Majestic (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

An hour after Hillenkoetter got the autopsy reports Will received an urgent telex: return to Washington soonest. He flew by light plane to Denver and connected with the United Main-liner, scheduled to land at Washington National Airport at eleven P.M.

He'd had only fitful sleep for three consecutive nights, and had been operating under numerous incredible pressures, ranging from the efforts of the Air Force to take over the project to the repeated personal assaults from the visitors.

The least thing could unsettle him, and he found himself wanting to weep over the simplest problem, like whether or not it would be impolite to remove his shoes on the plane.

He kept trying to tell himself that the episodes he'd had might have been dreams, and yet he knew that they weren't. They were physical experiences - horrible and impossible, but entirely real.

Every time he dozed off the image of the little man with the bobbing head would reappear and he would wake up pouring sweat. It would take him fifteen minutes just to control the nausea, and sometimes he could not.

He was running entirely on coffee and cigarettes. He sat smoking and staring out the window, trying to think of someone in whom he could confide.

A psychiatrist was obviously out. He had all the symptoms of what was then called dementia praecox and would be so diagnosed. When they landed at Washington National it was past eleven, closer to twelve.

A fog was rising from the Potomac. But for the lights and bustle associated with Will's flight the airport was empty. He was met by a young CIG man with a sign, "W. Stone."

This cheerful kid took his bag and conducted him to a black Chrysler. He assumed that he was on his way home to a bath, clean pajamas and blessed sleep.

They were turning onto Pennsylvania Avenue when he realized that their destination was the White House.

For a moment he was furious, but on reflection he realized that this was inevitable.

The fact that he was being driven this hard is a testament to the level of concern felt by the President.

Nobody had ever even questioned the basic assumption that this was an invasion by aliens with military ambitions.

Will was led into the Cabinet Room by a White House guard in full uniform and looking at midnight like he'd just been boiled clean and pressed to a razor crease.

The room was jammed with people, hazy with smoke and blazing with lights. Huge color pictures of the disk and the aliens were on every wall. The President was sitting at the far end of the table with a pot of coffee in front of him. Hilly and Forrestal were beside him. Van sat along one side of the table with the other Joint Chiefs. Eisenhower was there, looking extremely grim. There were a number of civilians present whom Will did not know.

When he appeared all conversation ceased, every head turned to face him. The silence was absolute.

He barely managed to keep on his feet, such was his fatigue.

"Mr. Stone," the President said, "I'm glad your plane was nearly on time."

Was he expected to make a presentation?

"May I see the agenda," he asked.

"There is no agenda, young man," one of the strangers said in a thick Middle European accent. "There is only you." Will fantasized stepping through a window and racing across the lawn, escaping into the night streets.

Vandenberg tossed a photo of the most startling of the visitors down the table. "We are given to understand that this is a deformed human child," Van said quietly. "Could you explain that a little further?"

"Well, that's what the pathologist found." "But look at it," Eisenhower said. "Does it look human to you?"

"I don't think I'm ready to say. All I can do is point to the fact that it has perfectly ordinary fingers and hands, and that the pathologist is a good one. His finding was that it was a surgically altered baby that had stopped maturing at about five months gestation. The fingers were even manicured."

"Young man," said one of the older gentlemen there, "I am Dr. Kenneth Rhodes of the Ringer Clinic."

Hilly spoke up. "Dr. Rhodes is one of the leading embryologists in the country."

"To take an embryo of that maturity and somehow cause it to grow larger without maturing further - that's a complete impossibility. As the cells grow they also mature. This is - well, this is in the nature of things."

"I don't think that creature is in the nature of anything, Doctor. We saw all sorts of signs of surgical intervention. God only knows what else was done - drugs, electricity. Could be anything. If that creature lived it was human. We found it in the company of two obvious aliens. According to Dr. Edwards none of these creatures could have lived long, if they ever lived at all. But nevertheless, they are what we found."

The President suddenly slapped his hand down on the cabinet table. "I want to know what the hell's going on here and what I'm supposed to do about it. If that thing is human, where did it come from? Whose baby was it?"

"Mr. President - "

"Not you, young man. I've got five of the leading scientists in the world here. Gentlemen, tell us where that baby came from."

"And what about the 'hivelike' living quarters," Forrestal asked. "Does that mean communist?"

Despite the President's admonition, Will spoke up. "I don't know what it means. Who said the living quarters were a hive?"

"We got a telex from Darby while you were en route," Hilly said. "They've begun making a blueprint of the interior of the disk."

"Hivelike," Will repeated.

"Are they communists?"

"I don't have any idea, General Eisenhower!"

Forrestal's eyes were almost popping out of his head. "Aliens in advance of us and they're communists. We must hide this at all costs."

"I can see Pravda now," the President said. "We have seen the future and it is communist."

A deep silence followed. Finally Van filled it. "We need to decide on a response. I think that we must prove to these people that we are sovereign in our own territory, land, sea and air."

"I agree," Truman said.

Eisenhower gave Will a challenging look. "How? Do you have any thoughts?"

"We have to face the fact that they're far ahead of us."

"How far?"

"Terribly far."

"Examples?"

"The condition of the fetus is an example. To us it is a human fetus - or was one. But somehow it was almost certainly functioning. The thing lived, breathed, thought. We do not know how that could be."

"I'll tell you what I think," the President said. "I think this damn infant was stolen from some family and monkeyed with by those - what are they, anyway? What was that stuff about vegetable material in the autopsy report?"

"The truly alien ones were more vegetable than animal. That was the key finding."

"Little green men," Eisenhower said. "Literally."

"More bluish-gray, actually."

"I think this is a kidnapped child," said the President. "That's my concern. And that's the reason for the order I have issued to the Army Air Force. Van?"

"The Air Force has orders to seek, engage and destroy the enemy. We will fire on these disks, gentlemen, and we will bring them down."

"Citizens are having their babies kidnapped," the President added.

Absolute silence filled the room. The President alone remained animated, looking from face to face with a strange half smile on his face. He must have looked like that at the moment he told his cabinet he was going to drop the bomb.

The decision was absolutely characteristic of Western civilization, the American government and Harry Truman himself. It was in its essence highly conservative. But ours is at core a very conservative civilization.

This is why it has survived so long, and why it has absorbed so many changes without altering its essential form.

Will also held his tongue. Unquestionably, it was a moment when he should have spoken out. I want to blame him for not doing so, but I cannot. He was at his very lowest ebb, he had just endured too much. Above all, I blame the visitors for his silence. Had they not put him under almost impossible pressure he might have had the psychic energy to intervene.

But that was probably their purpose: to test him, Truman, all of them, to the absolute limit and see then what they brought forth of themselves, peace or war.

Eisenhower was the first to speak. "I'd think a lot of questions would be answerable before you did that," he said. "A thing like that could have unpredictable importance."

In later years Eisenhower would become almost completely impossible to understand, but his locutions in the late forties required no more than a moment's extra thought.

"Unpredictable consequences," Truman snapped. "Do we have any ideas on that?"

"It's too early for us to make a cultural evaluation," Dr. Rhodes said.

"I want ideas!"

Van responded. "Mr. President, we have a five-hundred-mile-an-hour airplane on the drawing boards."

Hearing this, the President seemed to become suddenly exhausted. "Look, this thing first appeared over Roswell. In other words, over Roswell Army Air Field where our atomic bombers are located."

Van offered more disturbing information. "From May twenty-seventh to June thirteenth the 509th demonstrated its capability to deliver nuclear warheads to targets at intercontinental distance during maneuvers out of Wendover Field. This weapons system works, and that is the first time we demonstrated it.

Two weeks later the aliens started nosing around and getting in our hair."

The President continued. "Then we had soldiers go missing. And that estimate you wrote, Mr. Stone, and the missing persons reports for '44 to '46 suggest that people in the civilian population may be affected. And now this - this - I don't know what to call it - "

"An artificially deformed baby," one of the scientists offered.

" - living in a communistic hive," Forrestal said.

"Look, I've got a feeling we're going to have a war with these people and I don't know a goddamn thing! Not a goddamn thing!" Truman was actually ranting. Will saw his weakness and he was horrified.

"There are certain things that we do know." The scientist with the Middle European accent looked around the table. "First, they do not wish to annihilate us or they would already have done so - "

"Unless they're bringing up the big guns right now!"

"Well - "

"Well, nothing, Dr. Rosensweig! I'm telling you there could be an invasion coming. And as far as this communist business is concerned, maybe that's why we were singled out and they weren't - they don't need to be invaded because they're already communist."

Dr. Rosensweig spoke gently, trying to calm Truman down. "What 'they,' sir?"

"The Russians, man! They aren't getting treated to this or they'd be screaming in my face right this damn minute, you can bet your britches! Maybe they're being ignored because they're already communists."

"We know so little."

"Hell, they live in a hive! A hive! My blood runs cold."

"Yes, Mr. President, but the fact remains that they have not yet harmed us. Another thing we know is that their craft are vulnerable to thunderstorms. Meaning high-intensity electrical discharges applied in a random manner. Lightning."

"So what? How does that help me regain control of my airspace?"

"There is the beginning of a weapon in that idea, if we must have a weapon."

The President slammed his open hand on the table. "I need weapons now! Give me aircraft cannons with atomic bullets! Give me something that will damn well work right this minute!"

Eisenhower spoke again. "Within the joint mission capabilities, Mr. President, there are capacities that we have that we can apply in this case workably."

"And get this man a translator!"

"He means that we have joint mission capabilities that can be useful now," one of the other brass hats said quickly. Eisenhower flushed purple, obviously furious at Truman's jibe.

"We have substantial forces worldwide," Eisenhower said. "These forces can be raised to a higher level of alertness, with an increase in ground security and air patrols. It is a matter of casting your net, and you will get your fish."

Truman set his jaw. "I don't want to fail. I don't want to see a situation where we shoot and miss."

Van responded. "Mr. President, we will shoot and miss. But we will also shoot and hit."

"The metal is strong," Dr. Rosensweig cautioned.

"The things are made out of tinfoil, sticks and paper," Van said. "This is what they have. The foil is formed out of millions of tiny, absolutely uniform welds, according to Darby's telex. Amazing. They have good tinfoil, good sticks, good paper. But we have bullets that travel a thousand miles an hour and are made of hot lead.

We will have some success."

"I want to know generally if you are opposed to armed action or for it," Truman asked.

Forrestal replied, "I'm very uneasy, frankly. If it wasn't for this communist thing - "

"Yes or no!"

"Well, yes, given the situation. But proceed with caution."

"Hilly?"

"We must show that we are in control."

Will's heart sank. He knew that he should be speaking out. He knew that the President was making a terrible mistake. But he still remained silent.

"Dr. Rosensweig, what does your committee think?"

"Gentlemen," Rosensweig said as he looked around him, "does any scientist here want to shoot?"

The other scientists were silent. The President shuffled his notes.

"As you requested, sir, we discussed this at length before we came here," Rosensweig continued. "We feel that you should wait for developments. An effort should be made to make contact before shooting. There are those among us who believe that certain factors of human history would repeat themselves elsewhere.

Throughout history we have been getting more ethical. We think that this will also prove to be the case with our visitors."

Truman leaned far back in his chair. "More ethical? Now you've really scared me. I fear men who don't know history. Auschwitz is more ethical than something we did before? I would say that we are getting less ethical.