—”
“They’re related,” Al said. Instantly, he regretted it. He’d spoken in haste.
“General, I fail to see—” Tom began.
The president interrupted him. “I agree. Whether the things that struck in Gloucestershire came out of the lens in Algeria, God only knows. But there is obviously a relationship of some kind between all of these things—the disks we’ve been seeing for fifty years, the ones that attacked those people, and the lenses, and I might add that I think we need to assume the worst, here.”
“All I see are British and French problems,” Samson said. “Unless some of these things are in the Japanese Empire. Are they?”
“No, so far only British and French imperial territory is involved, and some South American countries.”
“Then I say we wait,” Tom announced, his voice taking on the tone of the pulpit. “Maybe it’s some kind of a secret weapon. Nothing to do with us. The Czar’s supposed to have some doozies, and he wants African possessions. He’d like Egypt, in fact, to annoy the Turks, if nothing else.”
The president turned on him. “Why are you here, Tom? Why in hell do you think you’re here? Something is wrong. Goddamn wrong.” He gestured at the screen. “This will spread, you know.”
Tom held his ground. “We have no evidence of that, Sir.”
“It will spread!”
“It’s not an attack on the United States. And there’s no evidence that such an attack is imminent.”
“Tom,” the president responded, “as soon as you get back to your office, you are to go to DEFCON 1 and issue a War Warning to all commands, worldwide.”
“Sir, I—”
“We’re under attack, you damn fool,” the president said. “The blue, white, and red, damn you! Not just a couple of the empires and a few banana kingdoms. Us!”
Tom went stiff. His eyes seemed literally to glitter with murderous rage.
But the president wasn’t finished. “Gentlemen, I’ve got a military background, and I know when my enemy is probing my defenses. That’s what happened in that little town in the very heart of the most powerful empire on earth. Bo, I want you to liaise with the Brits, the French, all the empires on this, and I want CIA to watch the streets worldwide for other, similar incidents.”
Al could smell the fear in the room, and found himself hoping that President Wade was not acting in the haste of panic.
“Al, you’re to organize a task force. You are ordered to find a way to destroy those lenses, all of them. I want it fast, and I want a one hundred percent certainty of success.”
“Sir,” Tom asked, “is an attack on them wise? We’re in the region of the unknown here.”
“The man with the medals suggests retreat,” the president said. “Okay, I hear you. Al, when you’re ready to attack these things, inform me at once. Directly.” He pointed to a telephone. “Directly,” he repeated.
“Yes, Sir. We only have four bombs, Sir. We’ll need British and French support.”
The president sighed. “Waldo, how many nuclear bombs do I have?”
“Twenty-three, Sir. Four in the hands of the military, the rest underground at—”
“Tom, Al, you understand that you had no need to know on this.”
“Sir, I beg to differ,” Tom said. Al could see that his neck was red, his veins pulsing. “We had a need to know. Strategic planning, war games—of course we had a need to know!”
“And I have a need not to find myself face to face with a quartet of outraged imperial ambassadors all demanding that I hand over my nukes. You leak, Tom. Nobody on your staff likes you, and that makes for security issues, doesn’t it?”
Al fought his face. The least trace of the smile that his enjoyment of this was urging to his lips would get him fired before sunset.
One of Waldo’s aides listened to his earpiece. He nodded to the intelligence chief.
Waldo said, “Mr. President, we have a party present at this time who might be able to help us. There was an archaeologist inside the pyramid as the explosion developed. His working party was killed, but he got out. He’s here.”
“Excellent work, Bo,” the president said. “Now, you listen and learn, Tom. Bo here wants to impress his president. This is what I like to see. You might take that under advisement.”
Tom bristled, then plastered a rigid grin on his face. A dusty young man, handsome but looking profoundly exhausted, came wide-eyed into the room.
MARTIN HAD BEEN GIVEN EGGS and a whole lot of coffee on the plane. It was quite incredible—Air Force private jets all the way from Cairo to Le Bourget, then here. He had been able to talk to Lindy and the kids via videophone from the plane. In normal times, incredibly fun. Now, not so fun. He was heartsick about what had happened, still trying to accept it as reality. The Great Pyramid, gone, replaced by that… thing. Lens, they called it —he’d called it that, in fact, for the BBC, which had interviewed him just before he left Cairo. In fact, he’d probably started the use of the word.
Now here he was in the White House, in the West Wing, no less. He was a reeking mess, he supposed. Nobody had bothered him with such niceties as a change of clothes or a shower. He still had Giza dust in his hair, as a matter of fact.
A man in a black suit took him to a book-lined study. He’d hoped to see the Oval Office, but this was apparently the inner sanctum of the Great American Fool, President Jimmy Wade. He’d gutted National Academy of Science budgets, he’d pulled grant money out of dozens of universities, Uriah included. He was a man willing to spend billions supporting American trade associations in their perpetual war with the larger imperial economic systems, but his education program was a sham, his entitlement system was a mess, and his interest in the sciences appeared to be, if anything, negative.
Under Wade, even NASA’s exobiology and alien culture programs were languishing, and now that it was known that UFOs were intelligently guided, these two programs seemed to be doing some of the most important science in the world. Not to mention the Advanced Propulsion Physics Seminar.
Still, he was the president, the leader of the American people and one of the more powerful world leaders, and seeing him here, all human and vulnerable, was an odd experience. He came to his feet and put out his hand. Martin shook it, and looked into the strange, empty eyes of the professional leader.
Another man, bald, big—dominating the room, in fact, despite the presence of two resplendent generals— pumped his hand, drew him past the president, and sat him down. “We know you’ve had a shock,” he murmured. His hands were soft, his eyes were not full of fear like the president’s. They sparkled. They watched. Martin recognized Bo Waldo, of course, he was all over the news all the time.
“Doctor Winters—may I call you Marty—”
“Martin.”
“Okay, Martin is a distinguished member of our country’s archaeological community. He’s managed to cause a small revolution of his own.”
It wasn’t small, it was huge, but Martin couldn’t say that.
“You lived through the pyramid?” the president asked. “Where were you, because I’ve been in that thing, and it’s not easy to get around.”
“I was in the burial chamber a hundred feet beneath the surface.”
“How could you have been there and survived?” one of the generals asked. This was a man with a narrow, almost cruel face, and small, ugly eyes, gleaming as black as obsidian.
Martin decided not to even address the question, it was so impertinent and, frankly, so stupid.
“What General Samson means is—”
“I meant what I asked, Al!”
The other general went instantly silent. Obviously, the tall man with the mane of white hair was the lesser of the two. He had a better face, aquiline, aristocratic, and, Martin thought, sad.
“I survived because I was so deep. We picked up unusual pulsations about three minutes before the structure blew, so I had time to withdraw.”
“Doctor Winters, if I tell you that these same lenses have appeared around the world at fourteen different sites, all the exact same distance from an axis point near the north pole—”
