“The number of breeding pairs you charted when you were figuring out who Allie was, 55.1… 3, 5… 55… 1,597,” Mary said. “They’re all Fibonacci numbers.”
“And it goes on,” Wakeman said, winking at Mary. “How many lights on board? Forty-six thousand, three hundred and sixty-seven, and with our little friend, Allie…” He wrote the number on the pad and turned the pad toward Eric. “46,368. The twenty-fourth Fibonacci.”
“So,” Mary said grandly. “How do you take our revelation and use it to make an effective block so that we can grab little Forty-six thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight, our little Allie?” She looked at Wakeman, turning the narrative over to him now.
Wakeman gestured toward a young man who lay unconscious on a gurney. “That’s Peter Miller. Mr. Miller has been taken thirteen times.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, Eric, I’m not going to splatter dear Peter all over the room. Janitorial would never forgive me.”
He pointed to the huge tracking board that covered the opposite wall, a enormous map of the United States, its surface scattered with colored lights.
“Mr. Miller has an implant,” he said. “We’re monitoring that implant. You can see by that light on the map that Mr. Miller is currently residing right here in the lovely, peaceful fishing village of Ellsworth, Maine.”
Wakeman took a five-sided device from the table and placed it like a hangman’s hood over Miller’s head. “The implants broadcast on a spread spectrum. They’re all based on the hydrogen hyperfine transition line. The most fundamental wavelength in the universe.” He took a studied, theatrical pause, then said, “Fibonacci again.” He smiled. “We block those frequencies in a way that will ensure that… shall we say… the ‘hamster’ doesn’t splatter.” He pointed to the map. “As you can see. Mr. Miller’s light is no longer shining. That means that his implant isn’t registering, and
Eric stared at Peter Miller. “Will this work on the girl?”
“Allie doesn’t have an implant, remember?” Wakeman said. “Just that neutron spiral, if you recall. The one she no doubt inherited from her mother.”
“So we can’t…”
“Yes, we can, Eric,” Wakeman said. “Because the same principle applies. We can block her frequency, too.”
Charlie moved around the room, his camera pausing at each face. Dale Adler, a middle-aged man whose grief lay upon him like a black veil; Ray Morrison; a married couple, Ben and Nora; a tough-looking young woman named Cynthia; Dorothy, who claimed to have twelve cats; and an older man named Adams.
“Contrails are messages,” Ray said. “When they appeared in the sky above St. Paul, the incidence of severe upper respiratory infections quadrupled.”
“What are contrails?” Dorothy asked.
“Those white trails jets leave behind,” Adams said.
“Messages,” Dale repeated. “I think we’re reaching here.”
“We’re not here to judge,” Harriet cautioned. “Just to listen.”
“There is a base,” Ray went on adamantly. “A landing strip at the bottom of Lake Superior. I was taken to this landing strip on my third abduction.”
“How come you didn’t drown?” Nora asked.
“They did something to me that made me able to breathe under water,” Ray answered.
Dale gave a doubtful shrug.
Ray glared at him. “But I’m supposed to believe your story about seeing your dead son in a spaceship, right?” he demanded. “So why is it that you can…”
“Could you share the story of your son with us, Dale,” Harriet said, cutting Ray off.
“We lost our boy, Luke,” Dale began. “In the Gulf War. It was about six months later when they came for me. One night, I woke up and there were these five young men standing by my bed. Soldiers, like Luke was. They asked me would I like to see Luke. Then there was this big light, and Luke was there and we talked. And after that, they’d come for me every night, these same soldiers, and there’d be Luke, and we’d talk, and then he’d be gone.” He shook his head. “It was like they wanted to make me grieve for him all over again.”
Ray shook his head. “You’re just having bad dreams, Dale.”
Dale leaped to his feet, his eyes flaring. “Does this look like dreams to you?” he asked as he pulled down the collar of his shirt, revealing several slender red lines on his neck, each knotted with what appeared to be joints.
Ray looked at the marks on Dale’s neck. “That could have happened any way at all. You could have done that to yourself.”
“Please now,” Harriet said. “You’re all here because you believe you’ve experienced something. This is hard work. Painful work.”
The door opened and Charlie saw a slender, dark-haired young woman enter the room. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, glancing at Charlie.
“Lisa, we have a guest today,” Harriet explained. “This is Charlie. He’s taping the session for a documentary he’s doing. Charlie has spent years talking to people who’ve had experiences like yours. The others have agreed to being taped but if you’re not comfortable…”
“No, I’m not,” Lisa interrupted. She looked Charlie dead in the eye. “I like to keep my private life private,” she said.
Charlie lowered the camera. “Sorry,” he said. “I understand.”
Throughout the rest of the session, Charlie noticed that Lisa continually drew her eyes toward him. They were knowing eyes, and what they knew was something fierce and dreadful, that a human being could vanish into a white light, then reemerge hours later in a completely different place, be taken again and again in sudden, nightmarish seizures, never told why you’d been chosen or if they would ever leave you alone.
Later that afternoon, as they sat together in a coffee shop, Lisa made no effort to conceal what had happened to her, or what she knew had happened to Charlie.
“How long have they been taking you?” Lisa asked.
“Since I was a kid,” Charlie answered.
“Me, too.”
“But they don’t take me anymore,” Charlie added. “Not in nine years. Since then, I’ve been trying to prove that it really happened. I want to know why they did it and why they stopped.”
Lisa considered this briefly, then said, “Did you like your abductions?”
“Like them?” Charlie asked, astonished.
“Yeah,” Lisa answered. “As in enjoy them. Look forward to them. I used to get this energy thing. This buzz. It felt great. I believe this whole abduction deal is going to turn out to be a positive event. Right now, people think we’re whacked, we’re fringe-dwellers, but that’s going to change. We’ve been chosen for something.”
“For me, it was never a buzz,” Charlie said. “I didn’t know what was happening to me… and I fought back as hard as I could.”
For a moment they peered at each other silently, then Lisa began to gather up her things. “I have to get home,” she said. “I have a daughter.”
Neither of them stood up. They just stared at each other, neither of them able to shake the eerie feeling that they’d already met.
Charlie reached for his wallet, and as he did so a picture fell onto the table between them. “That’s my dad,” he said when he noticed Lisa staring at it.
“The carny,” she whispered, her eyes lifting slowly toward Charlie. She seemed almost to shiver. “Things just got a lot more weird,” she said. “We need to talk to Dr. Penzler.”
Minutes later Charlie sat a few feet away as Penzler prepared to do what she called a regression. Lisa lay on a sofa, her eyes watching him, so strangely familiar, he felt they’d watched him all his life.
“Are you ready?” Dr. Penzler asked.
“Ready,” Lisa said.
