Hicks frowned. “And our conversations?”

“For the time being, what we say to each other is not to be discussed elsewhere. In the fullness of history, in our memoirs or whatever…”Crockerman nodded to the far walls. “Fine.”

“I’d like some more details,” Hicks said, “especially if Mr. Rotterjack and Mr. McClennan or Mr. Lehrman have control over me or my story. But for the time being, I’ll agree. I will not report what we say to each other privately.”

Crockerman put the papers on the table in front of him. “Now, here are my thoughts. Either we’ve been invaded twice in the last year, or somebody is lying to us.”

“The choice seems to be between doom and a hands across space policy,” Hicks said.

The President nodded agreement. “I’ve made some logic diagrams.” He held up the first sheet of paper. “Venn diagrams. Scant remnants of my college math days.” He smiled. “Nothing complicated, just drawings to help me sort the possibilities out. I’d appreciate your criticisms.”

“All right.” Hicks glanced at the piece of paper before the President. Brief notations of possible scenarios lay within nested and intersecting and separated circles.

“If these two spacecraft have similar origins, I see several possibilities. First, the Australians are dealing with a splinter group of extraterrestrials, some kind of dissident faction. But our information is correct, and the primary aim of the overall mission is to destroy the Earth, and the Guest does indeed represent survivors of their last conquest. With me so far?”

“Yes.”

“Second,” the President continued, “we are dealing with two separate events, which by some literally astronomical chance are happening simultaneously. Two groups of aliens, unacquainted or only marginally acquainted with each other. Or third, we are not dealing with aliens at all, but with emissaries.”

Hicks raised an eyebrow. “Emissaries?”

“I’m not completely comfortable with the vastness of the universe.” Crockerman said nothing for ten or fifteen seconds, staring at the table, his face passive but his eyes darting back and forth between the candle and his cup of coffee. “I suppose that you are.”

“I’m human,” Hicks said. “I’m limited, too. I accept the vastness without truly understanding it or feeling it.”

“That makes me feel better. I’m not doing too badly, then, am I?” Crockerman asked.

“No, sir.”

“I wonder if, perhaps, in charting our universe from a scientific perspective, we haven’t lost something…an awareness of…” Again he paused, searching for words. “Transgressions. If we think of God as a superior intelligence, not human, but demanding certain obediences…Do you follow me?”

Hicks nodded once.

“Perhaps we are no longer satisfying this superior intelligence. He, or more accurately, It, sends Its emissaries, Its angels if you will, to brandish the kind of sword we understand. The end of the Earth.” Crockerman raised his eyes to meet Hicks’s.

The waitress brought their breakfast and asked if they wanted more coffee. Crockerman refused; Hicks accepted a warm-up. When she had gone, Hicks investigated his omelet with a fork, no longer very hungry. His stomach knotted, acid. He could feel a kind of panic coming on.

“I’ve never been comfortable with religious interpretations,” he said.

“Must we classify this as a religious interpretation? Couldn’t this just as easily be an alternative to theories of conflicting aliens, or factionalized invaders?”

“I’m not sure what your theory is.”

“ ‘The moving finger, having writ.’ That.”

“Ah. ‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,’ or whatever.”

“Precisely. We’ve screwed up. Polluted, overarmed. The twentieth century has been a mess. The bloodiest century in human history. More needless human death than at any other time.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Hicks said.

“And now, we move outward. Perhaps we’ve been suffered only so long as we remained on Earth. Now—”

“It’s an old idea,” Hicks interrupted, his unease converting rapidly to irritation.

“Does that mean it’s invalid?”

“I think there are better ideas,” Hicks said.

“Ah,” Crockerman said, his own breakfast still untouched. “But none of them convince me. I am the only judge I can truly rely upon in this situation, am I not?”

“No, sir. There are experts—”

“In my political career, I have ignored the advice of experts many times, and I have prevailed. This made me different from other, more standard aspirants to high office. Now, I grant you, such a ploy has its risks.”

“I’m getting lost again, sir. What ploy?”

“Ignoring experts.” The President leaned forward, extending his hands across the table, fists clenched, his eyes moist. Crockerman’s expression was a rictus of pain. “I asked the Guest one thing, and received one important answer, from all of our questions…I asked it, ‘Do you believe in God,’ and it replied, ‘I believe in punishment.’” He leaned back, looking at his fists and relaxing them, rubbing the palms, where fingernails had dug deep. “That must be significant. Perhaps the Guest is from another world, another place where transgressors have been dealt with severely. That thing out there in the ‘Furnace,’ Death Valley of all places…We have been told it will render the Earth down into slag. Total destruction. We have been told we cannot destroy it. I believe in fact we cannot.”

Hicks was about to say something, but Crockerman continued, his voice low.

“God, a superior intelligence, sculpts us all, finds us wanting, and sends our material back into the forge to be reshaped. That thing out there. The Furnace. That’s the forge of God. That’s what we’re up against. Might be up against.”

“And the Australian artifact, the robots, the messages?”

“I don’t know,” Crockerman said. “It would clearly sound insane to claim the Australians were dealing with an adversary…But perhaps.”

“Adversary…a kind of Satan?”

“Something opposed to the Creator. A force that hopes we will be allowed to continue our transgressions, to put all creation out of balance.”

“I think there are better explanations, Mr. President,” Hicks said quietly.

“Then please,” Crockerman pleaded, “tell me what they are.”

“I am not qualified,” Hicks said. “I know almost nothing about what’s happened. Only what you’ve told me.”

“Then how can you be critical of my theory?”

The way Crockerman spoke, like a child though using grown-up words, chilled Hicks to the bone. A friend had once spoken to Hicks in a similar tone in London in 1959; she had died by her own hand a month later.

“It is not realistic,” he said.

“Is anything about this situation realistic?” Crockerman asked. Neither had done much more than push the food around on his plate.

Hicks took a bite. The omelet was cold. He ate it anyway, and Crockerman began to eat his. Neither spoke again until the plates were empty, as if engaged in a contest of silence. The waitress took the plates away and poured more coffee into Hicks’s cup.

“I apologize,” the President said, wiping his lips with the napkin and folding it on the table. “I’ve been rude with you. That’s unforgivable.”

Hicks mumbled something about the strain they were all under, and how it was understandable.

“You give me a kind of perspective, however,” Crockerman said. “I can see, just watching your reaction, how others would react. This is a very difficult time, in more ways than one. I’ve had to interrupt my campaign schedule. The election is less than a month away. Timing is very important. I see I need to trim the rough edges from my phrases…”

“Sir, it is not phrasing. It is perspective,” Hicks said, his voice rising. “If you pursue these theories of cosmic recrimination, I can hardly imagine the damage you might cause.”

“Yes. I see that.”

Do you? Hicks asked himself. And then, examining Crockerman’s suspicious, half-lidded expression, Yes, perhaps you do…but that won’t stop you.