The Forge of God (5 page)

This week, he was in San Diego. He had not been in San Diego since 1954, when he had covered the flight trials of the first jet fighter seaplane, the
Sea Dart
, in San Diego Bay. The city had changed greatly since then; it was no longer a sleepy Navy town. He had been booked in the new and stylish Hotel Inter-Continental, on the harbor, and from his tenth-story window could see the entire bay.

In those years, he had been a wire service reporter with Reuters, concentrating on science stories whenever possible. The world, however, had seemed to fall into a deep and troubled sleep in the 1950s. Few of his science stories had received much attention. Science was equated with H-bombs; politics was the sexier and more easily encompassed subject of the time. Then he had flown to Moscow to cover an agricultural conference, as part of the background for a planned book on the Russian biologist Lysenko and the Stalinist cult of Lysenkoism. That had been in late September.

The conference had dragged on for five excruciatingly dull days, with no meat for his book and worse, no stories to convince Reuters he even had a clue as to why he was there, On the last day of the conference, news of the launch of the world's first artificial moon, a 184-pound silvery metal ball called
Sputnik
, had come just in time to save his career.
Sputnik
had returned science to the forefront of world journalism. Trevor Hicks had suddenly found his focus: space. He had buried his book on Lysenkoism and forged ahead without a backward glance.

He had shed a wife—there really was no kinder word for it—in 1965, and had lived with and broken up with three women since. Currently, he was a confirmed bachelor, though he had fancied the reporter from
National Geographic
he had met at the
Galileo
flyby celebration in Pasadena last year. She had not fancied him.

Trevor Hicks was not just accumulating a greater store of historical memories; he was growing old. His hair was solidly gray. He kept in shape as best he could, but…

He drew the draperies on the bay and the glittering, Disneylandish conglomeration of shops and restaurants called Seaport Village.

His portable computer sat silent on the room's maple-veneer desk, its unfolded screen filled with black characters on a cream background. The screen looked remarkably like a framed sheet of typing paper. Hicks sat on the chair and gnawed a callus on the first knuckle of his middle finger. He had gained that callus, he thought idly, from thousands of hours with pencil in hand, taking notes that he could now just as easily type on the lap-sized computer. Many younger reporters did not have calluses on their middle fingers.

"That's it," he said, turning the machine off and pushing the chair back. "Nothing for it. Chuck it." He closed the screen and put on his shoes. The evening before, he had seen an old sailing ship and a maritime museum on the wharf, just a short hike.

Whistling, he locked the hotel room behind him and walked on powerful short legs down the hallway.

"What do you expect mankind to find in space, Mr. Hicks?" asked the news manager, a young, bushy-haired man in his late twenties. The microphone on its tilting arm and spring suspension poked up under Hicks's nose, forcing him to lift his chin slightly to speak. Hicks dared not adjust it now; it was live. The interview was being taped on an ancient black and gray reel-to-reel deck behind the news manager.

"The war for resources is hotting up," Hicks said. More romance than that. "The sky is full of metals, iron and nickel and even platinum and gold… Flying mountains called asteroids. We can bring those mountains to Earth and mine them in orbit. Some of them are almost pure metal."

"But what would convince, say, a teenage boy or girl to study for a career in space?"

"They have a choice," Hicks said, still cold to the microphone and the interviewer, his mind elsewhere. Call it a reporter's instinct, but he had been feeling uneasy for days. "They can elect to stay on Earth and live an existence, a life, very little different from the lives their parents led, or they can try their wings on the high frontier. I don't need to convince the young folks out there who are really going into space in the next ten or twenty years. They know already."

"Preaching to the choir?" the news manager asked.

"Rather," Hicks said. Space was no longer controversial. Hardly the sort of topic likely to get much air time on a rock-and-surf radio station.

"Did fears of 'preaching to the choir' lead you to write your novel, perhaps in hopes of finding a wider audience?"

"I beg pardon?"

"An audience beyond science books. Dabbling in science fiction."

"Not dabbling. I've read science fiction since I was a lad in Somerset. Arthur Clarke was born in Somerset, you know. But to answer your question: no. My novel is not written for the masses, more's the pity. Anyone who enjoys a solid novel should enjoy mine, but I must warn them"—oh, Lord, Hicks thought—not just cold; bloody well frozen—"it's technical. No ignoramuses admitted. Dust jacket locks tight on their approach."

The manager laughed politely. "I enjoyed it," he said, 'and I suppose that means I'm not an ignoramus."

"Certainly not," Hicks allowed.

"Of course you've heard of the Australian reports."

"No. Sorry."

"They've been coming in all day."

"Yes, well, it's only ten o'clock in the morning and I slept late." His neck hair was standing on end. He regarded the news manager steadily, eyes slightly protruding.

"I was hoping we could get a comment from you, an expert on extraterrestrial phenomena."

"Tell me, and I'll comment."

"The details are sketchy now, but apparently the Australian government is asking for advice on dealing with the presence of an alien spacecraft on their soil."

"Pull the other one," Hicks said reflexively.

"That's what's been reported."

"Sounds loony."

The manager's face reddened. "I only bring the news, I, don't make it."

"I have been waiting all my life for a chance to report on a true extraterrestrial encounter. Call me a romantic, but I've always held out hope as to the possibility of such an encounter. I have always been disappointed."

"You think the report's a hoax?"

"I don't know anything about it."

"But if there
were
alien visitors, you'd be among the first to go talk with them?"

"I'd invite them home to meet my mum. My mother."

"You'd welcome them in your house?"

"Certainly," Hicks said, feeling himself warming. Now he could show his true wit and style.

"Thank you, Mr. Hicks." The manager addressed his microphone now, cutting Hicks out. "Trevor Hicks is a scientist and a science reporter whose most recent book is a novel,
Star home
, dealing with the always-fascinating subjects of space colonization and first contact with extraterrestrial beings. Coming next on '90's News: another attempt to capture drift sand in Pacific Beach, and the birth of a gray whale at Sea World."

"May I see these Australian reports?" Hicks asked when the news manager had finished. He thumbed through the thin sheaf of wire service printouts. They were sketchy at best. A new Ayers Rock in the middle of the Great Victoria Desert. Geologists investigating. Anomalous formation.

"Remarkable," he said, returning the sheaf to the news manager. "Thank you."

"Anytime," the manager said, opening the door.

A bright yellow cab awaited him in the station parking lot. Hicks climbed into the back seat, neck hair still prickling. "Can you find a newsstand?" he asked the driver.

"Newsstand? Not in Clairemont Mesa."

"I need a paper. A good paper. Morning edition."

"I know a place on Adams Avenue that sells the New York
Times
, but it's going to be yesterday's."

Hicks blinked and shook his head. His technological reflexes were slow. "To the Inter-Continental, then," he said. Large parts of his brain still lived twenty years in the past. On his desk in the hotel was a device that could get him all the news he needed: his computer. With its built-in modem, he could access a dozen big newsnets within the hour. He could also peek into a few esoteric space bulletin boards for information the newspapers might not deem reliable enough to print. And there was always the enigmatic
Regulus
. Hicks hadn't accessed
Regulus
during his periodic ramblings through the boards and nets, but he had been given the number and ID code by a friend, Chris Riley at Cal Tech.

Regulus
, Riley had told him, knew unholy things about space and technology.

To hell with promoting a book. Hicks hadn't felt this charged since 1969, when he had covered the lunar landing for
New Scientist
.

Arthur lay in bed, arms folded behind his head. Francine sat against bunched pillows beside him. She and Martin had returned the day before, to find him preoccupied with deep secrets. A preliminary task force scheduling and planning book was spread open but unread in his lap.

He was assessing a life without Harry. It seemed bleak, even when charged with mystery and events of more than historic significance.

Francine, black hair loose around her shoulders, glanced at her husband every few minutes, but did not interrupt his reverie. Arthur intercepted these glances without reacting. He almost wished she would ask.

He had spent all of his adult life knowing that Harry was available for discussion, by phone or letter; available for visits on a day's notice, whenever they weren't both too involved in work. They had matured together, double-dated (quaintly enough); Harry had approved wholeheartedly of Francine when a much younger Arthur had introduced them. "I'll marry her if you don't," Harry had said, only half joking. Together, for ten years, Francine and Arthur had arranged meeting after meeting of various eligible and sensible women and Harry, but Harry had always politely drifted away from these good matches. It had surprised everybody when he met and married Ithaca Springer in New York in 1983. The marriage, against all predictions, had prospered. Young socialite banker's daughter and scientist; not a likely success story, yet Ithaca had proved remarkably adept at keeping up with the rudiments of her husband's work, and had brought Harry a most useful dowry: loving, persistent training in the social graces.

Both had kept a stubborn independence, but Arthur had sensed early on that Harry could no longer do without Ithaca. How would Ithaca get along without Harry?

Arthur hadn't told Francine yet. Somehow, the news seemed Harry's property, to be dispensed with his permission alone, but that prohibition was silly and Arthur's wall of resistance was wearing thin.

Tomorrow morning he would fly to Vandenberg and be introduced to the "evidence." That would be the biggest moment of his life, bar none, and yet here he was on the edge of tears.

His best friend might be dead within a year.

"Shit," he said softly.

"All right," Francine said, putting down her own book and rolling to lay her head on his shoulder. He closed the notebook and stroked her forehead. She wound her fingers through the thick salt-and-pepper patch of hair on his chest. "Are you going to tell me? Or is it more security stuff?"

"Not security," he said. He ached to tell her about that. Perhaps in a few weeks he could. News was leaking rapidly; he suspected that soon even the Death Valley find would be public knowledge. Everybody was too excited.

"What, then?"

"Harry."

"Well, what about him?"

The tears started to come.

"What's wrong with Harry?" Francine asked.

"He has cancer. Leukemia. He's working with me on… this project, but he might not see it through to the end."

"Jesus," Francine said, laying her palm flat on his chest. "Isn't he getting treatment?"

"Of course. He just doesn't think it will save him."

"Five more years. We keep on hearing five more years, and it won't be a killer anymore."

"He doesn't have five years. He may not have one."

Francine hugged him closer and they lay together in silence for a moment. "How do you feel?" she finally asked.

"About Harry? It makes me feel…"He thought for a moment, frowning. "I don't know."

"Betrayed?" she asked softly.

"No. We've always been very independent friends. Harry doesn't owe me anything, and I don't owe him anything. Except the friendship, and…"

"Being there."

"Yeah. Now he's not going to be there."

"You don't know that."

"He does. You should have seen him."

"He looks bad?"

"No. He looks pretty good, actually." Arthur tried to imagine one's entire body a battleground, with cancer spreading from point to point, or through the blood, unchecked, a kind of biological madness, a genetic suicide aided by mindless, lifeless clumps of protein and nucleic acid. He hated all errant microscopic things with a sudden passion. Why could not God have designed human bodies with seamless efficiency, that they might face the challenge of everyday life feeling at the very least internally secure?

"How was the visit?" Francine asked.

"We had a good couple of days. We'll see each other tomorrow, too, and that's all I can tell you."

"A week, two weeks?"

"I'll call if it's longer than a week."

"Sounds like something big."

"I'll tell you just one more thing," he said, aching with greater intensity to reveal it all, to share this incredible news with the person he loved most on Earth. (Or did he love Francine less than Harry? Different love. Different niches.)

"Don't spill the beans," she warned him, smiling slightly.

"No beans, no cats, just this. If it wasn't for Harry, right now I'd be the happiest man on Earth."

"Jesus," she said again. "Must be something."

He wiped his eyes with a corner of the flannel bed sheet. "Yup."

Edward Shaw swirled the spoon in the cup of coffee and stared at the glass port mounted at head level in the sealed chamber door. He had slept soundly during the night. The chamber was as quiet as the desert. The clean white walls and hotel-style furniture made it reasonably comfortable. He could request books and watch anything he wished on the TV in one corner: two hundred channels, the chamber supervisor informed him.