a way to revive their souls, to make their lives worth living again. Locked somewhere in the human genome was the secret of man’s vitality. Conner would find this spark, and understand how to enable the grays to share it.
At least, that was the dream. But if this atrocious weapon was fired at him, maybe the dream would end.
The collective directed a triad to attend to the thoughts of the president. Ever since Harry Truman had, in 1947, ordered his airplanes to shoot at the grays, all presidents were routinely implanted. This made their minds easy to hear, with the result that their most private fantasies, desires, and actions were part of the vast public entertainment the grays had constructed for themselves by implanting humans.
This was one of the main reasons they abducted human beings, to implant them so that they could enjoy them from a distance. Thus some of the most peculiar and most intense people, the ones with the most colorful fantasies—usually deeply hidden—were actually among the most famous creatures in the universe.
This president was a marvelous
Listening to the flowing whisper of words and watching in their own minds the flickering mass of colors, fantasized human body parts—long feminine legs and white, full breasts, mostly—and the low growls of desire that were the mental “voice” of his subconscious, they saw that he was uneasy about Charles Gunn’s murderous request. But would he deny it? Of this they could not be sure. Mind control was not a reliable tool. Also, they did not like to interfere in the action of human will. They had wrecked their own independent spirits by creating their collective. They would not also wreck man’s independence with excessive use of the tools of collective thought.
But this was one time that it was necessary. They began to work on the president’s mind, to touch it with images of the suffering the scalar weapon could cause.
As the collective mind of the grays concentrated on the president’s decision, they failed to address the building crisis in Wilton, or to see just how serious it was, and Conner’s death began to come closer and closer yet, as the fatal hours passed.
TWENTY-TWO
ROB LANGFORD PUT DOWN THE phone. “We’ve got orders,” he said to Lauren. “First, we are to assume that Colonel Wilkes is in the area, second that he is definitely here to kill this child. We are to protect the child at all costs, and deal with Wilkes in whatever way is required.”
“What does that mean?”
“Find him, kill him.”
“Wait a minute on that. Are these orders in writing?”
“No, they are not.”
“I don’t think murder is such a hot idea. I mean, if you don’t have a written order that is definitely legal, that is way out of line.”
“Let me deal with Wilkes. You concentrate on the kid. That’s the way it ought to be, anyway. What we are going to do is uniform up—or rather, I am—and pay an official visit. We will seek cooperation from the parents.”
“How far along is Mike? Do we know?”
“We do not.”
“What if these folks don’t like the Air Force?”
“Our objective is simple. It is to determine if there is an extremely smart child living on Oak Road. If not, then we extend our search to the local schools. Assuming we identify the child, we provide information to the parents and put them under surveillance protection. We must not to do anything that might cause these people to resist the approach of the grays to the child.”
They went to the traveling officer’s quarters where Rob had a suite. She remained in his small living room while he changed.
Rob was an attractive guy, and she wanted, she was finding, to do more than sample him the way she had been doing with men since she’d started this job. In fact, she could get serious with this guy. In fact, she thought he was the best man she had ever met.
He was also the most dedicated to his mission and the most businesslike.
They drove off the base and through fourteen miles of slowly worsening weather, passing through the town and going onto the Bell campus. On the way, they phoned all four Oak Road houses. They got three answering machines and a non-answer. So everybody was where they were supposed to be, which was working at their various occupations on campus or attending school.
“We’ll try the physics guy first. His discipline fits best, I think.”
“The baby’s not our target.”
“No. It could be one of the two teenagers, the Keltons, unless Adam was lying to you. The other three children seem too young.”
“He was lying.”
“Maybe Oak Road doesn’t even figure in it, then. Maybe the whole thing was a feint in anticipation of some discovery they knew Wilkes was about to make. They directed his—and our—attention to Oak Road because it doesn’t matter.”
She felt a shiver of unease the moment the words were out of his mouth. “My sense of it is that Oak Road is very damned important.”
“They don’t make mistakes.”
“Adam made one. He killed my father.”
“That’s true enough.”
“So they do.”
“What do you think they’ll do if they lose the child?”
She thought about it. “I get a feeling of tremendous rage.”
“Are you in touch with them now?”
“I’m not sure. I think I might be.” She shuddered. “Sometimes I feel sort of as if I am. As if I’m part of a great sorrow. I think that’s the heart of the grays, the way I perceive their collective being.”
“That’s chilling.”
He turned the car into a parking lot, beyond which was a neat white sign with black lettering, SCIENCE HALL.
It was a towered old brick pile, Bell’s science center. The enormous windows were designed to gather light, from back in the days before electricity had come to rural Kentucky.
According to a schedule affixed to his door, Dr. Jeffers had been teaching until five minutes ago, so they waited in his office. He had no secretary and the door wasn’t locked. Inside, it was surprisingly uncluttered for an academic’s lair.
“Uh oh,” Rob said, picking up a book from the professor’s desk.
“We have to expect them to be in a tizzy about UFOs. Look what just happened.”
“Well, we have to stay far from that topic.”
Ten minutes passed. Rob remained composed but Lauren did not wait well, and she got progressively more and more nervous. How could he be so collected? He was like too many military people, in a certain deep way resigned to fate, a fault that, in her opinion, came from living by orders.
“Maybe we should try the school,” she said, somehow keeping herself from screaming it at him.
At that moment a short, quick man came through the door. His eyes fixed on Rob’s blues. “Hello?”
Rob went to his feet. Smiled. Extended his hand. “Good afternoon, Dr. Jeffers, I’m Colonel Langford.”
“The UFO!”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re here about the UFO, yes?”
Rob shook his head. “I’m not aware…”
