Greg Bear - The Forge of God

Sand put together a list of hypotheses, and revealed one candidly to Samshow when they were alone. “It’s simple, really,” he said in the galley over a late breakfast of corned-beef hash and butter-soaked wheat toast. “I made some calculations and compared the spikes on the three traces. The three tubs aren’t really far enough apart to make the results authoritative, but I checked the digital record of each spike and found a very small time interval between them. I can explain the time interval in only one way. Doing a tidal analysis, and subtracting the ship’s reaction as a gravitated object, the traces show an enormous mass, about a hundred million tons, traveling in an arc overhead.”

“Coming from what direction?” Samshow asked casually.

“Due north, I think.”

“How far away?”

“Anywhere from a hundred to two hundred kilometers.”

Samshow considered that for a moment. Whatever the fireball had been, it had been far too small to mass at anything like a hundred tons, much less a hundred million. It would have spread the Pacific out like coffee in a cup if it had been a mountain-sized meteoroid. “All right,” he said. “We ignore it. It’s an official anomaly.”

“On all three gravimeters?” Sand asked, grinning damnably.

NEC National News Commentator Agnes Linder, November 2, 1996:

The newest twist in a very twisted election year, the arrival of visitors from space, almost defies imagination. United States citizens, recent polls show, are in a state of rigid disbelief.

The Australian extraterrestrials have arrived on Earth too soon, some pundits have said; we aren’ t ready for them, and we cannot begin to comprehend what they might mean to us.

Presidential candidate Beryl Cooper and her running mate, Edgar Farb, have been on the offensive, charging that President Crocker-man is hiding information provided by the Australians, and questioning whether in fact the United States is not behind the destruction — some say self-destruction — of the robot representatives in the Great Victoria Desert.

The American people are not impressed with these charges. How many of us, I wonder, have fixed any emotional or rational response at all? The scandal of the destruction of the extraterrestrials refuses to spread; the Australian government’s accusations of American complicity have been practically ignored around the world.

We have lived our lives on a globe undisturbed by outside forces, and now we are forced to expand our scale of thinking enormously. Western liberal tradition has encouraged an inward-turning, self-critical kind of politics, conservative in the true sense of the word, and President Crockerman is the heir to this tradition. The more forward-looking, expansive politics of Cooper and Farb have not yet struck a chord with Americans, if we are to believe the recent NEC poll, which gives Crockerman a rock-steady 30 percent lead just three days before voters go to the polls. This, without the President issuing any statements or making any policy regarding the Great Victoria Desert incidents.

Mrs. Sarah Crockerman wore a solemn, stylishly tailored gray suit. Her thick brown hair was carefully coiffed, and as she poured Hicks a cup of coffee, he saw her hands were immaculately manicured, the fingernails painted a metallic bronze, glinting softly in the gray winter light entering through French windows behind the dining table. The dining room was furnished in coffee-colored Danish teak, spare but comfortable. Beyond the second-story windows lay the broad green expanse of the U.S. National Arboretum.

Except for a Secret Service agent assigned to Hicks, a stolid-faced fellow named Butler, they were alone in the Summit Street apartment.

“The President kept this flat rented largely at my insistence,” she said, replacing the glass pot on its knitted pad. She handed him the cup of coffee and sat in the chair catercorner from him, her nyloned knees pushing up against the table leg as she faced him. “Few people know it’s here. He thinks we might be able to keep the secret another month or two. After that, it’s less my private hideaway, but it’s still here. I hope you appreciate how much this secret means to me.”

Butler had gotten off the phone and now stood by the window, facing the doorway. Hicks thought he resembled a bulldog, and Mrs. Crockerman a moderately plump poodle.

“My husband has told me about his preoccupations, naturally,” she said. “I can’t say I understand everything that’s happening, or…that I agree with all of his conclusions. I’ve read the reports, most of them, and I’ve read the paper you prepared for him. He is not listening to you, you know.”

Hicks said nothing, watching her over the rim of his cup. The coffee was very good.

“My husband is peculiar that way. He keeps advisors on long after they’ve served their purpose or have his ear. He tries to maintain an appearance of fairness and keeping an open mind, having those about him who disagree. But he doesn’t listen very often. He is not listening to you.”

“I realize that,” Hicks said. “I’ve been moved out of the White House. To a hotel.”

“So my secretary informs me. You’re still on call should the President need you?”

Hicks nodded.

“This election has been sheer hell for him, even though he hasn’t been campaigning hard. Their ‘strategy.’ Let Beryl Cooper hang herself. He’s sensitive, and he doesn’t like not campaigning. He’s still not used to being top dog.”

“My sympathies,” Hicks said, wondering what she was getting at.

“I wanted to warn you. He’s spending a lot of time with a man whose presence at the White House, especially during the campaign, upsets many of us. Have you ever heard of Oliver Ormandy?”

Hicks shook his head.

“He’s well known in American religious circles. He’s fairly intelligent, as such men go. He’s kept his face out of politics and out of the news the past few years. All the other fools ” — she practically spat out the word — “have turned themselves into clowns before the media’s cyclops eye, but not Oliver Ormandy. He first met my husband during the campaign, at a dinner held at Robert James University. Do you know of that place?”

“Is that where they asked for permission to arm their security guards with machine pistols?”

“Yes.”

“Ormandy’s in charge of that?”

“No. He leaves that to one of the bellowing clowns. He glad-hands politicians in the background. Ormandy is quite sincere, you know. More coffee?”

Hicks extended his cup and she poured more.

“Bill has seen Ormandy several times the past week. I’ve asked Nancy, the President’s executive secretary, what they discussed. At first she was reluctant to tell me, but…She was concerned. She was only in the room for the second meeting, for a few minutes. She said they were talking about the end of the world.” Mrs. Crockerman’s face might have been plastered on, her anger stiffened it so. “They were discussing God’s plan for this nation. Nancy said Mr. Ormandy appeared exuberant.”

Hicks stared at the table. What was there to say? Crockerman was President. He could see whom he pleased.

“I do not like that, Mr. Hicks. Do you?” • “Not at all, Mrs. Crockerman.”

“What do you suggest?”

“As you say, he doesn’t listen to me anymore.”

“He doesn’t listen to Carl or David or Irwin…or me. He’s obsessed. He has been reading the Bible. The crazy parts of the Bible, Mr. Hicks. The book of Revelation. My husband was not like this a few weeks ago. He’s changed.”

“I’m very sorry.”