“Coming up is a cross-street called 8-Mile Road,” said Roger. “From the satellite map it looks as if it might have some beachfront houses on it.” As they approached the intersection, they saw a prominent FOR RENT sign. Closer to the beach was a cluster of houses, all built atop tall poles. “Stilt houses!” said Roger. “One of the paintings that inspired Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was based on a Russian folktale about the hut of the witch Baba Yaga. It was built on stilts in the form of giant chicken legs, and the hut could walk around, carrying the witch across the countryside. I wonder if these houses can walk.” He grinned.
“Only during hurricanes,” said Alice, turning the car left toward the beach. “You’ll notice that they’re all relatively new. There are no old houses fronting directly on the Gulf. Hurricanes scrub the beaches clean every decade or so.”
They found the rental office, and George paid two weeks’ rent in advance for a furnished two-bedroom beachfront stilt house that was well separated from the neighboring houses. He gave the real estate agent a personal check for the rent and deposit. Then they drove back to the Food King store on Rosenberg and Avenue P ^ and bought a good supply of food and other items. At a hardware store across the street, George bought a large blue plastic tarp to cover Alice’s car. They parked the car under the house between the stilts and Roger and George carefully covered it with the tarp to protect it from the salt spray, but also to conceal its conspicuous Florida license plates.
Alice watched the ocean through the picture window that looked out over the beach and the ocean. The waves broke and rolled up onto the sand and into the wave-barrier rocks, making a soothing rush-and-flow sound. Gray-winged gulls wheeled overhead, sometimes diving into a wave and emerging with a fish. In the distance a white pelican flew east. This view must have looked much the same for a million years, she thought.
She looked across the room. On the coffee table in its nest of white laboratory tissue lay the Egg. George sat on the couch, studying its rough surface as if looking for hidden meanings. The tension was thick in the room. The sound of the ocean’s roar and hiss from outside did not have the usual calming effect.
“It’s clear enough,” said Roger. “We throw the Egg into the water, wait twenty-four hours, and go back to the same spot. Sounds rather like a fairy tale, doesn’t it?”
“Too damn much like a fairy tale,” said George. “What if the thing carries a virus or something that infests the Gulf of Mexico? The Makers could be bent on taking over or destroying our planet.”
“It could just as well be an airborne virus that has infested the planet already from Waxahachie,” said Alice.
“Exactly,” said Roger. “If Tunnel Maker and his people wanted to do us ill, they would not have needed to enlist our cooperation to do so. Your Egg could just as well have been a flock of nanomachines for converting the planet to gray goo, or into a new race of Makers. They are up to something else, and they are trying to minimize the impact of implementing it. I’m sure that’s why they wanted us away from the laboratory and out of the media spotlight. I’m convinced that we have to trust them, George. I see no alternative.”
George looked at him closely. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Roger, you’re dying anyway. Perhaps you’re more inclined to take risks than the rest of us.”
“George!” said Alice, shocked by his insensitively.
Roger raised his hand. “No, Alice, it’s all right. George is correct, in a way. In my present condition I am perhaps a bit more inclined to take risks. My previous gamble with synaptine could certainly be taken as evidence of that. But I assure you, George, I would not be willing to gamble with any life except my own. I believe our only rational course of action is to follow Tunnel Maker’s instructions. If there is a danger, it isn’t from him and his people.”
George stroked his beard for a time. “Okay, dammit,” he said finally. “I suppose you’re right. In fact, I have a gut feeling that you’re right. I just needed to make sure that we had thought it through.”
“Maybe Tunnel Maker just wants to introduce himself to us, before revealing himself to the rest of the world,” said Alice.
George picked up the Egg from its nest on the table. “So let’s get it over with.” He headed for the door.
“George,” said Alice as they were walking back from the beach, “we need to talk.”
For a moment George’s face took on a deer-in-the-headlights look. He took a deep breath and said, “Sure, Alice. What about?”
“I need to tell you about the kind of books I write, about the book I’m working on now,” said Alice.
George looked relieved, if a bit puzzled. “Books?” he said. “I don’t understand.”
Alice told him about her pseudonym, about her previous books, about F as in Fire Ants, and about how she had come to be commissioned by Search magazine to write an article on the SSC. She allowed him to read parts of Fire Ants from her laptop.
“The business with the press credentials was pretty devious, Alice,” he said with a look of dismay. “Sneaky, even.”
“I know,” she said. “At the time I thought it was necessary. How would you have reacted if I’d approached you for information and told you I was working on a novel about giant mutant fire ants attacking the SSC?”
“I can’t say,” said George. “I might have been willing to help, but it would clearly have been lower priority than helping you with an article for Search.” He was quiet for a while and finally said, “You know, when I think about it, our current situation is probably a lot more bizarre than anything you might have put in your Fire Ants book. Fiction has been outweirded by reality.” Then he looked closely at her. “What I don’t understand is why you choose to write bug-disaster novels, Alice. Somehow you don’t seem the type.”
She looked at him and smiled. It was going to be all right, she thought. “I suppose I wandered into it, George. In my view, most mainstream literature is an extended and depressing description of losers in the process of losing. I never saw the point of that kind of writing, aside from the fact that it’s currently fashionable and ‘literary.’
“When I made the decision to produce a book, I seriously considered doing investigative reporting and making that into a book, perhaps an expose of the Florida drug-money laundering scene. However, my late husband was against that because it might offend — or possibly even expose — some of his clients.
“Then I realized that I liked reading bug-disaster novels, as you call them, and that I would enjoy writing one. I sat down and analyzed why it was that I liked them. And I found the answer.
“It’s because they’re actually about change and how people react to it. In all of these novels something terrible happens, some unpleasant change occurs, and the people in the novel must deal with it. Some of them simply give up, lie down, and die. Some of them react, but they do all the wrong things, and they die, too. But some of them, either through cleverness or instinct, somehow do the right things, successfully deal with the problem, and survive. Those are the characters we identify with, and when they get beyond their problems, we feel good about it. In some measure we adopt their attitudes, so that when we come to a real problem in real life, we’re perhaps better prepared to deal with it.”
George looked thoughtful and nodded.
“There’s also another aspect of my bug-disaster novels,” Alice said. “Some of the themes I’ve used in my novels are real problems, like the overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and their effect on the environment. I’ve fictionalized the problems and exaggerated their effects, but the problems are nonetheless real. My bent for investigative reporting has been put to good use in developing that part of my books. And 1 think it’s had an impact. My paperbacks are read by far more people than any fancy hardcover work of investigative nonfiction would have been.