Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

But as he went back to pour coffee for the griping truckers, he realized yes, I most certainly can.

Half a mile away, Tessic’s sound system blasted Vivaldi as he was waved through the guard gate of the plant. He was the only civilian granted unrestricted access. One of the perks of having friends in high places, and a vested interest in the facility. With the gate closing behind him and the winding, forested road to the plant up ahead, Tessic changed his personal audio soundtrack to the Rolling Stones, to re­mind him that, at 56, he wasn’t quite as old as he sometimes felt. He looked at the recipe-scribbled napkin that lay on the seat next to him and smiled. No recipe was worth what he had paid, but then, a mitzvah was not measured in dollars and cents. Besides, altruism was the best kind of business investment.

He shifted into a higher gear, singing along to “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” feeling quite pleased with himself as he sped down his own particular path of enlightenment.

Transcription excerpt, day 193. 13:45 hours

“They drug me when they take me out, now. Problem is I metabolize the stuff so fast, they gotta give me elephant doses. Can’t be healthy.”

“Open wide. I can’t see your mouth through the hole.”

“I feel like a slot machine.”

“If you were a slot machine, I might get something back.”

“Naah. Suckers’ game.”

“Not with you around. Everyone knows how you closed Las Vegas.”

“To hell with Las Vegas. The slot machines all come up triple sevens, and they think it’s something biblical.”

“Is it?”

“How should I know? If the wheels had sixes instead of sevens, they would say I was the Antichrist.”

“Haven’t you heard? You are.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one, too.”

“Would you give your life for your country, Lieutenant Haas?” General Bussard had asked. “Would you give your soul?”

The second question caught her off guard. But as always, she had answered unhesitatingly. “Without pause, sir.” Bussard had shown no reaction, but apparently she had shown the right level of commitment, because she had been chosen for posting to the elite staff of Project Lockdown. Now, however, months after the interview, she remained in the dark as to what exactly the project was. Even as a freshly minted Army Lieutenant she knew better than to ask too many questions. But even by Army standards the silence was deafening.

“It’s Area 51 all over again,” her sister Erica mused, as they sat saying good-byes at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. “Why would you ask to be assigned to the Hesperia plant?” Her sister nursed a Starbucks decaf latte. The drink was so like Erica, Maddy thought: all style and no bite. Like the way she drove her Porsche—always on cruise control. Maddy, on the other hand, liked her coffee no-nonsense black, and hot enough to cauterize a tonsillectomy.

Maddy glanced around, brushing a hand through her dark hair, short enough to be military, but long enough to keep her as feminine as she cared to be. The airport coffee house had a full complement of harried travelers. Everyone was too absorbed in their own transit ennui to care about Maddy and Erica’s conversation. Still Maddy was careful not to raise her voice.

“I didn’t ask,” she told Erica. “Assignments are handed out. We go where we’re told.”

Erika snorted. “Oh, please! Spare me the party line. You can’t tell me a West Point cum laude doesn’t get courted by half the military— even the ones who don’t expect to get into your pants.”

Maddy gulped her coffee, and relished its scalding sting. “It’s still a boys’ club.” But, of course, Erica was right. Even in spite of the boys’ club fraternity she did have quite a lot of options available to her. But rumors of an informational black hole in Hesperia, Michigan, had piqued her curiosity. Mystery was Maddy’s nemesis, and she had be­come obsessed with knowing what they were hiding, or building, or dismantling in that dead power plant. Rumors had abounded in the halls of West Point—rumors that the Hesperia plant was housing some new Manhattan Project. After all, with the state of the world disinte­grating at such an exponential rate over the past year, there was no telling where the next threat would come from. Some even believed the plant was the entryway into a series of subterranean tunnels built for an elite few to survive whatever dark age they were all spiraling towards.

Maddy went up to the counter for a second cup, but was brusquely reminded that, among a thousand other things in the crumbling world economy, there was a shortage on coffee, and even Starbucks was rationing. She settled for some hot water with lemon, then, disgusted, dumped the whole thing into the trash before returning to her sister, who was craning her neck to catch sight of the departure boards, look­ing for a flight that might or might not actually happen. Her sister was headed to New York to some ex-boyfriend, who had decided that pigs had, indeed, flown and he was deeply ready for commitment.

“All those freaks on street corners proclaiming the end of the world finally got to him,” Erica had told her. “He probably just wants to get laid before it happens.”

Maddy’s flight was just a short hop to Grand Rapids, where she would finally be briefed on her assignment at the Hesperia facility.

“Maybe you get to babysit little green men,” Erica suggested.

“More likely gray,” Maddy informed her. “Haven’t the Roswell lunatics taught you anything?”

Erica gave the obligatory chuckle, and gulped the dregs of her latte. “Roswell freaks, Backwash communes—maybe you’ve got the right idea. Lock yourself behind a fence. At least you won’t get nabbed by some damn Colist cult.”

Maddy had to admit she had been, for the most part, shielded at West Point from the aftermath of the Colorado River Backwash. But even so, she knew it was the defining event in people’s lives. Like so many of those who had flocked to the spot where Hoover Dam once stood, she had wanted to witness it as well—to watch the waters of the Colorado River flow upward, in a rising backwash against the pull of gravity, into Lake Mead, if only to prove to her doubting spirit that it ever really happened. Then maybe she, too, might have joined so many others, searching the waters for the body of the martyred Dillon Cole.

Maddy knew it was more than Hoover Dam that had shattered that day. The very nature of creation was shaken to its foundations. If they had suddenly discovered that the world was flat, its consequences could not have been more far reaching than the physical impossibility of a mighty river crashing uphill at a thirty-percent grade. In a matter of days cults began to spontaneously generate on society’s fringes and had quickly germinated into the mainstream. Maddy had found it both frightening and wondrous.

A United 747 came in for a landing and Maddy watched idly as its tires squealed to earth, setting off a tiny puff of smoke on the tarmac. In a moment the jet was a beast of the ground again, ponderous metal that seemed too impossibly heavy to fly. But here was a case of mind over matter—science over perception, mused Maddy. No matter how heavy a plane appeared, Bernouli’s principle assured flight every time a mechanically sound jet sped toward the dead end of the runway. There had always been some comfort in the fact that some natural laws could never be repealed. Slim comfort now.

“Dare I ask what you think about all that business? The Backwash and all?” Erica asked.