I admit I’m also a bit of a science nerd. I often start my day checking out blogs dedicated to astronomy, physics and the question of alien life forms on other planets. (My favorite is “I Love Fucking Science.”)

So after my first sighting of what might be the Blue Star Kachina from Hopi legend, I scoured the internet, reading anything I could find about this extraordinary astronomical event. Scientists worldwide studied this comet, and speculation was rampant on the consequences for earth and mankind.

NASA scientists say that Sawaka Sahur had sailed forth from a dwarf galaxy located between the southern constellations of Dorado and Mensa in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The light, when the blue supergiant went supernova, left the galaxy about 160,000 years ago and finally reached Earth last summer.

Some “experts” made mind-boggling claims, such as that the radiation from the intense blast of neutrinos was estimated at one hundred times the intensity of what our sun will radiate during its entire ten-billion-year existence. Other scientists upped the ante and speculated that the radiation released was as much as the combined radiation from all the stars and galaxies in the visible universe.

The more esoteric articles I read argued that the staggering bombardment of cosmic energy released by the explosion of Sawaka Sahur—immense shockwaves of cosmic particles, infrared and ultraviolet radiation, gamma rays and x-rays—was affecting both the physical and metaphysical world, altering the electromagnetic matrix of our planetary grid, disturbing the delicate balance of earth’s vibratory center and vortexes and mutating on our DNA.

Whether you believed there was any truth in the old legends of indigenous American tribes and their prediction of a giant, punishing celestial object in the sky—or that the appearance of the Blue Star confirmed the Hopi revelation—something was destabilizing our planet, and maybe it was, as the prophecies foretold, coming from the stars.

I was first drawn to the mystery of the stars the summer when I was nineteen, two years before I came to France to study. I was going to the university in California, and I went over summer break to visit my big sis in Las Vegas.

About ninety miles north of downtown Las Vegas is Dreamland, though no road signs indicate its location or its presence, shimmering like a mirage behind a veil of mystery and rumors atop the salt flats of Groom Lake.

You may know Dreamland by its other names: Paradise Ranch, The Box, The Extraterrestrial Highway or simply—Area 51. Officially, it’s the test site for experimental aircraft and weapons systems developed by the highly classified military and defense program, innocuously called Special Access Program. Shrouded by such intense secrecy, the U.S. government did not even acknowledge its existence until July 2003, though they had been running research projects and developing military aircraft out of there since the fifties. The CIA considered no place on earth as sensitive as the area around Groom Lake.

Lots of hinky stuff was said to happen here: disappearing landing strips, which appear only when chemicals are sprayed on their camouflaged surfaces; crashed and stranded alien space craft, whose survivors were probed and studied in underground laboratories; whispers of weird science and research into weather control, time-walking and worm holes. Star Wars weaponry and visitors from distant galaxies were said to be housed here. Indeed, Area 51 is purportedly the hub of a subterranean transcontinental railroad that connects a vast network of top-secret facilities devoted to reverse-engineering alien technologies.

Stories of weird lights moving at unheard-of velocities, maneuvering at angles that defy the aerodynamics of conventional aircraft, only nourish the stories of alien “captives” and strange doings. All this myth and secrecy was too damned intriguing to resist. So one night, I went with a group of friends to see if we could get close and see for ourselves if any of these rumors were true.

For the adventure, it seemed appropriate to enhance our wanderings along those dark desert roads with a few fat buds of Acapulco Gold. After a couple of tokes, we were definitely open to welcoming strangers to our strange land.

I never knew that the night could feel so alive, like one vast organism, or that it could hold so many shades and textures—from the deep purple of shadows to hollows of indigo blue.

The starlight etched the saguaro cactuses against the starry sky, and the faces of my friends seemed to be dusted by a fine iridescent powder. The Milky Way was a gauzy mist flung across a black velvet vault, as the stars winked on and off. Occasionally, a shooting star plummeted across the midnight sky like a fallen angel.

Even though I was surrounded by friends, as I lay on the hood of the car, scanning the heavens above, I felt alone in that vast, ancient emptiness of desert and night sky. Experiencing their immensity and power, and recognizing how little we knew, anything seemed possible. I felt like I was falling upward into the infinite sky. In that moment, I wished more than anything for a telescope to explore the heavens that hung before my eyes; my love of stargazing was born.

Needless to say, we never got very close to Area 51 or made the acquaintance of visitors from faraway worlds. But we did meet the private security personnel who patrolled the perimeters of Dreamland—shadowy figures who kept us pinned in the glare of spotlights while they called the Lincoln County Sheriffs to run off another group of spaced-out tourists looking for extraterrestrials.

I shook off my memories of wandering on distant desert roads and moved cautiously down the path towards the Astrarama.

Only the sigh of the wind broke the stillness as I approached the observatory; the sand-colored walls of the building, storage shed and garage blended into the vegetation and rock formations of the peak. I strode across the large viewing deck that seemed to hang suspended over the crags and scrub brush; the world spread out before me, endless sea merging into the sky.

I checked to see if the key to the padlocked metal double doors was still hidden behind a loose brick in the low wall to the right of the small domed structure. The hinges were rusted and the doors looked slightly warped, but in a groan of protesting metal I heaved them open and let the sunlight pour into the domed interior. I flipped the light switch near the door and was surprised to find the electricity was still on. I heard the low hum of the back-up generators kick in.

The building was about 150 square meters in size, and just inside the open doors of the main domed room stood the shrouded form of an older-model Celestron10 StarHopper Dobsonian telescope, ready to be wheeled outside. I don’t think they make this model anymore, but it remains a classic for its simplicity of design and ease of use.

Dust mantled the tables and folding chairs stacked against the far wall; the bookshelves were crammed with charts of constellations, astronomy texts, UFO pamphlets, and science fiction novels. The two long sofas stood at angles to each other, and an assortment of armchairs were arranged in a corner, the leather on one sofa cracked and smelling faintly of old cigarettes and mildew. With the lights dimmed, the concave ceiling of the dome overhead lit up in a map of our galaxy, the stars and constellations little pinpricks against a black background.

I saw that the dust coating the tiled floor lay undisturbed, indicating that no one had been here in the last six months. If you weren’t a member of this amateur stargazing club, you wouldn’t know this building existed.

Last year at the beginning of September, not long after we had seen the Blue Star blaze by, Arnaud, who owned the land and had built this small observatory twenty years before, had vanished. His phone and email went unanswered, and his cell phone was out of service. No one knew what happened or where he had gone. A crotchety old bachelor and a classic science nerd, no one had heard him speak of any family. The stars and the possibility of life flourishing on other worlds was all that mattered to him.

Posters of
The X-Files
, featuring Agents Mulder and Scully, emblazoned with the legend “I believe,” hung over the sofa and attested to Arnaud’s interests and self-deprecating humor. Arnaud knew most people considered him odd, but he didn’t give a damn.

At first, none of the members of the club were unduly concerned. We thought he’d gone to an astronomy convention for a few weeks, or was off on safari chasing UFOs. But when weeks stretched into months, it finally sank in that he wasn’t coming back. The group who met here disbanded near the end of last year.

I checked the kitchen and the two small bedrooms and bath in the living quarters branching off the hall from the main room. The beds were made, sheets and towels folded on shelves. Clothes still hung in one of the closets.

In the kitchen water ran from the taps. Stocks of bottled water, coffee, pasta, rice, tuna and whiskey filled the pantry. A set of keys to the Astrarama and Arnaud’s Land Rover lay in a tray with an unopened pack of Marlboro Reds. I grabbed the keys and Marlboros and went out the back door towards the garage and workshop.

The battered dark green Land Rover started on the first try. I checked the oil and fuel gauges; there was almost a full tank. Cans of fuel for the car and diesel for the generators were stacked along the walls, and Arnaud’s array of tools appeared intact.

Sitting on the edge of the Astrarama’s viewing deck, my feet dangling over the void, I lit up one of Arnaud’s Marlboro Reds and nursed a tumbler of Johnnie Walker Black and thought.

Nothing had been looted. But there was no sign Arnaud had been back, either. There were no new tire tracks since the last of the storms. Dominating the high ground, the building was protected by the rock face of the cliff at its back; there was only one access road, the entrance camouflaged by the hillside run-off and vegetation. There were lots of trails through these hills to escape down. All who had ever known about this place appeared to have forgotten its existence. It seemed I might have found the perfect hideout.

I picked up my binoculars and scanned the surrounding terrain. I could see parts of all three of the Corniches. Traffic was flowing normally on the Basse Corniche by the coast, but diminished considerably on the higher roads. Because of the winding switchbacks of the road, I would be able to see anyone approaching from a long way off. I scanned the hillsides, and except for a hawk riding the thermal currents, nothing moved. No neighbors for miles around.

I imagined how dark it would be here at night, alone, surrounded only by starlight, the moonlight a shining trail on the sea. Even if somewhere in this doomed world, Julian were watching the same night sky as me, how lonely it would be.