DIES IRAE

69

Below San Francisco Bay, hours after boarding the ark, the young woman who had guided them on the fishing boat — her name was Clara Fogarty — went among the twenty in the waiting room and spoke to them, answering questions, trying to keep them all calm. She seemed none too calm herself; fragile, on the edge.

Help her, Arthur was ordered. He and several others immediately obeyed. After a few minutes, he circled back through the people to Francine and took her hands. Marty hugged him fiercely.

“I’m going to visit the areas where we’ll be staying,” he said to Francine.

“The network is telling you this?”

“No,” he said, looking to one side, frowning slightly. “Something else. A voice I’ve not heard before. I’m to meet somebody.”

Francine wiped her face with her hands and kissed him. Arthur lifted Marty with an oomph and told him to take care of his mother. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

He stood beside Clara Fogarty at the middle hatch on the side opposite where they had entered. The hatch — little more than an outline in the wall’s surface — slid open and they passed through quickly, before they had a clear impression of what was on the other side.

A brightly illuminated broad hallway, curving down, stretched before them. The hatch closed and they regarded each other nervously. More hatches lined both sides of the hallway.

“Artificial gravity?” Clara Fogarty asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

At a silent request, they stepped forward. They remained upright in relation to the floor, with no odd sensations other than the visual. At the end of the hallway, another open hatchway awaited them; beyond was a warm half darkness. They entered a chamber similar to the waiting room.

In the center of this chamber rose a pedestal about a foot high and a yard wide. On the pedestal rested something that at first examination Arthur took to be a sculpture. It stood about half as tall as he, shaped like a hefty square human torso and head — rather, in fact, like a squared-off and slightly flattened kachina doll. Other than an abstracted and undivided bosom, it lacked any surface features. In color it was similar to heat-treated copper, with oily swirls of rainbow iridescence. Its skin was glossy but not reflective.

Without warning, it lifted smoothly a few inches above the pedestal and addressed them both out loud:

“I am afraid your people will soon no longer be wild and free.”

Arthur had heard this same voice in his head just a few minutes ago, beckoning them through the hatches.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am not your keeper, but I am your guide.”

“Are you alive?” He did not know what else to ask.

“I am not biologically alive. I am part of this vessel, which will in turn soon become part of a much larger vessel. You are here to prepare your companions for me, that I may instruct them and carry out my own instructions.”

“Are you a robot?” Clara asked.

“I am a symbol, designed to be acceptable without conveying wrong impressions. In a manner of speaking, I am a machine, but I am not a servile laborer. Do you understand me?”

The object’s voice was deep, authoritative, yet not masculine.

“Yes,” Arthur said.

“Some among your group might panic if exposed to me without preparation. Yet it is essential that they come to know and trust me, and come to trust the information and instructions I give them. Is this understood?”

“Yes.” They answered in unison.

“The future of your people, and of all the information we have retrieved from your planet, depends on how your kind and my kind interact. Your kind must become disciplined, and I must educate you about larger realities than most of you have been used to facing.”

Arthur nodded, his mouth dry. “We’re inside one of the arks?”

“You are. These vessels will join together once we are all in space. There are now thirty-one of these vessels, and aboard twenty-one of them, five hundred humans apiece. The vessels also contain large numbers of botanical, zoological, and other specimens — not in most cases whole, but in recoverable form. Is this clear?”

“Yes,” Arthur said. Clara nodded.

“Most of my early communications with you will not be through speech, but through what you might call telepathy, as you have already been directed by the network. Later, when there is more time, this intrusive method will be largely abandoned. For now, when you go among your companions, I will speak through you, but you will have the discretion of phrasing and timing. We have very little time.”

“Has it begun?” Clara asked.

“It has begun,” the object said.

“And we’re leaving soon?”

“The last passengers and specimens for this vessel are being loaded now.”

Arthur received impressions of crates of chromium spiders being loaded from small boats through the surface entrance of the ark. The spiders contained the fruits of weeks of searching and sampling: genetic material from thousands of plants and animals along the West Coast.

“What can we call you?” Arthur asked.

“You will make up your own names for me. Now you must return to your group and introduce them to their quarters, which are spaced along this hallway. You must also ask for at least four volunteers to witness the crime that is now being committed.”

“We’re to witness the destruction of the Earth?” Clara asked.

“Yes. It is the Law. If you will excuse me, I have other introductions to make.”

They backed out of the shadowy room and watched as the hatchway slid shut.

“Very efficient,” Arthur said.

“The Law.’” Clara smiled thinly. “Right now, I’m more scared than I ever was on the boat. I don’t even know all the people’s names yet.”

“Let’s get started,” Arthur said. They traversed the curved hallway. The hatch at the opposite end opened and they saw a cluster of anxious faces. The smell of fear drifted out.

70

Irwin Schwartz stepped into the White House situation room and nearly bumped into the First Lady. She backed away with a nervous nod, her hands trembling, and he entered. Everyone’s nerves had been frazzled since the evacuation the night before and the rapid return of the President to the Capital. No one had slept for more than an hour or two since.

The President stood with Otto Lehrman before the high-resolution data screens mounted on the wood paneling covering the concrete walls. The screens were on and showed maps of different portions of the Northern Hemisphere, Mercator projection, with red spots marking vanished cities. “Come on in, Irwin,” Crockerman said. “We have some new material from the Puzzle Palace.” He seemed almost cheerful.

Irwin turned to the First Lady. “Are you here to stay?” he asked bluntly. He respected the woman, but did not like her much.

“The President specially requested my presence,” she said. “He feels we should be united.”

“Obviously, you agree with him.”

“I agree with him,” she said.

Never in United States history had a First Lady deserted her husband when he was under fire; Mrs. Crockerman knew this, and it must have taken some courage to return. Still, Schwartz had himself given long hours of thought to resigning from the administration; he could not judge her too harshly.

He held out his hand. She accepted and they shook firmly. “Welcome back aboard,” he said.

“We have photos about twenty minutes old from a Diamond Apple,” Lehrman said. “Technicians are putting them on the screens any minute.” Diamond Apples were reconnaissance satellites launched in the early 1990s. The National Reconnaissance Office was very zealous with Diamond Apple pictures. Usually, they would have been reserved for the eyes of the President and Secretary of Defense only; that Schwartz was seeing them indicated something extraordinary was in store.