Greg Bear - The Forge of God

“A MiG?” the slim, black-haired woman asked after he hung up. She sounded incredulous.

“Listen,” Edward said. “I lied to them. But I’m not going to lie to you. We might need your meat locker.”

Esther looked as if she might faint. “What’s happenin’ heah?” she asked. “Stella? What’s this awl abauht?” Her drawl had thickened and her face was sweaty and pasty.

“Just you,” Edward said to Stella.

She examined him shrewdly and pointed to his belt and rock hammer, still slung in its leather holder. “You’re a rock hound?”

“A geologist,” he said.

“Where?”

“University of Texas,” he said.

“Do you know Harvey Bridge from—”

“U.C. Davis. Sure.”

“He comes here in the winter…” She seemed markedly less skeptical. “Esther, go get the sheriff. He’s at the caf6 talking to Ed.”

“I don’t think we should let everybody in on this,” Edward suggested. Bad feeling.

“Not even the sheriff?”

He glanced at the ceiling. “I don’t know…”

“Okay, then, Esther, just go home. If you don’t hear from me in a half an hour, go get the sheriff and give him this man’s description.” She nodded at Edward.

“You’ll be okay heah?” Esther asked, short thick fingers rapping delicately on the counter.

“I’ll be fine. Go home.”

The store had only one customer, a young kid looking at the paperback and magazine rack. With both Stella and Edward staring at him, he soon moved out through the door, shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his neck.

“Now, what’s going on?” Stella asked.

Edward instructed Minelli to drive the Land Cruiser around to the back of the store. He motioned for Stella to follow him through the rear door. “We’ll need a cool dark place,” he told her as they waited.

“I’d like to know what’s happening,” she repeated, her jaw firm, head inclined slightly to one side. The way she stood, feet planted solidly on the linoleum and hands on her hips, told Edward as plain as words she would stand for no more evasion.

“There’s a new cinder cone out there,” he said. Minelli parked the vehicle near the door. Talking rapidly to keep his story from crashing into splinters, Edward opened the Land Cruiser’s back gate, pulling aside the tent and moist towels. “I mean, not fresh…Just new. Not on any charts. It shouldn’t be there. We found this next to it.”

The miter-head lifted slightly, and the three sherry-colored eyes emerged to stare at the three of them. Reslaw stood by the store’s far corner, keeping a lookout for gawkers.

To her credit, Stella did not scream or even grow pale. She actually leaned in closer. “It’s not a fake,” she said, as quickly convinced as he had been.

“No, ma’am.”

“Poor thing…What is it?”

Edward suggested she stand back. They unloaded it and carried it through the delivery door into the refrigerated meat locker.

East Coast News Network interview with Terence Jacobi, lead singer for the Hardwires, September 30, 1996:

ECNN: Mr. Jacobi, your group’s music has consistently preached — so to speak — the coming of the Apocalypse, from a rather radical Christian perspective. With two songs in the Top 40 and three records totaling ten million sales, you’ve obviously hit a nerve with the younger generation. How do you explain your music’ s popularity?

Jacobi (Laughing, then snorting and blowing his nose) : Everybody knows, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, you’ve got only two best friends: your left hand and Christ. The whole world’s out to get you. Maybe if the world went away, if God wiped the slate clean, we could get on with just being ourselves. God’ s a righteous God. He will send his angels to Earth to warn us. We believe that, and it shows in our music.

Harry Feinman stood near the back of the boat untangling line from the spindle of his reel. Arthur let the boat drift with the slow-moving water. He dropped anchor a dozen yards south of the big leaning pine that marked the deep, watery hollow where, it was rumored, fishermen had pulled in so many big ones the past few years. Marty played with the minnows in the bait bucket and opened the cardboard containers full of dirt and worms. The sun was a dazzle outlined by thin high clouds; the air smelled of the river, a fresh, pungent greenness, and of coolness, of the early fall. In the calm backwater of the hollow, orange and brown leaves had collected in a flat, undulating clump.

“Do I have to bait my own hook?” Marty asked.

“That’s part of the game,” Harry said. Harry Feinman was stocky and muscular, six inches shorter than Arthur, with premature ash-gray hair receding on all fronts but his neck, where it ventured as stiff fuzz below the collar of his black leather jacket. His face was beefy, friendly, with small piercing eyes and heavy dark eyebrows. He reeled in loose nylon vigorously and propped the pole between the bait can and a tackle box. “You don’t earn your fish without doing the whole thing.”

Arthur winked at Marty’s dubious glance.

“Might hurt the worms,” Marty said.

“I honestly don’t know whether they feel pain or not,” Harry said. “They might. But that’s the way of things.”

“Is that the way of things, Dad?” Marty asked Arthur.

“I suppose it is.” In all the time they had spent living by the river, Arthur had never taken Marty fishing.

“Your dad’s here to break things easy to you, Marty. I’m not. Fishing is serious business. It’s a ritual.”

Marty knew about rituals. “That means we’re supposed to do something a certain way so we won’t feel guilty,” he said.

“You got it,” Harry said.

Marty put on the vacant look that meant he was hatching an idea. “Peggy getting married…is that a ritual, because they’re going to have sex? And they might be guilty?”

In the morning, Francine and Martin would drive to Eugene to attend her niece’s wedding. Arthur would have accompanied them, but now there were far more important things.

Arthur raised his eyebrows at Harry. “You’ve done all the talking so far,” he said.

“He’s your son, fellah.”

“Getting married is celebration. It’s a ritual, but it’s joyous. Not at all like baiting a hook.”

Harry grinned. “Nobody’s guilty about having sex anymore.”

Marty nodded, satisfied, and took a hooked line from Arthur. Arthur gingerly pulled a worm out of the carton and handed it to his son. “Twist it around and hook it several times.”

“Blecchh,” Martin said, doing as he was told. “Worm blood is yellow,” he added. “Squishy.”

They fished in the hollow for an hour without luck. By nine-thirty, Martin was ready to put the pole down and eat a sandwich. “All right. Wash your hands in the river,” Arthur told him. “Worm juice, remember.”

“Bleechh.” Marty bent over the gunwale to immerse his hands.

Harry leaned back, letting his knees grip the pole, and locked his hands behind his neck, grinning broadly. “We haven’t done this in years.”

“I don’t miss fishing much,” Arthur said.

“Sissy.”

“Dad’s not a sissy,” Marty insisted.

“You tell him,” Arthur encouraged.

“Fishing’s gross,” Marty said.

“Like father, like son,” Harry lamented.

Harry’s floppy fisherman’s cap cast a shadow over his eyes. Arthur suddenly remembered the dream, with Harry’s head a full moon, and shuddered. The wind rose cool and damp in the tree shadows of the hollow with a beautiful, mourning sigh.

Marty ate his sandwich, oblivious.

October 4

Beyond the wide picture windows and a curtain of tall pines, the river eddied quiet and green around a slight bend. To the west, white clouds rolled inland, their bottoms heavy and gray.