“Roswell,” I said disgustedly. “When my family finds out I was here, they’ll laugh themselves sick.”
“I take it we all know the basis of the legend?” said Honey. “In 1947, just outside the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, a farmer found strange metallic objects scattered across his field. He couldn’t identify them, so he notified the authorities. On July 8, the local air force base informed the local newspaper that they were the remains of a crashed flying saucer. The local radio station wasted no time in spreading the news to an excited world . . . at which point the air force slammed on the brakes and went into reverse. Swore blind it was just the remains of a crashed weather balloon. End of story.”
“Except,” I said, not to be left out, “thirty years later, people started saying it was all a cover-up. The air force admitted the weather balloon stuff was a lie, but all the explanations they’ve come up with since have proved equally flawed. All of which had probably nothing to do with flying saucers and a hell of a lot more to do with the fact that the 509th Bomb Group was stationed just outside Roswelclass="underline" the only bombing command authorised to carry nuclear bombs at that time. Hardly surprising they didn’t want the world’s attention anywhere near them. Especially if they were carrying out missions the public weren’t supposed to know about.”
“It is interesting how the legend has continued to change and mutate down the years,” said Walker. “Everything from crashed UFOs with alien bodies scattered all over the mesa, to alien autopsy films, to a really screwed-up First Contact. The last version I heard talked about was the direct downloading of an alien consciousness from a higher dimension. Absurd.”
“Oh, sure,” I said. “Utterly absurd.”
“I saw that alien autopsy film,” said Honey. “Never saw anything so obviously fake-looking in my life.”
“Right,” I said. “Alien autopsies don’t look anything like that.”
Walker and Honey looked at me for a long moment.
“Moving on,” said Walker, turning to Honey. “You’d know, if anyone, what’s going on here, so . . . What’s going on here?”
“Not a damned thing, as far as I know,” said Honey. “Though admittedly, if anything really important was under way here, it would all be discussed on a much higher level than I have access to. I know what I need to know, but I don’t need to know everything. On the other hand . . . you’re right, Eddie. People like us . . . If there was anything to the legend, we’d have heard something . . .”
“So why are we here?” I said. “What mystery are we supposed to investigate?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” said Honey.
“Why don’t you use that frankly rather disturbing computer implant in your head and phone home?” said Walker. “Ask your higher echelons at Langley if anything of interest has happened here recently.”
Honey’s face went blank for a moment, and then she scowled heavily. “The signal’s jammed. Again . . . I can’t get through. Eddie?”
I reached out to my family through my torc . . . and there was nobody there.
“You too?” said Honey. “Cut off again? That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Can’t be a coincidence,” I said. “Someone here doesn’t want us talking with anyone outside Roswell. Someone . . . or something.”
“Maybe something’s due to happen here,” said Honey. “Something important or significant, and somebody doesn’t want to risk us calling in reinforcements.”
“The nearest Drood field agent is in Texas,” I said. “Do your people have anyone useful any closer than that?”
“Not that I know of. Besides, this would be FBI business, and the Company has never got on well with the Bureau.”
“Why don’t you try Peter’s mobile phone?” Walker said reasonably. “See if it’s just the two of you who’ve been jammed, or whether it’s more general.”
I tried Peter’s phone. Couldn’t get a signal. We walked down the street till we found a public pay phone and tried that. Nothing but dead air; not even a hiss of static. I put the phone back, and we looked at one another.
“I would be willing to wager good money that the whole town is like this,” said Walker. “Someone (or something; yes, Eddie) has gone to great lengths to isolate Roswell from the outside world. So why hasn’t anyone else here noticed? Why has no one raised a fuss?”
“Look around you,” said Honey. “Roswell is a tourist town. Most of these people are tourists. Probably haven’t a clue anything unusual is going on.”
“And the local people?” said Walker.
“That’s what makes this interesting,” I said. “They might be keeping quiet so as not to scare off the tourists, or . . . Actually, I don’t have an or. Something’s definitely happening here, and we need to investigate.”
“I don’t know . . .” Honey looked around her, her face cold and thoughtful. “What if all of this . . . is just a distraction? The Independent Agent sent us here to solve the mystery of Roswell. We go back without that specific information, we could forfeit the prize. And I have come too far, and been through too much, to miss out on that now.”
“She has a point,” Walker said to me reluctantly. “We’re here for a specific purpose, and nothing can be allowed to interfere with that. Alexander King’s hoarded secrets are of vital importance to the world. They must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.”
“He chose the time and place of our arrival,” I said. “So what’s happening here, or about to happen, must be significant.” And then I stopped dead as I suddenly made a connection. “They’re all significant! All five locations we’ve been to! Remember the photos and trophies we saw back at Place Gloria? All scenes of the Independent Agent’s most important cases? We’ve been following in his footprints all along! He’s been here before us!”
Honey and Walker both nodded quickly. “So,” said Walker, “are we reliving his past triumphs? Or making up for his greatest failures? Is that the point of the game? That only the agent who could get to the truth where he failed would be worthy to replace him and have access to his treasure?”
“Let’s take a look around,” said Honey. “Get the lay of the land. See what’s really going on here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Hey! Let’s follow that gaudily painted minivan with the four kids and the oversized dog. They look like they’d know a mystery when they saw it.”
“You really do get on my tits sometimes, Eddie,” said Honey.
Roswell, not surprisingly, was something of a tourist trap. Far too many of the shops and stores we passed were dedicated to off loading overpriced UFO junk on gullible tourists, all of it linked to one or the other of the many prevailing Roswell myths. And the happy families swarming through the packed streets ate it all up with spoons. One man sold three-foot-tall balloons shaped like cartoonish Gray aliens. A man and a woman in Reptiloid costumes handed out leaflets headed Impeach David Icke! Plugging their new book, apparently. A towering statue of a Gray alien bestowed a fatuous smile on passersby and blessed them with a peace sign. (Boy, had they got that one wrong. I wouldn’t turn my back on a Gray unless I had my armour on.) Someone had graffitied the base of the statue, ET was a fink!
A lot of the tourists were wearing Star Trek costumes, original and Next Generation. I couldn’t help but feel there should be a strict weight limit enforced on people who wear skintight costumes. Lycra isn’t meant to stretch that far.
We passed by an entire restaurant in the shape of a flying saucer. Outside the front door, a full-sized replica of Robby the Robot recited the day’s specials in his roboty voice. A DVD shop had a poster in its window proudly proclaiming the imminent arrival of a new big-budget remake of The Starlost, directed by Harlan Ellison and starring Laurence Fishburne and Paris Hilton. Even more distressing, many stores were given over to all that crystal-channelling angel-worshipping flower-aromatherapy New Age bullshit, all of it priced through the ceiling. I sometimes feel people should be required to sit a mandatory IQ test before they’re allowed into places like that.