Rhubarb (31 page)

As Martin crested the hill, people were clamoring off the
roof of the RV as if late for a Black Friday sale. They handed their tripods
down to a forest of waving hands. People spilled out onto the road, making way
for the RV. Some of them had linked hands, and were stepping back slowly,
keeping the crowd in check, clearing a path.

The show intro ended, followed by a few seconds of silence.
And then Lee, Lee as he should be, but breathless and clipped by the cell
phone’s range, spoke to Martin through the truck’s radio. “I’ll be right with
you. The danger of live radio is that sometimes things don’t go as planned. I
beg your patience, Waker Nation.”

Familiar pan flute and synthesizer bumper music toodled out
in place of Lee. And over that, a prerecorded announcer’s voice said, “Please
stay tuned. We are experiencing technical difficulties.
Beyond Insomnia with
Lee Danvers
will return shortly on the Weirdmerica Radio Network.”

The RV’s lights glimmered on, and it maneuvered back and
forth in the tight pullout. It soon squirmed free onto the road, and backed
north, leaving the lane clear for Martin to make a turn south toward the
portal. A solitary figure in the middle of it all waved and pointed, directing
the crowd like a conductor. The recording repeated.

Lee lifted his arms as if for a finale, and through the
magic of radio, the gate opened. Several men had lifted it off its hinges and
swung it into the field, pivoted on the chained end.

Lee hustled through his own personal Red Sea up the hill
toward Martin with his phone still pressed to the side of his head. “This is
amazing,” called Martin, when they converged about a hundred yards from the
gate. But Lee put a finger to his lips. He opened the passenger door but didn’t
get in. The pan flute toodling ceased and was replaced by a rustling and air
buffeting into a microphone.

“Waker Nation, welcome to Montana,” said Lee, and a few
seconds later the radio repeated it. A cheer erupted across Big Thunder Valley.

“Folks.” Lee waved frantically at Martin to turn off the
truck’s radio. “I can’t tell you how excited I am about tonight’s show and to
be able to share this unprecedented, potentially historic, moment, not only for
Beyond Insomnia
, but for our planet and very species, with you. Since
the discovery of this phenomenon, top scientists, in cooperation with the
Weirdmerica Radio Network and wakernation.com, have been analyzing the
collected video evidence, as well as completing geologic surveys, magnetic
resonance scans, studying satellite thermo-photography, and…”

Oh my god, thought Martin. He just makes this stuff up.

“…believe they have determined the properties of the
phenomenon. Today, at an emergency symposium in…in…”

“Great Falls,” Martin suggested.

“…in Great Falls, Montana, these scientists assembled a
package of instruments that are designed to activate, study, and potentially
pass through the phenomenon to communicate with whatever is on the other side.
I have been given the distinct honor of riding along for the delivery of this
instrument package to the phenomenon itself. And I can’t tell you how thrilled
I am to bring you all with me. It’s time for the rest of the world to wake up
and see that the Waker Nation is the smartest audience of any radio show in the
world!”

After a few seconds of delay, the crowd roared. Lee stepped
away from the truck and took it all in. He gave Martin a grin. “Tonight,” he
said as the cheers faded, “we—not a government, not a military, not NASA or the
ESA, no church, or secret cabal—yes, we, We The People, will be the first to
reach out our hands in friendship to an extraterrestrial intelligence, to knock
on their door and welcome them to our world as one!”

Another thunderous roar.

He was Mick Jagger.

“Are you ready?”

He was Barack Obama.

“Then let’s get started!”

He was William Shatner.

He climbed in the cab. “Wakers, I’m here with a very special
guest. George Henr…in…son, from the University of New Mexico at Las Cruces.
George is a physicist who worked with JPL on the Dawn Probe to the asteroids
Vesta and Ceres, and has been selected by his colleagues to deliver the
instrument package to the phenomenon. Let’s wake up and welcome him to the
show.”

As the assembly cheered, Lee fumbled with his phone. It
beeped and he held it out on his palm.

“Welcome, George,” said Lee, then nodded to Martin.

“Um. It’s a pleasure to be with you tonight?” said Martin.
Lee shook his head, chewing his lower lip, and gestured for more. Martin
shrugged. “We are excited to be able to study this phenomenon with so many from
your audience.”

Lee gave Martin a thumbs-up. “So much of science is done in
a lab, with few witnesses. It’s a unique opportunity for people to see the work
that you do. Can you tell us a little bit about what we can expect to see
tonight?”

“Um, yes.” Martin threw his hands up, but Lee egged him on.
“We will approach the phenomenon, or the portal, as some call it, from the
northwest, coming up the hill from Deaver Creek. We will need everyone to stay
back, off the road. There is no danger from the portal itself, but we don’t
want to run over any of your guests.”

“I’m sure we all thank you for that,” said Lee, then waved
for more.

“We will activate the…instruments…which repeat the frequency
ranges we’ve obtained from our scans. This will activate the portal. Then we’ll
send in the probe.”

“If it works, it should be quite a show,” said Lee, “so
everyone have their cameras ready. George, will the photographic evidence
collected here today be valuable to your research?”

“Absolutely?” Martin shrugged. “We are setting up a database
for photos and videos to be submitted to the research project, all through
wakernation.com.”

Yes,
mouthed Lee and gave Martin another thumbs-up.
“Excellent. Also, tonight we’d like to welcome a new sponsor who’s woken up and
smelled the coffee. FastNCo. hardware has graciously provided the delivery
vehicle for the instrument package tonight. FastNCo.’s fastening hardware can
be found across the nation, so be sure and follow the FastNCo. trucks to fine
retailers for the best-quality products for the professional, the
do-it-yourselfer, or the visitor from another world. Let’s hear it for
FastNCo.”

Before the resulting cheer, Martin heard a rumbling, more
distant than the Screwmobile’s engine. Oh my god, thought Martin. The portal.
But he stayed awake and no swirl of light appeared.

“Folks, I think we’re about ready,” said Lee. “George? Are
we a go?”

Martin opened the door and stood on the doorframe to get a
better view.

“George?” Lee asked again.

A line of red and blue flashing lights was approaching from
the north, followed by even more lights. Not the streams of hiking Wakers with
flashlights, but headlights, bright and high. A convoy of lumbering trucks.

“We have to go, now,” said Martin.

“We’ve been given the green light,” said Lee.

Martin headed west as fast as the field would let him, but
kept an eye to the north. Lee grabbed onto the door and almost dropped his
phone. “Let’s have a countdown, Waker Nation. T minus one minute.”

“Too long,” Martin cried. The crowd across the road,
blocking 360 to the north, began to thin. Martin heard a whoop and a bloop of a
siren, and an unintelligible PA announcement, and floored it. The last thirty
yards were smoother than the rest, but the compacted gravel of the pullout was
a welcome sensation under the truck. Martin barely braked as he bumped out onto
the road—and shouted until he knew they hadn’t flipped over and murdered a
bunch of Wakers.

“Ten…!” called Lee.

The open-mouthed crowd raised their arms and voices as the
truck raced by. Flash. Flash. Flash. Cameras from every direction.
Constellations of supernovas lit their path.

“Nine…!”

One patrol car squeezed through the Wakers in Martin’s
rearview mirror, then another. Lee stopped counting, seeing the chase. Objects
in mirror may be closer than they appear. “Go. Go. Go,” he said.

“I’m going,” said Martin.

A third patrol car broke through.

“Wakers. They’re trying to stop us…they’re trying to stop
you from knowing the truth,” said Lee.

The speedometer climbed, but not nearly fast enough. Martin
hoped to be more than exceeding the legal speed limit by the time they reached
the bridge and the base of the hill. He couldn’t let the patrol cars catch him
on the slope.

The crowd counted off three, or maybe four, as they thumped
across the bridge. The patrol cars neared, but then backed off. People had
begun to crowd the road. Whether stepping out to hail their guru’s passage, or
deliberately trying to slow the evil government vehicles in the cause of
scientific justice, the Screwmobile gained ground.

“Hold on,” Martin called as he made the corner. He could
make out the individual faces of the people he would kill if he took the curve
a whisker too fast.

Martin whooped when he hit the bottom of the hill at eighty-three
miles per hour, leaving a slipstream of cheering, waving, flashing Wakers in
their wake. The patrol cars gained the hill, but the crowd still bogged them
down.

“You know what you’re doing?” called Lee.

“This one to seal us in, and this one to activate the
portal,” said Martin.

“Shouldn’t you do that now?” asked Lee. The Gap loomed
closer and closer.

Martin tapped the icon to activate the environmental field,
partly hoping nothing would happen. This dampened the crowd noise, but not
much. “The windows,” Martin screamed. “Roll up the windows.”

They cranked frantically, shutting out even more of the
crowd’s roar. Then Martin stabbed the portal icon. A single patrol car raced up
in his mirror, having beaten the crowd.

“Did it work?” asked Lee.

On both sides of the road, as if in slow motion, people
slumped, falling into piles of humanity. The patrol car slowed.

A singularity flickered into existence in The Gap. In a
millisecond, a maw gaped open, swirling like an electric toilet bowl. Martin’s
scream, and Lee’s, and the Screwmobile’s straining roar melded in the swirl and
chaos.

Light shot out like a chameleon’s tongue and yanked them in.

Disconsciousness.

Extrusion of life and light.

Existence snapped back into darkness. The myriad flashes and
flashlights had been replaced by the dashboard lights and a swath of stars so
thick it would have made Martin want to run the windshield wipers, if he hadn’t
still been so busy screaming.

He separated from the seat, weightless, but forced himself
back in place with both hands on the steering wheel. Lee braced himself against
the ceiling.

The RPMs raced toward the red. The empty Diet Mountain Dew
cup drifted out of the cup holder. The radio box wanted to float away, but
Martin elbowed it against the seat.

They both stopped screaming at the same time, as if in
rehearsed agreement.

“Are we dead?” asked Martin, letting his foot off the gas.

“God, I hope not,” said Lee. He checked his phone, then
showed it to Martin. “No Service,” it said. “I guess I’m off the air.”

“Could be worse. They could be charging you roaming fees,”
said Martin.

Lee laughed. “I’ll probably get better ratings with this
dead air than I’ve ever had. Where are we?” The Milky Way spread out ahead of
them, but an object loomed in the mirrors—not so much visible, more an absence
of stars.

“I suppose I press this now,” said Martin, and tapped the
docking icon, even as Lee raised serious wordless doubts.

They accelerated, but backward. In unison, Martin and Lee
zipped their seat belts across their shoulders. The truck turned, slowly, to
face their destination. An asteroid, or some kind of roughly natural body, hung
nearby, dwarfed by the unnatural, scale-defying object.

The Screwmobile’s headlights illuminated the thing like a
firefly over an aircraft carrier. Parts, for it couldn’t all be taken in at
once, resembled shopping malls stuck onto hives of aircraft hangars, and not
the little ones, but the Goodyear Blimp-sized ones. Those clusters were glommed
fractally onto a drunken parade of airports, convention centers, and domed
stadiums. Every facet, large and small, too many to count, had been decorated
with a logo, the sight of which made Martin’s mouth water. He felt a nascent
sense of desserts, indulgent but at the same time wholesome.

“This has got to be the place,” said Martin.

“I probably should have asked this earlier, but what’s the
plan when we get in there?” asked Lee.

Martin felt for the staple gun. “Find Cheryl and get out,”
he said.

“That’s it?” asked Lee.

“Sue me. I’m a little out of my element here,” said Martin.
“I thought you were going to get some blurry footage.”

Lee unzipped his bag and extracted his iPad. He held it up
to the windshield and scanned the view. Martin leaned over to watch the screen.

“It’s 10:23 Mountain Time on…I can’t remember the date…” Lee
narrated. “And we’ve passed safely through the portal. I don’t know where we
are, but there’s an asteroid or ice body close by. I’ll try and get a shot of
it. We are approaching, by the apparent use of some kind of tractor beam, a
large ship or space complex. As you can see…” Then he shut it off.

“What?” asked Martin.

“Screw it,” said Lee. “No one’s ever going to believe us
anyway. That’s if we make it home.” He looked as if he wanted to toss the iPad out
the window as so much fodder for Native American tears. But he stuffed it back
in his bag and zipped it all shut.

“What about the proof?” asked Martin.

“No one wants proof,” Lee replied. “The truth’s never
interesting.”