Tintagel (9 page)

"It's that nuclear group. They're from Denver protesting the meltdown. It appears that more radioactive debris is entering the water table in southeastern Colorado, and they think it's your fault because you won't put your foot down."

Katie stared out the window.

Ken went on. "Then there are a few farmers protesting in general. Something about the Mississippi spill. That defoliant, BT-701. They want some heads to roll."

"Shit." She shook her own head, stubbing out her cigarette. "That was a bad one. I really do sympathize with them. Maybe I should fly out there and take a look. Talk to some of the locals. We should run through that emergency relief bill as soon as we can."

Ken chortled. "If we can get Randell off the floor."

"How long's the filibuster been going?"

"Just two days now, but there's a lot of work to do before the holidays set in. And they just don't seem anxious to get any of it done. Particularly Senator Randell."

Katie lit up another cigarette. "Don't worry about Albertson. One phone call will fix his wagon. I'll see to that. Can't have that boy ruining things for us."

She fell silent. Ken waited.

"Listen, Ken," she spoke softly. "Those Japanese terrorists may get their hands on another nuclear device and do something very stupid again. We all know that. And the Saudis can strangle the Japanese economy. We can't have things like this happening so often. It's a vicious circle. We need Floyd. Do what you can about finding out just what happened at that party. I want guest lists, a list of the orchestra members, and any of the hired help. Run a correlation on all of them through DataCom as soon as you can. If there are any terrorist connections, I want to know about them. Besides, I have to do something publicly significant soon if I don't want to get shot at again."

She didn't laugh, nor did she mean her remark to be funny. But Ken knew that for as long as she was President, she would be paying for it. The assassination attempts had become more and more frequent. The splinter groups and the wackos that roamed the country swore to see her dead before the year was out. Her term in office she often saw as a sentence. She had already racked up more assassination attempts than any President in the history of the nation, a record she wasn't too particularly proud of.

As Ken turned to go, Katie looked up from her papers. "Hey, is that music out there?" She glanced beyond the door.

"Sure is," he smiled. "It's synthesized music. All the radio stations have it. Two students at Cal Tech tried to commit suicide a couple of weeks ago to computer music, but the Syndrome wasn't triggered. Those two grad students are practically heroes now."

"I wasn't aware of that."

"Unusual, isn't it? But it's better than no music at all." He grinned. "You should listen to the news at night. There are all sorts of things going on in the world."

"Well, I'll be damned," said the President of the United States.

Nebraska
, Lanier guessed, gazing appreciatively out over the wide vista of green wheat before him.

He had never known the prairie to be so beautiful before, even back in the real world. The sky blazed the purest blue he had ever seen, as huge rich gray-white cumulus puffed along in the lazy breeze that skudded the tops of the bending wheat. Flowers of a wide range of colors grew at the crowns of the low hills in the distance. And at his feet were hollyhocks and Indian paintbrush, and other flowers for which he had no names. In a distant meadow, dandelions washed in the wind like a wave on a golden sea.

It was a perfect world in which to hide.

Lanier paused, letting the vibrations resonate throughout his body, and the landscape.
Floyd Matkin
, he thought,
there
.…

A farmhouse across the field ahead of him was the only human structure nearby. Matkin had to be there.
Why not
? At least it seemed likely. The burdens he carried as the Secretary of State would naturally compel him to seek the security of the pastoral landscapes of middle America. Matkin had grown up in the Midwest, and the Midwest would naturally be a place he might want to return to in times of stress. Times such as these.

A slight chill hovered about Lanier as he walked through the wheat, which was only inches high. He buttoned the wide collar of his long coat, careful to keep the priest's collar in sight for the dreamlings, or anyone else, who might see him. He strolled through the low wheat toward the farmhouse.

Something's out of whack
, he thought suddenly.
Something's wrong
.…

An uneasiness crept into his senses. He felt as if he were being watched. But not by Matkin. Lanier was certain of that much. Something else plagued him. He distinctly had the impression that whatever it was that observed him wasn't quite human. Nightmarish.
Alien
? He looked around at the sheer peacefulness of the scenario. He couldn't tell exactly what bothered him.

He pinched his ear, listening to Vaughan Williams'
Norfolk Rhapsody
, feeling the vibrations ripple through his body.

Then, from behind him came a sound he wasn't at all ready to find out here in the prairie. It sounded like a bass violin being plucked at a great distance: a deep burst, a strong reverberation that faded after a few seconds. He raised his hand to shade out the bright sunshine.

On the horizon, in plain daylight, were five lights of brilliant orange. They moved aloft parallel to the horizon, circling the farmland on which he stood. And they sure as hell looked like spacecraft to him, but nothing like anyone had known on the earth. Whatever they were, they seemed quite intelligent.

That deep, resounding plucking was the only sound they made. Lanier pulsed with adrenalin.
Fear
. This had all the trimmings of a homemade nightmare.

The orange-glowing craft swept behind a hill briefly. But in his sudden paranoia, Lanier felt that a black-clad figure standing in wide, open spaces on the prairie was as conspicuous as a crushed thumb under a ball-peen hammer. How Floyd Matkin got this out of Vaughan Williams'
Rhapsody
baffled him.

He ran for the farmhouse. The orange craft had made a sudden, sweeping turn. A few kilometers off, they were heading directly for the large farmhouse.

Just then, a scream grated forth from the open windows of the farmhouse's second floor. Lanier swiftly leaped the small white picket fence in the front yard. The orange craft had slowed, but were in a direct line to the farmhouse. Whoever screamed upstairs had also seen the strange craft approaching.

Lanier pulled out his Malachi. Another scream pierced the calm that surrounded the farmyard. A cluster of chickens scattered as Lanier ran up to the door.

"Matkin!" he yelled. "Floyd Matkin!" He swung the door open and entered the large living room.

Matkin's voice came down the stairs. "
Jesus! They're coming!
"

Lanier glanced quickly out the back window.

The deep, bass, plucking sound shook the farmhouse. Shutters and walls rattled. What Lanier saw startled him. The five craft were at best two kilometers off. But in the distance, another farmhouse stood against the horizon. The farmhouse seemed to be much larger than this one, and there were a couple of small ranch houses near it. There was also a large barn and two grain silos. Lanier could discern a great deal of farming equipment standing out in the afternoon sun.

As the first of the orange craft swept over the farmhouse and silos, the plucking sound struck again. Lanier watched intensely. The farmhouse suddenly began elongating upward, as if made into taffy, into the bottom of the lead ship. The ship then glowed so brightly that Lanier had to blink to protect his eyes. The farm in the distance was being ingested! The grain silos were then sucked up, stretching into orange columns a hundred meters long. Then up went the farm equipment. The red harvesters became slender, disintegrating crimson streaks, flashing into the bellies of the glowing craft.

Whatever they were, each glowing object absorbed anything that passed beneath it. Anything, that is, that was built by human hands.

And they were heading this way!

"Matkin!" Lanier yelled up the stairs, turning around.

Then he heard a woman's voice. She was speaking softly.

The woman, whoever she was, Lanier realized, could be anyone in this world: a dreamling Matkin's psyche provided as a wife, or a lover for this paradise. He and his companion could be an ordinary farmer and wife out in the gentle Nebraska prairie.

But the screaming.
Why the screams
?

Lanier took the stairs three at a time. "Matkin, I've come to get you out of this!" He gripped the Malachi firmly.

The hallway at the top of the stairs was long, breaking off in either direction of the second floor. At the end of the hallway, off to his left, Lanier glimpsed a quickly fleeing figure as it rounded the corner into another room. His eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the darkness of the second floor.

"Matkin!" He turned in pursuit.

The plucking of the orange craft began phasing into the Vaughan Williams that was playing in Lanier's mind.
This is real
! Lanier thought suddenly.
My

God…!

He reached the end of the long hallway and found a second set of stairs leading down the south side of the farmhouse. The figure, clothed in an off-white, almost formal gown—a
bridal
gown?—was striding out across the front lawn. A woman! She leaped a fence like an antelope, never losing her stride or balance.

She had turned around once, but at Lanier's vantage point it was difficult to recognize her. But she was certainly no farmwife. Young and swift, the dreamling vanished over a small hill that led to a creek. Whoever she was,
whatever
she was, she was captivatingly graceful.

With little time to spare, Lanier retreated back down the hall.

"Matkin! Where are you?" He faced a number of closed doors leading into bedrooms and dens. He started trying the doorknobs, running as he did, down the hallway. Each door was locked.

"Oh, my God! Oh!" came Matkin's desperate voice from behind one of the doors.

Lanier lifted a solid boot and caved in the door with a resounding kick.

Matkin lay completely tied up in bed, looking like a moth's cocoon or an Egyptian mummy out of its sarcophagus. He was completely helpless.

"She did this! Stop her!" he said wildly. "It was a game…" Fear flushed his face as the plucking sound increased, almost as if it were immediately overhead.

An orange light suddenly suffused the entire farmhouse.

The building shook with a penetrating thunder. The walls boomed and chairs moved across the floor. It was too late.

Lanier stumbled backward as Matkin started screaming in the vile orange shadows. He scrambled back into the hallway. He didn't have time to anesthetize Matkin because the man was already dissolving in the mist of his tortured screaming. To his horror. Lanier saw one whole end of the room begin to stretch upward in the fluorescent light.

Matkin's mouth elongated fantastically as he was pulled upward in his bindings. Bed, hutch, chairs, nightstand, everything glowed and lifted. Dissolving as they went.

Lanier spun and leaped out of an open window directly behind him, twisting in a flip that he hoped would land him on his feet. He crashed into a large bush just as the huge orange craft mooned directly overhead. The thing had to be about as big as a football field. And the farmhouse was being sucked up beneath it.

Lanier ran off to the side of the house like a wild man, staying fractionally ahead of the dissolving orange light. He had dropped his Malachi in the jump from the window. It was useless now. His heart seemed like it would burst from his chest. He was filled with utter panic.

Behind a large horse chestnut tree, he saw the slanted shelter of a tornado cellar. Without even thinking of what to do, or how to do it, he simply dove into its dark opening as if he were diving into a secluded swimming hole.

He smashed into the wooden stairs leading down to the musky dark of the cellar, rolling off on his right shoulder in a judo fall he had learned years ago in the air force. He crashed into a pile of boxes containing turnips and potatoes. They tumbled around him in the darkness, burying him completely.

And the vibrations shook him to the bones as the five craft drifted overhead, sucking up the farmhouse and everything around it. Pain rocketed throughout Lanier's body, as though he had broken his shoulder.

Yet nothing happened to him.

The slanted shelter of the door to the cellar disappeared, but the stairs remained. Through the potatoes that concealed him, he could see the orange glow recede. Whatever the light touched, it absorbed. He froze with fear, not daring to move.

What a nightmare
! he thought.
Who on earth could have gotten this out of Vaughan Williams
?

With the shelter gone, the afternoon light slanted down into the cellar. When the vibrations of the craft could no longer be felt, and the orange glow had gone completely, Lanier rolled over onto a crate of turnips. Painfully, he lifted himself to the stairs. He could no longer hear anything but the
Norfolk Rhapsody
coming from the transceiver in his earlobe.

The ships were gone.

Carefully, he craned his head up out of the cellar. The only thing left standing was the single horse chestnut tree that stood next to the storm cellar. That was it.

Like an incredible vacuum cleaner, the orange spacecraft had scoured the landscape clean of any human presence. All that was left of the large farmhouse was the crater of its basement. Lanier walked over to the hole it had left, and saw pipes spouting jets of water like severed arteries. He could smell gas.

Nothing remained, absolutely nothing. The fence was gone. The tractor was gone. Even the chickens were gone. Not a feather remained behind.

Lanier pushed back a strand of brown hair from his eyes. He stood dumbfounded.