“We saw a UFO. There’s videotape. Our whole neighborhood saw it. There was an Air Force jet chasing it.”
“Uh, I don’t think we do that.”
Rob was really very impressive at this.
“We’re here to talk about gifted students.”
“Gifted students?”
“There’s a new program, and we’re informing science departments all over the country. Seeing as you’re head of the physics department here at Bell, and we’ve got Bell on our list, we decided to come on over.”
“On your list?”
“We’re from Alfred,” Lauren said. “I’m in procurement. He’s—”
“Traffic-control supervisor. I make sure our trainees don’t run into each other. We’ve volunteered for this mission, actually.”
“What mission is it? I’m not understanding.”
“The Air Force is looking for a few very gifted, very extraordinary students. Unusual. Freaks, even. That smart.”
“This is Bell College, nobody here is smart. I’m not even particularly smart. In fact, I’m not smart at all, and certainly my students aren’t. They’re a bunch of idiots, actually.”
“Ah. We always thought—”
“A beautiful campus does not mean smart. It only means lots of red brick and white columns.”
“What about that other school?” Rob asked. “The professors’ kids?”
He leaned back in his desk chair, stared at the ceiling. “Actually, my neighbors have a sort of monster. Aggressive, peculiar, frenetically loquacious for age eleven. Builds remarkably detailed model trains.”
This didn’t sound promising to Lauren, but Rob said, “Should we interview him? It could mean an appointment to the Air Force Academy.”
“Somehow I don’t see Conner in a uniform. He’s… anarchic. I really find him quite disturbing, but now that you mention it, he is pretty much of a genius.”
Now it sounded promising. “Can we meet him?” Lauren asked.
“His father’s over in the psych building. Daniel Callaghan. Or he could be off fucking some administrator. Apparently he does a bit of that.”
What a bitter man this was. Bitter, mean little man. “So he’s a monster and his father’s a womanizer. Has he got a mother, or has she killed herself?”
Rob shot her a frown, but she couldn’t help it. This was a very nasty little man, and she wanted him to know it.
“Surprisingly not. Actually, I’m being mean, which I suppose what’s got your back up. I am rather frustrated, I’m afraid.” He held up the UFO book. “I believe in this, which has demoted me from CalTech through the middle Ivies to Bell. I thought you were here about our astonishing, wonderful UFO. I thought everything was about to change. Instead, you’re here for some totally conventional and annoying reason. The Callaghans would never let that precious child of theirs anywhere near the military. At least, I hope not. I suppose I was trying to scare you off, to preserve them from a temptation I don’t actually trust them to resist. Truth be told, he’s the most marvelous human being I have ever encountered, and I bless the day we happened by sheerest chance to move next door.”
She knew for certain, then, that they had found the child of the grays. She thought of all the generations of effort that must have gone into his creation, of the struggles in the night, the long and careful thought of those strange, exquisite minds, and all the people who had suffered their bruising attentions, all for this person with the euphonious name of Conner Callaghan.
She knew, also, that she had more than a little of Adam still within her, whether due to some arcane connection devised by the grays or from her own beating heart, but she felt at that moment that, without question, she would give her life to save him.
Rob had flushed and grown silent. In his silence, he had taken the book from Professor Jeffers.
“Essentially that another academic has been marginalized for promoting folklore as fact. However, it’s actually an expertly written and devastating indictment. By careful and scholarly inches, it proves without question that the government is engaged in a cover-up of the UFO phenomenon. So what would you do with him, Air Force people, shoot him, get him fired, trump up some charges against him?”
How extraordinary to sit here and see this man suffering like this for a truth he believed in—and to know that he was right, to know it better than he did, and to still lie to him, and curse his innocent soul and condemn it with your lie.
“Dr. Jeffers,” Rob said, “we’d like to thank you for your time and help. We’ll contact this family in due time. Who knows, perhaps Conner Callaghan will solve the mystery for us.” He handed back the book. “I’ve always thought that the Air Force hid a lot of things that it shouldn’t. Maybe about this. But it’s not my lookout, unfortunately.”
He gave the wild-haired professor a grin that made his face explode into gleaming, twinkling boyishness.
On the walk to the parking lot, the snow was more persistent.
“That was pitiful,” Rob said.
“Why don’t we just tell them?”
“You don’t know? Even yet?”
“Sure I know. You tell people that something is going to invade not only their space but their actual, personal bodies, they are going to panic. I’m panicked, just thinking about it. If there was any viable alternative, I’d take it.”
“I think that’s how we all feel. But our next step is to meet this family. Because if we found this kid, we can be sure that Mike has found him, too.”
“Maybe the grays will attack him.”
“If he showed up with a gun they’d probably abduct him and barbecue his damned brain. But what if he’s more indirect? They have their limits, Lauren, as you must know.”
“Look, I don’t know how to protect him, either, okay! And it’s winter, it’s snowing, and it’s starting to get dark, so one of us had better come up with an idea. How about it, boss?”
“I’m not the boss. You’re the one closest to the grays. You’re the boss.”
“Fine. I say we go out to Oak Road. Take it from there.”
First they returned to Alfred. Rob threaded his way around to the parking lot closest to his billet and went up to change again. After Jeffers’s reaction, he no longer felt that the uniform was such a good idea.
She sat in the car and listened to the radio, which told the story of the onrushing storm.
TWENTY-THREE
“HI, CHRIS,” KATELYN SAID. SHE was quite surprised to see him. The Jefferses usually called before they came over. As he entered the foyer, snow swirled behind him and he brushed off his coat. He looked extremely solemn, she noticed. “Are you okay?”
“Where’s Conner?”
“Downstairs designing a train wreck. He had an unpleasant day, apparently. Why do you ask?”
“We need to talk. Where’s Dan?”
“Dan,” Katelyn called, “Chris is here.”
“Yo. Hey there,” he said coming in from the kitchen. “Whassup?” Then he saw Chris’s face. “What’s wrong?”
They went into the family room together. The TV was blasting. Katelyn turned it off.
“I got the classic visit from the Air Force today.”
What was he talking about? “What visit?”
