Sidney Sheldon - The Doomsday Conspiracy

“That’s incredible.”

“But true. We’ve also learned that plants respond to different kinds of music.”

“Different kinds?”

“Yes. They did an experiment at Temple Buell College in Denver where healthy flowers were put in three separate glass cases. Acid rock music was piped into one case, soft East Indian sitar music was piped into the second case, and the third had no music. A CBS camera crew recorded the experiment, using time-lapse photography. At the end of two weeks, the flowers exposed to the rock music were dead, the group with no music was growing normally, and the ones that heard the sitar music had turned into beautiful blooms, with stems and flowers reaching toward the source of the sound. Walter Cronkite ran the film on his news show. If you wish to check it, it was on October 26, 1970.”

“Are you saying plants have an intelligence?”

“They breathe, and eat, and reproduce. They can feel pain, and they can utilize defences against their enemies. For example, ter-penes are used by certain plants to poison the soil around them and to discourage competitors. Other plants exude alkaloids to make them unpalatable to insects. We’ve proved that plants communicate with one another by pheromones.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of that,” Janus said.

“Some plants are meat eaters. The Venus flytrap, for example. Certain orchids look and smell like female bees, to decoy male bees. Others resemble female wasps to attract the males to visit them and pick up pollen. Another type of orchid has an aroma like rotting meat to coax carrion flies in the neighbourhood to come to them.”

Janus was listening to every word.

“The Pink Lady’s-Slipper has a hinged upper lip that closes when a bee lands, and traps it. The only escape is through a narrow passageway out the rear, and as the bee fights its way to freedom, it picks up a cap of pollen. There are five thousand flowering plants that grow in the northeast, and each species has its own characteristics. There is no doubt about it. It’s been proven over and over that living plants have an intelligence.”

Janus was thinking: And the missing alien is at large somewhere.

DAY THREE

Bern, Wednesday, October 17th

Bern was one of Robert’s favourite cities. It was an elegant town, filled with lovely monuments and beautiful old stone buildings dating back to the eighteenth century. It was the capital of Switzerland and one of its most prosperous cities, and Robert wondered whether the fact that the street cars were green had anything to do with the colour of money. He had found that the Berners were more easy-going than the citizens from other parts of Switzerland. They moved more deliberately, spoke more slowly, and were generally calmer. He had worked in Bern several times in the past with the Swiss Secret Service, operating out of their headquarters at Waisenhausplatz. He had friends there who could have been helpful, but his instructions were clear. Puzzling, but clear.

It took fifteen phone calls for Robert to locate the garage that towed the photographer’s car. It was a small garage located on Fribourgstrasse, and the mechanic, Fritz Mandel, was also the owner. Mandel appeared to be in his late forties, with a gaunt, acne-pitted face, a thin body, and an enormous beer belly. He was working down in the pit of the grease rack when Robert arrived.

“Good afternoon,” Robert called.

Mandel looked up. “Guten Tag. What can I do for you?”

“I’m interested in a car you towed in Sunday.”

“Just a minute till I finish this up.”

Ten minutes later, Mandel climbed out of the pit and wiped his oily hands on a filthy cloth.

“You’re the one who called this morning. Was there some complaint about that tow job?” Mandel asked. “I’m not responsible for …”

“No,” Robert reassured him. “Not at all. I’m conducting a survey and I’m interested in the driver of the car.”

“Come into the office.”

The two men went into the small office and Mandel opened a file cabinet. “Last Sunday, you said?”

“That’s right.”

Mandel took out a card. “Ja. That was the Arschficker who took our picture in front of that UFO.”

Robert’s palms felt suddenly moist. “You saw the UFO?”

“Ja. I almost brachte aus.”

“Can you describe it?”

Mandel shuddered. “It … it seemed alive.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean … there was a kind of light around it. It kept changing colours. It looked blue … then green … I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. And there were these little creatures inside. Not human, but …” He broke off.

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Were they alive?”

“They looked dead to me.” He mopped his brow. “I’m glad you believe me. I tried to tell my friends and they laughed at me. Even my wife thought I had been drinking. But I know what I saw.”

“About the car you towed …” Robert said.

“Ja. The Renault. It had an oil leak, and the bearings burned out. The tow job cost a hundred and twenty-five francs. I charge double on Sundays.”

“Did the driver pay by cheque or credit card?”

“I don’t take cheques and I don’t take no credit cards. He paid in cash.”

“Swiss francs?”

“Pounds.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I remember I had to check the rate of exchange.”

“Mr Mandel, do you happen to have a record of the licence number of the car?”

“Of course,” Mandel said. He glanced down at the card. “It was a rental. Avis. He rented it in Geneva.”

“Would you mind giving me that licence number?”

“Sure, why not?” He wrote the number down on a piece of paper and handed it to Robert. “What is this all about, anyway? The UFO thing?”

“No,” Robert said, in his sincerest voice. He took out his wallet and pulled out an identification card. “I’m with the IAC, the International Auto Club. My company is doing a survey on tow trucks.”

“Oh.”

Robert walked out of the garage, and thought dazedly, It looks like we have a fucking UFO with two dead aliens on our hands. Then why had General Hilliard lied to him when he knew Robert would discover that it was a flying saucer that had crashed?

There could only be one explanation, and Robert felt a sudden, cold chill.

The huge mothership floated noiselessly through dark space, seemingly motionless, travelling at 22,000 miles an hour, in exact synchronization with the orbit of the earth. The six aliens aboard were studying the three-dimensional field-of-view optical screen that covered one wall of the spaceship. On the monitor, as the planet Earth rotated, they watched holographic pictures of what lay below, while an electronic spectrograph analysed the chemical components of the images that appeared. The atmosphere surrounding the land masses they passed over was heavily polluted. Huge factories befouled the air with thick, black, poisonous gases, while unbiodegradable refuse was dumped into landfills and into the seas.

The aliens looked down at the oceans, once pristine and blue, now black with oil and brown with scum. The coral of the Great Barrier Reef was turning bleach-white and fish were dying by the billions. The Amazon rain forest was a huge, barren crater, where the trees had been stripped. The instruments on the spaceship indicated that the earth’s temperature had risen since their last exploration three years earlier. They could see wars being waged on the planet below, spewing new poisons into the atmosphere.

The aliens communicated by mental telepathy.

Nothing has changed with the Earthlings.

It is a pity. They have learned nothing.