“Citizen of the world, anymore, actually,” Hicks said.
Reuben stiffened.
Voice.
I’d take them home to meet my mum. My mother.
“That’s him,” he said.
“Who?”
Reuben shook his head. “Where is he?”
“They’re in Washington, like always,” his father said.
“—Mr. Hicks, are we to understand that it was you who first advised President Crockerman to reason with these invaders?” the eager-faced conservative asked.
“Not at all,” Hicks said.
Reuben’s brow furrowed with the intensity of his concentration. That’s the one. He’s Trevor Hicks. His name, his voice.
“Then what did you tell the President?”
“Gentlemen, the President would not have listened to me no matter what I said. He hoped for a sympathetic ear, and I tried to provide that, but I am as adamantly opposed to his policy regarding the spacecraft as I imagine you are, Mr…Mr…”
“What do you recommend we do with the spacecraft? Should we destroy it?”
“I doubt that we could, actually.”
“So you do hold defeatist views—”
Reuben trembled with excitement. Washington, D.C.
He had enough money saved to go there. Big town, though. Where would Trevor Hicks be in Washington, D.C.?
He listened closely, hoping to pick up clues. By the end of the show, he had a fair idea where to begin.
The next morning, at dawn, Reuben stood in the door to his parents’, his father’s, bedroom. His father stared at him from the bed, blinking at the orange hall light behind his son’s silhouette.
“I’ve got to leave now, Pop.”
“So sudden?”
Reuben nodded. “It’s important.”
“Got a job?”
Reuben hesitated, then nodded again.
“You’ll call?”
“Of course I’ll call,” Reuben said.
“You’re my son, your momma’s son, always. You remember that. Make us proud.”
“Yes, sir.” Reuben went to the bed and hugged his father and was surprised again at how light and frail he seemed. Years past, his father had loomed a muscled giant in Reuben’s eyes.
“Good luck,” his father said.
Reuben pulled the overcoat around him and stepped out into the early morning frost, his boots crunching and slipping on the glazed steps. In one deep side pocket, the metal spider lay curled tight as an untried puzzle. In the other jingled two hundred dollars in change and bills.
“Good-bye, Momma,” he whispered at the locked door.
36
The afternoon had been tiring and the early evening showed signs of being even more strenuous. Samshow had already attended the public presentation of two papers in rooms filled half with geologists and half with TV correspondents and camera crews, ever hopeful of finding new revelations. What they got for the most part were technical presentations on resources discovery, migration of metallic ores in deep crust, and discussions of pinpointing Middle Eastern underground nuclear tests.
Samshow had left the last presentation and wandered into the spacious white-tiled men’s rest room of the St. Francis.
He glanced up at his image in the mirror. Two young men in business suits, hair trimmed short, faces shaved so clean they might have been beardless adolescents, took positions at the urinals.
“This oxygen reading bothers the hell out of me,” said one.
“Not just you,” said the other.
“There’s no place for it to come from. Increase by one percent.” He shook his head as he zipped up. “More of that, and we’ll all be drunk.”
He rejoined Kemp and Post and they walked to the elevator, squeezing in beside four bewildered elderly tourists and two middle-aged geologists dressed in jeans and old sweaters. Arthur Gordon had arrived too late on Saturday to attend their first scheduled meeting. He had invited them to come to his room at seven, to talk and perhaps join him for late dinner after.
The hotel room was small. Post and Kemp sat on the bed, leaving the two guest chairs for Samshow and Gordon. Arthur shook Samshow’s hand firmly and offered ice water. As he poured the glass in the bathroom, he asked, “Is there any consensus on this object supposed to be burrowing through the crust?”
He returned and handed Samshow the glass.
“None,” Post said. Samshow agreed with a small nod.
“Maybe there’s no consensus, but nobody doubts that something’s there,” Kemp said.
“Are you convinced your meteor sighting and the seismic traces are connected?” Arthur asked Samshow.
“I suppose I am,” Samshow replied. “The South American traces we predicted did occur.”
“And the object is still making noise.”
“I talked with my company stations in Manila and Adak this morning,” Kemp said. “Still grumbling like an old bear.”
“Are the sounds weakening at all?”
“We think so. Our measurements aren’t so precise we can be sure at the moment.”
Post removed an electronic notepad from his pocket. “That’s probably deceleration because of drag.”
“And the second object…?” Arthur prodded.
Somebody knocked at the door. “That’s Sand, probably,” Samshow said. Post got up to open the door.
Sand came in clutching a thick bunch of computer printouts. “Naval Ocean Systems just came through. I pulled these off the conference printer after setting up a data link.” He spread the sheets out on the table. “There’s half a dozen folks downstairs who can’t wait to look these over, but since Mr. Gordon made the arrangements, I thought he should be the first. I’ve also got more on the oxygen figures, and Coomaraswami in Sri Lanka has distributed a paper on…” He pulled a stack of copies from his briefcase and handed them around the room. “On reduction of mean sea levels.”
“Jesus,” Samshow said. He took a copy and scanned it quickly. “Jesus H. Christ.”
Arthur hefted the printout and pursed his lips. “What about the second object?” he asked again.
“Actually, that’s shown…” Sand stood beside his chair and riffled through the sheets. “Right here. Wave analysis of the microseisms. There are two objects, orbiting around the center of the Earth — within the mantle and the inner and outer cores. They are slowing down at the rate of about one percent a day… and,” Sand said, almost triumphantly, “the supercomputers at UCSD have duplicated the effects using several different models. The best model requires an object less than a few centimeters wide, very long — hundreds of meters long — traveling at between two and three kilometers a second.”
“What in hell would do that?” Samshow asked.
Nobody answered.
“Eventually, because of drag the objects will settle down at the center, right next to each other, right?” Arthur asked.
“Inevitably,” Sand said.
Samshow finished his glass of water and set it on the table. He held a cube of ice in his mouth, bouncing it back and forth from the hollow of one cheek to the other with his tongue. “Would the President understand this, Mr. Gordon?” he asked.
“I don’t understand it,” Arthur replied.
“Two objects,” Samshow said, “orbiting inside the Earth, missing each other, I presume, their harmonic motions being damped until they meet at the center. What does that remind you fellows of?”