better chance of slipping entirely out of Falkirk's notice.
"A mistake," Bennell repeated. "Or rather . . . an example of the
human race's typical xenophobia-hatred and suspicion of strangers, of
anyone that's different. When we first viewed some of the videodisks I
mentioned, when we first learned about the extraterrestrials' desire to
pass these powers to other species, we apparently misinterpreted what we
were seeing. Initially, we thought they were taking possession of those
they changed, inserting an alien consciousness into a host body. I
guess it's an understandable paranoia, after all the horror novels and
movies. We thought perhaps we had a parasitical race on our hands. But
that misapprehension was quickly dispelled when we'd seen more of their
disks and had time to puzzle out some of the finer points. Now we know
we were wrong."
"I don't know it," Falkirk said. "I think you were all infected and
then, under the control of these creatures, you began to downplay the
danger. Or ... or the disks are merely propaganda. Lies."
"No," Bennell said. "For one thing, I don't think these creatures would
be capable of lying. Besides, if they could so easily take us over,
they wouldn't require propaganda. And they sure as hell wouldn't bring
us this encyclopedia that tells us they're going to change us."
Ginger had noticed Brendan Cronin following the discussion even more
avidly than everyone else, and now he said, "I know the religious
metaphor may not be entirely appropriate here. But if they feel they
come to us as the servants of God . . . and if they come to hand down
to us these miraculous gifts, then you could almost say they were
angels, archangels bestowing special blessings."
Falkirk laughed harshly. "Oh, that's rich, Cronin! Do you really think
you can get to me from a religious angle? Me?
Even if I were a religious fanatic, like my dead and rotting parents, I
wouldn't buy these creatures as angels. Angels with faces like buckets
of worms?"
"Worms? What's he talking about?" Brendan asked Bennell.
The scientist said, "They look very different from us. Bipeds with
forearms rather like us, yes. Six digits instead of five. But that's
about all we have in common in the way of looks. Initially, they seem
repulsive. In fact, repulsive is a mild word. But in time . . . you
begin to see they have a certain beauty of their own."
"Beauty of their own," Falkirk said scornfully. "Monsters is what they
are, and they'd only have beauty in the eyes of other monsters, so
you've just proven my point, Bennell."
Ginger's anger with Falkirk drove her to take a couple of steps toward
him in spite of his submachine gun. "You damn fool," she said. "What
does it matter what they look like?
The important thing is what they are. And evidently they're creatures
with a deep sense of purpose, noble purpose. No matter how different
they look, the things we have in common with them are greater than our
differences. My father always said that, as much as intelligence, the
things that separated us from the beasts were courage, love, friendship,
compassion, and empathy. Do you realize what courage it took for them
to set out on this journey across God knows how many thousands of
millions of miles? So that's one big thing we share with them-courage.
And love, friendship? They must have those too. Otherwise how would
they have built a civilization that could reach to the stars? You need
love and friendship to have a reason to build. Compassion? They've got
a mission to bring other intelligent species to a higher rung on the
evolutionary ladder. Surely, that takes compassion. And empathy? Isn't
that obvious? They empathize with our fear and loneliness, with our
dread that we're adrift in a meaningless universe. They empathize so
much that they commit themselves to these incredible journeys on the
mere hope of encountering us and bringing us the news that we are not
alone." Suddenly she knew her anger wasn't directed so much at Falkirk
as at this horrid blindness in the human species that led it frequently
into spirals of self-destruction. "Look at me," she told the colonel.
"I'm a Jew. And there are those who'd say I'm not the same as they are,
gentile babies-there are the ignorant who believe that garbage. Is
there any difference between that sick antisemitism and your stubborn
insistence, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that these
creatures come to drink our blood? Let us go, for God's sake. Stop the
endless hatred here. Stop it now. We have a destiny that leaves no
room for hatred."
"Bravo," Falkirk said acidly. "A very nice speech." Even as he spoke,
the colonel swung his machine gun toward General Alvarado and said,
"Don't go for your gun, General. I assume you're carrying one. I won't
be shot. I want to die in the glorious fire."
"Fire?" Bennell said.
Falkirk grinned. "That's right, Doctor. The glorious fire
that will consume us all and save the world from this infection."
"Christ!" Bennell said. "That's why you didn't bring more men with you.
You didn't want to sacrifice more than necessary. " He turned to
Alvarado. "Bob, the crazy bastard's gotten into the tactical nukes."
Ginger knew that Alvarado was feeling precisely what she felt at this
news, for his face twisted and went instantly gray.
"Two backpack nukes," Falkirk said. "One right outside that door. The
other in the main chamber downstairs." He checked his watch. "Less than
three minutes, and we'll all be vapor. Not even time left for you to
change me, I'll bet. How long does it take to change one of us to one
of you? Longer than three minutes, I suppose."
Abruptly, the machine gun tore out of Falkirk's hands as if it had
acquired life and taken flight, wrenching loose of his grasp with such
force that it cut his fingers and tore off a couple of his nails. At
the same instant, Lieutenant Horner screamed as his machine gun erupted
from his grasp with equal suddenness and force. Ginger saw both weapons
spin through the air and drop with a clatter, one at the feet of Ernie
Block and the other at Jack Twist's side, both of whom jubilantly took
up the guns and covered Falkirk and Horner.
"You?" Ginger said wonderingly, turning to Dom.
"Me, yeah, I think," he said breathlessly. "I ... I didn't know I
could do it until I had to. Sort of the way Brendan heals people."
Stunned, Dr. Bennell said, "But it doesn't matter. Falkirk said three
minutes."
"Two," Falkirk said, cradling one bleeding hand in the other and
grinning happily. "Two minutes now."
"And backpack nukes can't be disarmed," Alvarado said. Running, Dom
shouted: "Brendan, you take the one outside this door. I'll get the one
downstairs."
"They can't be disarmed!" Alvarado repeated.
Brendan knelt beside the nuclear device and winced when he saw the time
remaining on the clock. One minute, thirtythree seconds.
He didn
't know what to do. He had healed three people, yes, and he had
caused some pepper shakers to whirl through
the air, and he had even generated light out of nothingness. But he
remembered how the pepper shakers had gotten out of control and how the
chairs had leapt off the diner floor and smashed against the ceiling.
And he knew if he made one false move with the detonator in this bomb,
he would not be saved by all his superhuman power.
One minute, twenty-six seconds.
The others had come out of the cavern where the ship rested and had
gathered around. Even Falkirk and Horner remained under guard, though
there was no reason for them to try to get their guns. They trusted in
the efficacy of the bomb.
One minute, eleven seconds.
"If I smash the detonator," Brendan said to Alvarado, "pulverize it,
would that-"
"No," the general said. "Once armed, the detonator will trigger the
bomb automatically if you try to wreck it."
One-oh-three.
Faye knelt beside him. "Just make it pop right up out of the damn bomb,
Brendan. The way Dom tore those guns out of their hands."
Brendan stared at the rapidly changing numerals on the detonator's clock
and tried to imagine that entire device popping free of the rest of the
bomb.
Nothing happened.
Fifty-four seconds.
Cursing the slowness of the elevator, Dom virtually flew out of the
doors when they opened, with Ginger close behind him, and dashed to the
backpack nuke standing in the center of the main cavern on the bottom
level of Thunder Hill. Heart pounding even faster than his stomach was
churning, he crouched beside the bomb and said, "Jesus," when he saw the
digital clock.
Fifty seconds.
"You can do it," Ginger said, stooping at the other side of the hateful
device. "You've got a destiny."
"Here goes."
"Love you," she said.
"Love you," he said, as surprised as she was by that statement.
Forty-two seconds.
He raised his hands over the nuclear device, and he felt the rings
appearing immediately in his palms.
Forty seconds.
Brendan had broken out in a sweat.
Thirty-nine seconds.
He strained, trying to work the magic that he knew was in him. But
though the stigmata burned on his palms, and in spite of the fact that
he could feel the power surging in him, he could not focus on the ur ent
task. He kept thinking about what could go wrong, and that in some way
he would be responsible if it did go wrong, and the more he thought the
less he could direct the miraculous energy within him.
Thirty-four seconds.
Parker Faine pushed between two onlookers and dropped to his knees
beside Brendan. "No offense, Father, but maybe the problem is that you,
being a Jesuit, are just too damn prone to intellectualize. Maybe this
requires going with your gut. Maybe what this needs is the wild-ass,
go-foreit, tryanything, gonzo, berserker commitment of an artist." He
thrust his own large hands toward the detonator and shouted: "Come out
of there you fucker!"
With a snap of wires, the detonator leapt out of its niche in the bomb
package and straight into Parker's hands.
There were cries of relief and congratulations, but Brendan said, "The
clock's still counting down."
Eleven seconds.
"Yeah, but it's not connected to the bomb any more," Parker said,
grinning broadly.
Alvarado said, "But there's a conventional explosive charge in the damn
detonator."
The detonator erupted out of the bomb, into Dom's hands. He saw the
clock still counting, and he sensed it had to be stopped even though
there was no longer a chance of a nuclear explosion. So he simply
willed it to stop, and the lighted numerals froze at 0:03.
0:03.
Parker, unaccustomed to the role of magician, panicked at this secondary
crisis. Certain his power was depleted, he chose a course of action
perfectly in character. With a war cry to rival John Wayne in one of
the Duke's old movies, Parker turned and threw the detonator toward the
far wall of the cavern, as if lobbing a grenade. He knew he could not
cast it clear to the other side of the chamber, but he hoped he could
pitch it far enough. Even as it left his hand, he flung himself to the
floor, as the others had already done.
Dom was kissing Ginger when the explosion sounded overhead, and they
both jumped. For an instant he thought Brendan had failed to disarm the
other device, then realized a nuclear explosion would have brought the
ceiling down on them.
"The detonator," she said.
"Come on," he said. "Let's see if anyone's hurt."
The lift crawled upward. When they arrived at the second level, the
main chamber was filled with scores of Depository staff members, all
carrying guns and responding to the sound of battle.
Holding Ginger's hand, Dom pushed through the crowd, toward the place
where he had left Brendan with the first backpack nuke. He saw Faye,
Sandy, and Ned. Then Brendan-alive, unhurt. Jorja, Marcie. Parker
loomed on his right and gave both him and Ginger a bear hug. "You
shoulda seen me, kids. If they'd had both me and Audie Murphy, World
War 11 would've been over in about six months."
"I'm beginning to see why Dom admires you so," Ginger said.
Parker raised his eyebrows. "But of course, my dear! To know me is to
love me."
A sudden cry of alarm rose, which jolted Dom because he thought all
danger was past. When he turned, he saw that Falkirk had dodged away
from Jack and Ernie in the turmoil and had wrenched a revolver from one
of the Thunder Hill staff. Everyone fell back from him.
"For Christ's sake," Jack shouted, "it's over, Colonel. It's over, damn
you."
But Falkirk had no intention of resuming his private war. His gray
translucent eyes shone with madness. "Yes," he said. "It's over, and I
won't be changed like the rest of you. You won't get me. " Before
anyone could reach him, or before anyone could think to tear the weapon
from his hands with telekinetic power, he thrust the barrel of the
revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
With a cry of horror, Ginger looked away from the falling corpse, and
Dom turned his head, too. It was not the bloody death itself that
repelled but the stupid, pointless waste when, at last, humankind had
within its grasp the secret of immortality.
3.
Transcendence
As the staff of Thunder Hill filled the cavern, milling around the ship
that most had never seen before, Ginger and Dom and the other witnesses
followed Miles Bennell into the vessel.
The interior was not dramatic, but as plain as the exterior, with none
of the complex and powerful machinery that one expected in a craft
capable of such a journey. Miles Bennell explained that the builders
had advanced beyond machinery as humankind understood it, perhaps even
beyond physics as humankind understood it. There was one long chamber
within, and it was for the most part gray, drab, featureless. The warm
golden luminosity which had filled the vessel on the night of July 6-and
which Brendan had remembered in his dreams was not visible now. There
was only a line of ordinary work lights that the scientists had strung
for their convenience.
In spite of its plainness, the chamber had a warmth, appeal, and magic
that, strangely enough, reminded Ginger of her father's private office
at the back of his first jewelry store in Brooklyn, the one he always
used as his headquarters. The walls of that sanctum sanctorum had been
decorated only with a calendar, and the furniture had been inexpensive,
old, and well used. Plain. Even drab. But for Ginger, it had been a
fine and magical room, because Jacob had seldom worked there but had
squirreled away with one book or another, from which he'd often read to
her. Sometimes it would be a mystery, or a fantasy about gnomes and
witches, a story of other worlds, or a thriller about spies. And when
Jacob read, his voice acquired a resonant and mesmerizing timbre. The
reality of the gray little office faded, and for hours Ginger could
believe herself to be investigating with Sherlock Holmes upon the misty
moors, celebrating with the Hobbit Mr. Bilbo Baggins inside the Hill at
Bag End, or with Jim and Will as they explored the terrible carnival in
Mr. Bradbury's lovely book. Jacob's office hadn't been only what it