BLACKWOOD. TEXAS
The night breeze swept across the prairie relentlessly. After a while the wind seemed to rise, as though heavy weather was moving in.
Above the desolation of sage and dust, two black, unmarked helicopters appeared, swoop-ing perilously close to the ground.
They buzzed past, flying at dangerously low altitude toward their destination: several large, ominously glowing domes, duplicates of the moon's own reflection upon the prairie. Only a few hundred yards away, the commonplace lights of the housing development sparked the night, white and yellow and ice-blue where a television was on. But there was nothing com-monplace about the work site that had sprung up where, only days before, four young boys had knelt digging in the brick-colored earth.
Now, the white hoods of several geodesic dome tents stretched over nearly the entire patch of ground. They were surrounded by long white cargo trucks, their tanks devoid of any markings, and a number of anonymous support vehicles: cars, vans, pickup trucks. Between these, figures in black fatigues moved purpose-fully, their somber uniforms in stark contrast to the white Hazardous Materials suits worn by their counterparts who stepped in and out of the central dome and support tents.
Overhead the hum of the choppers became a drone, as the two aircraft banked and then slowly settled upon the ground. Dust devils spun up around them; tents billowed and tugged at their struts. The eerie daylight glow of the main dome washed over one of the heli-copters, as several men in fatigues gestured at the pilot. An instant later and the chopper's door swung open. A man stepped down, mov-ing with studied, almost casual ease as he shielded his eyes from the dust and blinding light. He lowered his head instinctively as he walked beneath the whirring propellers, head-ing to where a line of trucks provided a makeshift windbreak from the helicopter's prop wash. Once there, he stood with his back to it all—choppers, drones, the huge and weirdly glowing tent—and lit a cigarette.
"Sir?"
The Cigarette-Smoking Man replaced his light and inhaled, then turned to look at the uniformed man addressing him. "Dr. Bronsch-weig is waiting for you in the main staging area."
The Cigarette-Smoking Man regarded him through slit eyes, his weathered face dull gray in the dome's glare. His expression was cool, almost disinterested, but after a moment he nodded and without a word followed the other man across the field. At the entrance to the central dome, the uniformed man nodded curtly, indicating the bulky white form of someone in a Haz-Mat suit. "Dr. Smith will escort you inside," he said, and left.
"This way, sir." From behind his mask the man's voice sounded hollow and thin. He held open a vinyl flap, and the Cigarette-Smoking Man ducked beneath.
Inside, the dome was a maze of clear plastic tubing, translucent vinyl walls, and opaque barriers separating one work area from another. In between, in makeshift cubicles and plastic-sided alleys, men and women stood or sat before stainless steel tables. Some wore Haz-Mat suits or surgical masks; all had the intense, almost dreamy expressions of people engaged in work they had spent a lifetime preparing for. The tables were covered with vials and alem-bics and crucibles of glass, but also with home-lier instruments: hammers, chisels, sifters, and strainers, all the accoutrements of the archae-ologist's art. The entire place resembled a cross between a high-tech dig and a surgical operat-ing theater.
Or a modern abattoir. There were refriger-ation units everywhere, huge and linked by sheaves of electrical cords. The dome res-onated with their humming, and the faint sweetish smell they exuded. The Cigarette-Smoking Man passed them quickly and in silence, barely taking note of the hive of activ-ity around him, until finally he came to the entrance to the very center of the dome. Here he took the bulky white suit and mask that an underling handed him, donning it quickly before drawing aside the last vinyl flap and entering.
Inside was a small, partitionless area, banked roundabout with refrigeration units. It was cold, cold enough that the Cigarette-Smoking Man's breath clouded even inside his mask. Several metal gurneys were tucked beneath halogen lights and shrouds of plastic sheathing. In the middle of it all, a small mound of bare earth had been covered by a clear plastic cover, like a manhole cover: twelve inches thick, its transparent surface crisscrossed by heavy stainless steel bars. The walls of the earthen hole had been shored up by inserting a sort of metal tube into the ground, like a culvert, big enough for a man to pass through. It was this that the sturdy cover fit over, like a trapdoor. And it was from this entrance into the underworld that Dr. Bronschweig appeared, suited up, his head obscured by the cumbersome mask. He pushed aside the clear plastic hatch and stepped out as the Cigarette-Smoking Man approached him,
"You've got something to show me."
Dr. Bronschweig nodded. Not even his mask could hide his excited expression, or the nervous tone edging his voice. "Yes."
He pointed to the hatch, the ladder that could be glimpsed now leading into the earth. The Cigarette-Smoking Man slung himself down the hole, moving awkwardly in his suit as he went down the ladder. A moment later Dr. Bronschweig followed.
They were inside the cave, a frigid chamber lit by an array of halogen and fluorescent lights. "We brought the atmosphere here back down to freezing in order to control the develop-ment," he explained.
"And that development is like nothing we've ever seen…"
The Cigarette-Smoking Man stood beside him, catching his breath. "Brought on by what?"
"Heat, I think. The coincident invasion of a host—the fireman—and an environment that raised his body temperature above 98.6."
He motioned the other man to follow him to one end of the cavern. Two portable drilling rigs had been set up on the floor, their pistons moving silently up and down, like macabre rocking horses. Behind them, more plastic sheets hung from the ceiling, to form an eerily glowing drapery of cool blue lit from within. Dr. Bronschweig hesitated, then pushed away the plastic.
"Here—"
The flickering blue light revealed a gurney, draped with the ubiquitous plastic but differing from the others the Cigarette-Smoking Man had seen in one regard:
There was a body on it. A man, unclothed, his body covered with a filigree of tubes and cords and wires that led to a battery of monitors lined up against the cavern wall. There was a muted drone as the equipment registered his vital signs, the rhythmic pulse and sigh of respirators and the metronomic beat of a cardiac ventilator monitor-ing his heartbeat. The Cigarette-Smoking Man quietly stared down at its occupant.
"This man's still alive," he said. He stared at the body before him. The skin was nearly translucent, a clear gray aspic of tissue and muscle fibers. Beneath the surface, veins and capillaries were clearly visible, pulsing slightly, blue and crimson strands threading along arms, legs, and thickening like rope at the man's neck. "This man's still alive…."
Dr. Bronschweig shrugged. "Technically and biologically. But he'll never recover."
The Cigarette-Smoking Man shook his head. "How can this be?"
"The developing organism is using his life energy, digesting bone and tissue. We've just slowed the process." He reached to grasp the swivel neck of a lamp, redirecting it so that it shone directly on the fireman's torso. Beneath the smooth spongy planes of his chest, some-thing moved.
The Cigarette-Smoking Man grimaced.
On the gurney, the body of the fireman shud-dered. A ripple seemed to race through it, the glistening translucent skin shuddering the way a sea nettle does when it flounders upon a beach. The chest heaved gently, as though something inside had moved and stretched. A closer look revealed a hand attached to what had to be an organism.