J.M. Dillard - War of Worlds: The Resurrection (36 page)

time. Which suited Forrester just fine. It was only the memory of his promise to the boy
You aren't going to die, are you? No, Harrison, I'm not going to die.
that kept him from finishing off an entire bottle of sleeping pills at once and being done with it. Harrison had suffered enough for one lifetime, and Clayton refused to add to the boy's grief. Harrison already had enough guilt at being a survivor.

Forrester walked silently down the hallway—the carpet was a new addition since he'd retired—into the older wing, and finally arrived at his old office. It felt right being there, even though the plastic imitation woodgrain plaque on the door read
McCullough
now. The door was unlocked, as Forrester had known it would be—everything of value belonging to its current occupant had been removed a day and a half ago. He turned the doorknob and entered.

Clayton had packed his belongings at the house yesterday, and was ready to go, but it had taken Archives a full day to come up with the files. And here they were, covering the entire desktop, in topless cardboard boxes stuffed full of manila folders. Clayton walked around, behind the desk.
A
box rested in the seat of the swivel chair, but there was no sign of Suzanne McCullough's things; even the photograph of her daughter was gone. Clayton had noticed it a few days before, and it had reminded him of the photograph of Harrison he'd kept in almost the same spot. It made him sympathize with Suzanne all the more; he knew the horror of trying to raise a child with the specter of the aliens hanging over one's head like the sword of Damocles.

He set the coffee on the one clear spot near the desk's edge, then bent over and started going through one of the boxes. It was tedious work, and the angle made his back ache. After about fifteen minutes of it, he straightened, put his hands against the small of his back, then stretched backward. This would never do. He eyed the formidable-looking box resting in the chair. He wasn't supposed to do any heavy lifting, but then, Jacobi wasn't coming for another half hour, and Clayton refused to stand all that time. Besides, Jacobi was older and smaller than he was. Forrester bent down, slid his hands under the bottom of the box, and lifted it with a grunt.

It was even heavier than it looked. Red-faced, gasping, Clayton slowly lowered the box. About four inches from the floor, he let it drop onto the carpet with a muted thud. Clayton went back and sank into the chair with a sigh, then picked up his coffee and took a small sip. Some thick-headed, muscle-bound college student who worked part-time as a gofer must have thought himself brilliant to set the heavy carton in the chair, where someone else would obviously have to—

Pain blotted out the rest of the thought. Heavy, crushing pain that squeezed his chest until it pushed all the air from his lungs in one startled, frightened gasp. Forrester panted and waited for it to lessen, but instead of easing, it bore down harder against his chest while it swept down his left arm.

His grip on the cup eased; it fell, spilling scalding hot liquid down the front of his cotton shirt, into his lap, down his legs. Clayton scarcely felt it. He was too busy struggling to breathe, to hold back the growing blackness that loomed threateningly along the periphery of his vision.

In the midst of the fear and the struggle, he was vaguely conscious of the irony of it all—that this should happen today of all days, when, after all these long years, he finally felt like living . . . and yet, as he looked out at the familiar surroundings as they began to gray and dim, it somehow seemed good to have it happen here, in the place he loved best.

With his other attacks, the pain had gradually eased, then faded, but this was nothing like the other attacks. The agony mounted until it reached truly unbearable intensity. Forrester raised a hand to his chest. "Harrison," he whispered.

And then the darkness took over, and there was no pain at all.

TWENTY-FIVE

At nine o'clock that same morning, Harrison watched through his office window as Kensington led Spirit, with Debi aback, for a slow walk around the corral. After checking out the new yet familiar office yesterday, Harrison had come to the conclusion that there was very little for him to do until (a) the aliens broke their radio silence, or (b) Norton somehow managed to break the code.

Harrison sighed and walked back to his desk to shuffle through the Forrester Project files. He'd read every scrap of paper in them at least a thousand times, but he picked up the folder succinctly labeled "Three" and slumped down at his desk to go through it again.

A whirring sound in the hall caused him to glance up. Norton sat in the doorway looking uncharacteristically vexed, his brown forehead puckered.

"I take it you haven't come to tell me you've cracked the code," Harrison said.

Norton shook his head glumly. "Doc, I'm getting nowhere fast. Forward seven, Gertrude." The chair rolled forward and parked a short distance in front of Harrison's desk.

"I thought you said if you could just spend enough time on the Cray—"

Norton interrupted him. "Without more information, all the supercomputers in the world can't decipher those alien radio signals." He folded Ms strong amis in a gesture of finality, as if to say:
That's all I can do about it. Now what?
They stared at each other unhappily for a moment.

"Then," Harrison said at last, "we'll simply have to reconceptualize our approach."

"Hey," Norton scoffed, "you're talking to the king of reconceptualization himself." His tone softened. "What I need, good buddy, is a clue. The archeolo-gists had the Rosetta Stone before they could figure out how to read hieroglyphics. We've got diddly-squat"

Harrison closed the folder in his hands, put it on top of the other aged files, and reached across the desk to proffer them to Norton. "We've got Clayton's old research. We even have photocopies of alien maps found in the wreckage of ships. Maybe your Rosetta Stone is in here."

Norton's expression wasn't particularly hopeful, but he took the files. "I guess it's worth a try. Home, Gertrude." The chair did a 180-degree turn and headed out.

The vaguest outline of an idea began to form in Harrison's brain; he stood up suddenly. "Norton—"

"Hold it, Gertie. One eighty." Norton turned to face him again.

Harrison felt a dawning excitement. "Does the number three mean anything to you?"

Norton shrugged. "Should it?"

"It meant something to the aliens. Think about it. Their ships flew in groups of three, their optic devices were divided into three units, they attacked all their targets in three directions. Even those weapons they made, the bolas, had three weighted ends. Three, Norton . . ." His voice rose with enthusiasm. "Think number three. Just a hunch, but the answer's there, I know it is."

"Number three, huh?" Norton stroked his chin, then said a little more cheerfully, "Hey, I'll think of it. A hunch is the best thing we've got right now. What've we got to lose?"

Just a world,
Harrison thought, but he didn't let himself say it.

By late that afternoon Harrison was sitting with his feet propped on his desk, staring out the basement window with the usual ennui, when he heard the shout.

"Bingo!"

It came from the direction of Norton's office, and Harrison knew instantly what it meant. He scrambled to his feet and dashed out the door. In the corridor he almost collided with Suzanne as she came running out of the lab.

"What on earth—" She broke off as he clutched at her to keep from losing his balance.

"Yes!" Norton's voice ranted on. "Absolutely, undoubtedly,
yes!"

"Sounds like we've got a breakthrough," Harrison told her; together, they made it down to the communications center. Ironhorse was already inside, staring quizzically at Norton, who sat over at the Cray console, pressing a computer printout to his chest in a display of ecstatic affection. His eyes were closed, his dark face lit up by a beatific smile.

"Norton!" Harrison grinned at him. He'd expected results, of course—after all, Norton Drake plus a Cray supercomputer were an unbeatable combination, but he hadn't expected them this
fast.
"Norton, you son of a gun, you did it, didn't you?"

Norton opened his eyes and smiled sweetly at Harrison. "I did it all right. Me and the Cray."

Ironhorse's voice rose with frustration. "Did
what?
Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?"

Norton gave him a who-is-this-imbecile? stare. "Cracked the alien lingo, of course, Colonel! What planet have you been stationed on?"

"Well then, let us see it," Suzanne said, putting a hand out.

Norton pulled it out of her reach and held it up with a grand flourish so everyone could see.

Ironhorse bent down to squint at it, then began to read aloud. "One, two, one, one—" He rose. "Doesn't make any sense to me." He glared at Nor-

ton, then Harrison. "Is this somebody's idea of a joke?"

"No, no, no." Norton clicked his tongue with disgust. "The top line is two to the seventh power." He pointed at the page with an index finger. "Bottom line's two to the third. Two to the seventh is a hundred twenty-eight. Two to the third is eight."

"We can all work the math, Norton," Harrison said impatiently, bending over to look at the columns of numbers himself. A math-based code? Seemed too easy. Maybe the aliens were trying to mislead them.

"Some of us, anyway," Norton muttered, casting a contemptuous sidewise glance at Ironhorse.

"Have you worked out what the numbers stand for?" Harrison asked.

Norton seemed to deflate a little, apparently disappointed that no one shared his elation. "Come on, Doc, you expect me to do everything around here? How should I know what they mean? I focused on one part of the transmission—" He cheered up again at the thought. "That 'think number three' stuff really helped. These are all base three." He drew his finger along a horizontal column of numbers and shook his head in appreciative awe. "Beautiful. Anyway, this is what I came up with."

"A
coded message?" Suzanne asked.

To Harrison's surprise, Ironhorse straightened and shook his head. "Too easy," the colonel said. "Even primitive codes use large prime numbers as their key."

Apparently impressed, Norton raised his eyebrows
349

at Harrison. "When the soldier's right, he's right. This is no code. This is pure."

Ironhorse grunted. "The question is, pure
what?*

Harrison took the printout from Norton's hand and studied the rows of numbers. It was all right here, staring him in the face. Maybe if he just stared at it long enough . . . "We're overthinking this," he said distractedly, "digging too deep. We're giving the aliens too much credit."

"You mean we're assuming the obvious. . ." Suzanne began.

Harrison nodded. "Thereby overlooking the obvious." He began to pace, staring down at the paper in his hand, making his way around Norton's desk, swamped with mounds of printouts and old file folders, past the counters of transmission equipment, to the doorway and back. Somehow, the pacing freed his mind to wander, and he tried to lead it gently along the most obvious paths.

"I'm missing something," Ironhorse said in a low voice.

He heard Suzanne chuckle softly. "What it all means is that you'll get to go on one of Harrison's famous—or should I say infamous—field trips."

Harrison registered the exchange without letting it break his concentration. The information was all there if he could just see it. It was
all there.

He stopped pacing and looked up at Norton. "Have you loaded all of Clayton's material into the Cray?"

Norton noddeid, Now that his excitement had faded, his voice sounded tired. "Damn straight. Spent all morning and afternoon doing it. Tedious work. I bet my eyes look like little pinwheels." He scrunched them shut and rubbed them.

"So
that's
why you missed breakfast again," Ironhorse muttered.

Norton's eyebrows rushed together. "Tell me, Colonel, does General Wilson make you take attendance at every meal? I bet you've got a little rollbook with all our names in it."

Harrison refused to be distracted. "Norton, how long to run a basic substitution program—those numbers against the material in the alien documents?"

"Ah." Norton's eyes gleamed as he understood what Harrison was getting at. "Now you're talking, Doc." He gave the Cray an affectionate pat. "With my friend here—maybe twenty seconds."

"Well then, do it," Harrison told him.

They gathered around the Cray as Norton cracked his knuckles, then poised over the keyboard and wiggled his fingers like a concert pianist preparing to play.

"Enough showmanship," Ironhorse groaned.

Norton's fingers flew over the keyboard, typing in the names of files and programs faster than Harrison could follow. He drew in his breath and counted.

Approximately eighteen seconds later, numbers and symbols began filling the screen, scrolling by too fast for human eyes to read. Suddenly, the numbers stopped coming—and on the screen was something Harrison recognized: a representation of an alien topographic map complete with three-dimensional mountain ranges. Along the vertical and horizontal axes were numbers—the alien equivalent of longitude and latitude. On each axis a number was highlighted and blinking.