Douglas Preston: Mount Dragon

He gazed down the dirt road that ran in front of the house. Engle was a typical New Mexico desert town, no longer dying but already dead. There were a scattering of adobe buildings with pitched tin roofs; an abandoned school and post office; a row of dead poplars long stripped of leaves by the wind. The only traffic past the house was dust devils. In one sense, Engle was atypical: the entire town had been bought by GeneDyne, and it was now used solely as the jumping-off place for Mount Dragon.

Carson turned his head toward the horizon. Far to the northeast, across ninety miles of dusty sun-baked sand and rock only a native could call a road, lay the complex officially labeled the GeneDyne Remote Desert Testing Facility, but known to all by the name of the ancient volcanic hill that rose above it: Mount Dragon. It was GeneDyne’s state-of-the-art laboratory for genetic engineering and the manipulation of dangerous microbial life.

He breathed deeply. It was the smell he’d missed most, the fragrance of dust and witch mesquite, the sharp clean odor of aridity. Already, New Jersey seemed unreal, something from the distant past. He felt as if he’d been released from prison, a green, crowded, sodden prison. Though the banks had taken the last of his father’s land, this still felt like his country. Yet it was a strange homecoming: returning not to work cattle, but to work on an unspecified project at the outer reaches of science.

A spot appeared at the hazy limits where the horizon met the sky. Within sixty seconds, the spot had resolved itself into a distant plume of dust. Carson watched the spot for several minutes before standing up. Then he went back into the ramshackle house, dumped out the remains of his cold coffee, and rinsed the cup.

As he looked around for any unpacked items, he heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside. Stepping onto the porch, he saw the squat white outlines of a Hummer, the civilian version of the Humvee. A wash of dust passed over him as the vehicle ground to a halt. The smoked windows remained closed as the powerful diesel idled.

A figure stepped out: plump, black-haired and balding, dressed in a polo shirt and white shorts. His mild, open face was deeply tanned by the sun, but the stubby legs looked white against the incongruously heavy boots. The man bustled over, busy and cheerful, and held out a plump hand.

“You’re my driver?” Carson asked, surprised by the softness of the handshake. He shouldered his duffel bag.

“In a manner of speaking, Guy,” the man replied. “The name’s Singer.”

“Dr. Singer!” Carson said. “I didn’t expect to get a ride from the director himself.”

“Call me John, please,” Singer said brightly, taking the duffel from Carson and opening the Hummer’s storage bay. “Everybody’s on a first-name basis here at Mount Dragon. Except for Nye, of course. Sleep all right?”

“Best night’s rest in eighteen months,” Carson grinned.

“Sorry we couldn’t have come out to get you sooner,” Singer replied, slinging the duffel, “but it’s against the rules to travel outside the compound after dark. And no aircraft inside the Range, except for emergencies.” He eyed a case lying at Carson’s feet. “Is that a five-string?”

“It is.” Carson hefted it, came down the steps.

“What’s your style: three-finger? Clawhammer? Melodic?”

Carson stopped in the act of stowing the banjo and looked at Singer, who laughed delightedly in response. “This is going to be more fun than I thought,” he said. “Hop in.”

A wave of frigid air greeted Carson as he settled himself in the Hummer, surprised at the depth of the seats. Singer was almost an arm’s length away. “I feel like I’m riding in a tank,” Carson said.

“Best thing we’ve found for desert terrain. Takes a vertical cliff face to stop it. You see this indicator? It’s a tire gauge. The vehicle has a central tire-inflation system, powered by a compressor. Pressing a button inflates or deflates the tires, depending on terrain. And all the Mount Dragon Hummers are equipped with ‘run flat’ tires. They can travel for thirty miles even after being punctured.”

They pulled away from the cluster of houses and bumped across a cattleguard. Carson could see barbed wire stretching endlessly in both directions from the cattleguard, signs placed at hundred-foot intervals, reading: WARNING: THERE IS A U.S. GOVERNMENT MILITARY INSTALLATION TO THE EAST. ENTRY STRICTLY PROHIBITED. WSMR-WEA.

“We’re entering the White Sands Missile Range,” Singer said. “We lease the land Mount Dragon’s on from the Department of Defense, you know. A holdover from our military contract days.”

Singer aimed the vehicle for the horizon and accelerated over the rocky trail, a great rocket plume of dust corkscrewing behind the rear tires.

“I’m honored you came to get me personally,” Carson said.

“Don’t be. I like to get out of the place when I can. I’m just the director, remember. Everybody else is doing the important work.” He looked over at Carson. “Besides, I’m glad of this chance to talk with you. I’m probably one of five people in the world who read and understood your dissertation. ‘Designer Coats: Tertiary and Quaternary Protein Structure Transformations of a Viral Shell.’ Brilliant.”

“Thank you,” Carson said. This was no small praise coming from the former Morton Professor of Biology at CalTech.

“Of course I only read it yesterday,” Singer said with a wink. “Scopes sent it, along with the rest of your file.” He leaned back, right hand draped over the wheel. The ride grew increasingly jarring as the Hummer accelerated to sixty, slewing through a stretch of sand. Carson felt his own right foot pressing an imaginary brake pedal to the floorboards. The man drove like Carson’s father.

“What can you tell me about the project?” Carson said.

“What exactly do you want to know?” Singer said, turning toward Carson, eyes straying from the road.

“Well, I dropped everything and came out here on an hour’s notice,” Carson said. “I guess you could say I’m curious.”

Singer smiled. “There’ll be plenty of time when we reach Mount Dragon.” His eyes drifted back to the road just as they whipped past a yucca, close enough to whack the driver’s mirror. Singer jerked the Hummer back on course.

“This must be like a homecoming for you,” he said.

Carson nodded, taking the hint. “My family’s been here a long time.”

“Longer than most, I understand.”

“That’s right. Kit Carson was my ancestor. He’d been a drover along the Spanish Trail as a teenager. My great-grandfather acquired an old land grant in Hidalgo County.”

“And you grew tired of the ranching life?” Singer asked.

Carson shook his head. “My father was a terrible businessman. If he’d just stuck to straight ranching he would have been all right, but he was full of grand schemes. One of them involved crossbreeding cattle. That’s how I got interested in genetics. It failed, like all the rest, and the bank took the ranch.”

He fell silent, watching the endless desert unfold around him. The sun climbed higher in the sky, the light turning from yellow to white. In the distance, a pair of pronghorn antelope were running just below the horizon. They were barely visible, a streak of gray against gray. Singer, oblivious, hummed “Soldier’s Joy” cheerfully to himself.

In time, the dark summit of a hill began to creep over the horizon in front of them, a volcanic cinder cone topped by a smooth crater. Along the rim of the crater stood a cluster of radio towers and microwave horns. As they approached, Carson could see a complex of angular buildings spread out below the hill, white and spare, gleaming in the morning sun like a cluster of salt crystals.