Independence Day: Silent Zone (16 page)

As soon as he stepped
inside the glass room, Wells could feel how close to death the alien
was. He
brought a glass of water to the creature's side and, still struggling
to
control his own hydrophobia, held it in front of the huge black eyes,
mentally
imploring the creature to drink.

He felt the thing's
response: it was a command to take the liquid away. Wells complied,
handing the
glass to one of the soldiers behind him. Although he knew the frail
body before
him needed water, he empathized with its refusal. But the tone of the
command
was troubling. Wells got the sense of being "spoken to" as an
underling, an inferior being, as if the scrawny half-dead form on the
table
were a delirious lord barking orders to a serf.

Following
the script prepared for him, he got down to the business of asking the
questions to which the Army needed to know the answers. He queried the
creature
about why it had come, about the chain of command among its species,
about its
military capabilities and whether other ships had entered earth's
atmosphere.
But the only answer Wells received was a vision of something that
looked like
an enormous Y. Perhaps owing to the visitor's weakened physical state,
the
vision had none of the power of its previous communication. It was a
blurred
mental image of a branching structure in the middle of a barren
landscape. The
blinding light of a sun washed the vision out, causing the scientist to
squint.
He assumed the place was somewhere on the ruined surface of the planet
he had
been shown before. He could feel the alien's desire to travel to this
place,
but that was all the information he could gather. And it wasn't what he
was
after.

He
returned
to the question of why the creature and its companions had come to
earth.
Having found the
window
or
channel
which allowed him to interact
with the foreign being, he began to move more quickly, with more
confidence. He
sensed the alien understood his questions, but was too weak to answer.
Wells
sat back in his chair and contemplated the possibility that it was too
late,
that the creature had passed the point of being able to communicate.
Although
he was quickly learning how to share the creature's thoughts, he
couldn't
feel
them with the same intensity he had previously. Then he
had another
idea, one he wasn't particularly anxious to try out. He looked at the
hand
resting on the table. It had two plump, opposable fingers, each about
six
inches in length. The hand was still covered with the piss-smelling
goop that
lined the chest cavity of the larger, tentacled, exoskeletal suit.
Wells drew a
deep breath, reached out, and laid his hand over one of the alien's
fingers. He
squeezed it gently, feeling the resinous substance squish into the gaps
between
his own fingers. A moment later, the second finger closed around
Wells's hand,
gripping it with the strength of a small child.

Why have you come
here? Who are your leaders? What do you want? The questions traveled
through
one body and into the other. For two full hours, they sat motionless
and in
outward silence while the observers behind the glass looked on. Then
the
creature opened its hand and took it away. Wells whispered something to
it,
then came out of the room.

"Our
friend," as Wells began calling the EBE, was a scientist-explorer, as
were
the other beings who had died in the crash. They had stumbled upon our
planet
during what seems to have been a random search through the universe.
They
somehow picked up energy, possibly radio waves, emanating from earth
and came
to investigate. One thing had been made perfectly clear—these aliens
wished
only to observe. They had taken great care to avoid being noticed and,
although
they did not seem to fear humans, wanted no interaction with them. They
seemed
to be just as interested in other animals and even plant life. "As a
matter of fact," as Wells said, "I got the sense that our good friend
found me physically repulsive. It was as strange for it to touch me as
it was
for me to touch it."

When
he'd
asked about the alien's social structure and chain of command, he was
shown the
image of a very tall alien, considerably larger than the others, which
was some
kind of leader or commander. There was a strong sense of benevolence
associated
with this tall creature. It was a protector of some sort, although it
wasn't
clear whom it was protecting. Wells had the most difficulty
understanding the
creature's reply to his questions about additional ships. He was shown
a vision
of the sixty-foot craft traveling through deep space. When Wells asked
why
there were no provisions on board and communicated the military's
belief that
the ship was only a short-range vehicle, the interview ended.

The scientist openly
expressed his admiration for the space voyager, discussing the bravery
it must
have taken to embark upon a dangerous journey of the sort his friend
had taken.

That evening Wells
was standing in the hospital's lobby chatting with a group of officers.
He was
trying to describe the physical sensation involved in reading the
alien's
thoughts when he suddenly broke off in mid-sentence, complaining of
dizziness.
Reaching out, he grabbed one of the men by the arm, struggling to stay
on his
feet, then collapsed to the floor before anyone could catch him.

Both
he and
the alien had lapsed into a shared coma, one that would last for the
next nine
days. Solomon became convinced that the EBE and Wells had developed a
sympathetic bond. It was, he argued, related to the phenomenon
sometimes
observed in human twins, where one can feel the pain of the other. He
cited the
Metcheck case, where a sister in Dallas called police in Connecticut to
report
a traffic accident. She claimed to have visualized her twin sister's
car
sliding off an icy road and plunging down an embankment. Although she
had never
visited Connecticut, she was able to describe several landmarks along
the road
and the exact place where the car had broken through a retaining wall.
When the
police investigated, they found the injured twin exactly where they had
been
told to look. Solomon feared the alien might be trying to take Wells
with it,
and won permission for the scientist to be moved away from the
quarantine area.
He was transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he
remained until
the EBE died.

When he woke up, he
had permanently lost the use of both his legs, and movement in his
upper body
was impaired. After that, Dr. Wells no longer referred to the alien
survivor as
his friend.

After
reading the Wells report,
Okun opened his
door and began wandering the
hallways, lost in contemplation. He ended up pacing the corridor
outside the
vault room and decided to pay the dead aliens a visit.

The
tanks lay side by side on the floor, a trio of
steel-reinforced glass coffins filled with murky liquid. He squatted,
put his
nose inches from the glass, and sent a telepathic message to wake up.
Each time
he played this game, some part of him actually expected to see the
twitch of a
muscle, the blink of an eye, a sign of life that would send him racing
through
the halls hollering, "They're alive! They're alive!" But the pasty
white corpses continued to float tranquilly in their formaldehyde
graves. They
looked as peaceful in death as the Wells report had described them in
life.
Their wide open eyes gave them a startled, innocent expression which
almost
made it possible to believe they had come here for the sake of pure
science,
that they had no ulterior motives.

But
Okun wasn't convinced. Although he proudly considered himself a
peacenik, he
was also a realistic scientist. The creatures might be from a different
galaxy,
but they were still animals, with instincts and drives. If they were
anything
like humans, he doubted they could be as selfless as Wells made them
out to be.

He
thought back to a story he'd heard at Caltech about the emperor
Napoleon
Bonaparte. As he was preparing to invade Egypt, he was approached by a
group of
France's most famous philosophers and historians. Sensing this would be
a
historic moment, they wanted to witness and record the campaign
firsthand. They
appealed to Napoleon's ego, promising to write a book glorifying his
exploits,
one that would assure the general's place in history. He agreed, but
only on
the condition the academics stay to the rear of the march where they
belonged,
"with the whores and the cooking wagons." The professor who told
Brackish this story said it illustrated the typical relationship
between science
and the military. "Where there is science," she said, "there is
war. And the idea of pure science is nothing more than a myth. There is
always
another motive lurking beneath the surface."

At
the time, Okun hadn't taken her too seriously, but here he was only a
couple of
years later working, basically, for the military. Sure, he had shoulder
length
hair, wore an ankh necklace, and had a "War is Unhealthy for Children
and
Other Living Creatures" poster taped to the wall in his room, but he,
too,
was marching at the rear of the caravan.

If
he could have spoken with the dead aliens, he would have asked them
about their
biomechanical suits. The doctors present at the autopsy had concluded
the two
animals were of different species. Although the idea hadn't occurred to
any of
the medical examiners in '47, Okun wondered if perhaps the beings came
from
different
planets.
If so, it would indicate the
creatures floating in
the tank were members of a conquering race, one that had used the alien
bodies
in much the same way humans used, say, cattle. Either way, it made him
want to
become a vegetarian. The exoskeletal suits were, unfortunately, long
gone. They
were unintentionally destroyed when, to prevent the spread of
otherworldly
bacteria, they were sprayed with the insecticide DDT. The spray
triggered a
chemical reaction that reduced the shells to thick liquid paste.

Okun
sat down on the nearest coffin, thinking about the question of a second
ship.
"Am I being paranoid," he asked the extraterrestrial life-form below
him, "or does my government know about more of your guys' ships? Maybe
there's even an Area
52
someplace. Otherwise, why would they be trying to discourage me from
investigating that possibility?"

The
aliens didn't say it was all part of a plan to keep the young genius
motivated.

"Just the man
I've been waiting to see."

"I
don't like the sound of that. What's up?" Radecker,
no longer trying to disguise the fact that he was on a five-year
vacation, was
dressed in tennis whites. A covered racket protruded from his small
suitcase.
He'd just returned from thirty-six hours of fun and sun on the shores
of
Frenchman Lake.

"Been
playing tennis?"

"Yes,
I have. You getting ready to head off to Woodstock?" the boss shot back
defensively. Okun was wearing open-toed sandals and a grungy old
T-shirt with
Jimi Hendrix's silhouette on it.

"That
Wells report was pretty interesting. Did you read any of it?"

"Glanced
at it. Why? Is there something I should know?"

Okun
scrutinized him for signs he was lying and thought he saw them. "It's
just
that the table of contents on the front page lists an addendum added a
couple
of years later, a section called 'Revision of Preliminary Conclusions.'
But
it's not there. Those pages are missing."

"And
you think I took them?"

"I
didn't say that." Okun tried to maintain a poker face, but failed.
Radecker knew from the cocked head and the narrowed eyes that he was
being
accused.

"Look,
you asked me for the report, and I got it for you. Why would I go to
the
trouble of having it sent here and then not show you the whole thing?"

Both
of them knew the answer to that question. Because there might be
information in
those pages concerning additional ships. Brackish opened his mouth to
say
something, but stopped when he remembered the promise he'd made to
Dworkin. He
couldn't let Radecker know what the old men had told him.

"I'm
not saying you removed the pages, but it looks like somebody did. Maybe
somebody in DC wants to keep us in the dark about something."

"If
that's true, there's really nothing we can do about it, is there?" He
went
off to his room to unpack.

Okun
shook his head. He wondered if Colonel Spelman knew how Radecker was
spending
his time in Nevada. He knew from things the agent had said during their
first
days in the lab that he was ambitious, that he wanted to climb the
career
ladder at the CIA. But he appeared to possess only moderate
intelligence and
didn't seem to be a very diligent worker. For the first time, the idea
occurred
to Okun that perhaps Radecker wasn't a good CIA man. Maybe they'd
chosen him
because he was mediocre, expendable. But without a doubt, Radecker was
right
about one thing. If the Pentagon and the CIA didn't want them to know
something, they had the power to keep the men of Area 51 in the dark.

Okun
followed the labyrinth of hallways toward the exit doors and turned on
the long
row of lights that illuminated the stacks. Somewhere in that welter of
printed
material, he sensed, was the clue he needed. But where? Since his
introduction
to this wildly disorganized library, he had finished reading over forty
reports. He pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and used the palm of
his hand
as scratch paper. At his present rate of speed, he calculated it would
take him
513 years to read every document in the room.