Douglas Preston: Mount Dragon

“Hi,” said the image of Scopes. “How’re you doing, Guy?”

For a moment Carson was speechless. Jesus , he thought, this isn’t a film at all . “Uh, hello, Mr. Scopes. Sir. Fine. Sorry, I’m not really dressed—”

“Please call me Brent. And face the screen when you talk. I can see you better that way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not sir. Brent.”

“Right. Thanks, Brent.” Just calling the supreme leader of GeneDyne by his first name was painfully difficult.

“I like to think of my employees as colleagues,” Scopes said. “After all, when you joined the company, you became a principal in the business, like everyone else. You own stock in this company, which means we all rise and fall together.”

“Yes, Brent.” In the background, behind the image of Scopes, Carson could make out the dim outlines of what looked like a massive, many-sided vault.

Scopes smiled, as if unashamedly pleased at the sound of his name, and as he smiled it seemed to Carson that he looked almost like a teenager, despite being thirty-nine. He watched Scopes’s image with a growing sense of unreality. Why would Scopes, the boy genius, the man who built a four-billion-dollar company out of a few kernels of ancient corn, want to talk to him? Shit , I must have screwed up worse than I thought.

Scopes glanced down for a moment, and Carson could hear the tapping of keys. “I’ve been looking into your background, Guy,” he said. “Very impressive. I can see why we hired you.” More tapping. “Although I can’t quite understand why you’re working as, let’s see, a Lab Technician Three.”

Scopes looked up again. “Guy, you’ll forgive me if I get right to the point. There’s an important post in this company that’s currently vacant. I think you’re the person for it.”

“What is it?” Carson blurted, instantly regretting his own excitement.

Scopes smiled again. “I wish I could give you specifics, but it’s a highly confidential project. I’m sure you’ll understand if I only describe the assignment in general terms.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do I look like a ‘sir’ to you, Guy? It wasn’t so long ago that I was just the nerdy kid being picked on in the schoolyard. What I can tell you is that this assignment involves the most important product GeneDyne has ever produced. One that will be of incalculable value to the human race.”

Scopes saw the look on Carson’s face and grinned. “It’s great,” he said, “when you can help people and get rich at the same time.” He brought his face closer to the camera. “What we’re offering you is a six-month reassignment to the GeneDyne Remote Desert Testing Facility. The Mount Dragon laboratory. You’ll be working with a small, dedicated team, the best microbiologists in the company.”

Carson felt a surge of excitement. Just the words Mount Dragon were like a magic talisman throughout all of GeneDyne: a scientific Shangri-la.

A pizza box was laid at Scopes’s elbow by someone offscreen. He glanced at it, opened it up, shut the lid. “Ah! Anchovies. You know what Churchill said about anchovies: ‘A delicacy favored by English lords and Italian whores.’ ”

There was a short silence. “So I’d be going to New Mexico?” Carson asked.

“That’s correct. Your part of the country, right?”

“I grew up in the Bootheel. At a place called Cottonwood Tanks.”

“I knew it had a picturesque name. You probably won’t find Mount Dragon as harsh as some of our other people have. The isolation and the desert setting can make it a difficult place to work. But you might actually enjoy it. There are horse stables there. I suppose you must be a fairly good rider, having grown up on a ranch.”

“I know a bit about horses,” Carson said. Scopes had sure as hell done his research.

“Not that you’ll have much time for riding, of course. They’ll run you ragged, no point in saying otherwise. But you’ll be well compensated for it. A year’s salary for the six-month tour, plus a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus upon successful completion. And, of course, you’ll have my personal gratitude.”

Carson struggled with what he was hearing. The bonus alone equaled his current salary.

“You probably know my management methods are a little unorthodox,” Scopes continued. “I’ll be straight with you, Guy. There’s a downside to this. If you fail to complete your part of the project in the necessary time frame, you’ll be excessed.” He grinned, displaying oversized front teeth. “But I have every confidence in you. I wouldn’t put you in this position if I didn’t think you could do it.”

Carson had to ask. “I can’t help wondering why you chose me out of such a vast pool of talent.”

“Even that I can’t tell you. When you get briefed at Mount Dragon, everything will become clear, I promise.”

“When would I begin?”

“Today. The company needs this product, Guy, and there’s simply no time left. You can be on our plane before lunch. I’ll have someone take care of your apartment, car, all the annoying details. Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” said Carson.

“That makes things easier.” Scopes smoothed down his cowlick, without success.

“What about my supervisor, Fred Peck? I was supposed to—”

“There’s no time. Just grab your PowerBook and go. The driver will take you home to pack a few things and call whoever. I’ll send what’s-his-name—Peck?—a note explaining things.”

“Brent, I want you to know—”

Scopes held up a hand. “Please. Expressions of gratitude make me uncomfortable. ‘Hope has a good memory, gratitude a bad one.’ Give my offer ten minutes’ serious thought, Guy, and don’t go anywhere.”

The screen winked out on Scopes opening the pizza box again.

As the lights came on, Carson’s feeling of unreality was replaced by a surge of elation. He had no idea why Scopes had reached down among the five thousand GeneDyne Ph.D.s and picked him, busy with his repetitive titrations and quality-control checks. But for the moment he didn’t care. He thought of Peck hearing thirdhand that Scopes had personally assigned him to Mount Dragon. He thought of the look on the fat face, the wattles quivering in consternation.

There was a low rumbling noise as the curtains drew back from the windows, exposing the dreary vista beyond, cloaked in curtains of rain. In the gray distance, Carson could make out the power lines and smokestacks and chemical effluvia that were central New Jersey. Somewhere farther west lay a desert, with eternal sky and distant blue mountains and the pungent smell of greasewood, where you could ride all day and night and never see another human being. Somewhere in that desert stood Mount Dragon, and within it, his own secret chance to do something important.

Ten minutes later, when the curtains closed and the video screen came once again to life, Carson had his answer ready.

Carson stepped onto the slanting porch, dropped his bags by the door, and sat down in a weather-beaten rocker. The chair creaked as the old wood absorbed his weight unwillingly. He leaned back, stretching out the kinks, and looked out over the vast Jornada del Muerto desert.

The sun was rising in front of him, a boiling furnace of hydrogen erupting over the faint blue outline of the San Andres Mountains. He could feel the pressure of solar radiation on his cheek as the morning light invaded the porch. It was still cool—sixty, sixty-five—but in less than an hour, Carson knew, the temperature would be over one hundred degrees. The deep ultraviolet sky was gradually turning blue; soon it would be white with heat.