Fade Out (49 page)

The exchange widened out to include other ideas, attitudes and experiences, and as they progressed towards a deeper understanding, Allbright unexpectedly revealed a terrifying vision that had lain inside his brain like a hidden cancer for years.

Countless explosive chain reactions, fusing into one enormous, apocalyptic, cleansing fireball that would wipe the diseased, the poverty-stricken, the overpopulated, burdensome nations of the world clean off the face of God's Earth. Society would start again. Start anew. The rotten would perish. The sane would survive. And so would the strong. Enough to build a new America. A clean, straightforward, simple America, that his father had known and that he, himself, had seen corrupted…

Wedderkind was so disturbed by the discovery that he lapsed back into speech. ‘Did you really want that to happen?'

‘It was a nightmare wish that stayed with me a long time,' admitted Allbright. ‘It may have been because of my job. When you are near the apex of the command system that controls the most powerful, most destructive force the world has ever known…'

‘I know. One tends to develop a Jupiter complex. Scientists are sometimes afflicted with it too,' said Wedderkind. ‘And now –?'

‘Now I realize that there are other ways by which the same end result can be achieved.'

‘But less bloodily.'

‘That depends very much on how people react,' said Allbright. ‘Things may go badly if you rely on people's willingness to make great sacrifices. The kind of change you and I are talking about will be viewed by most people as a global catastrophe – and no doubt they will react accordingly.'

‘And will you still go ahead as planned?'

‘Of course. There's no other alternative.'

‘Even though you may be risking your life?'

Allbright shrugged. ‘That's nothing new. We are all condemned to die from the moment we're born. It's what you do in between that counts. If I refused to carry out my orders, it could put the lives of everyone on the project at risk.'

‘You're right. I hadn't thought of that.'

‘In any case, neither you or I have the right to allow Crusoe to impose his ideas on the rest of the world. If it was put to the vote what do you think the verdict would be?'

‘How often has the majority been right?' asked Wedderkind. There was no room for the democratic process in your own thermonuclear solution.'

‘My personal feelings are irrelevant, Mr Wedderkind. I took an oath of allegiance to serve my country. Crusoe's presence may be benign, but neither you or I have absolute proof of that. Whatever benefits Crusoe may have come here to bestow on us – and already, we both know of one – his presence and power threaten the authority of the government that the people of the United States elected, and that I serve. Regardless of any other considerations, for that reason alone, if the order comes,
I have
to act.'

‘Oh, it will come, General. It's inevitable. We are all prisoners of the system. I know the present situation is fraught with danger, but I'm praying for your efforts to
be rewarded with total failure – and also for your safe return. Even if it is only to arrest me for treason.'

Allbright smiled. ‘If it does prove impossible to destroy Crusoe, I hope, for your sake, I
do
survive, Mr Wedderkind. You're going to need people like me.'

Despite the apparently frank exchange, Wedderkind had been aware that Allbright was blocking off certain areas within his mind that held information he was not ready to share. In visual terms, the sensation was rather like driving along a freeway in clear weather and then suddenly running into a dense bank of dark grey fog that blots out all sight, sound, and movement. With practice, it might be possible to probe through the mental barriers into the concealed areas. Allbright must have experienced something similar, because Wedderkind had, himself, made a strenuous effort to hold back his knowledge of the possible existence of other landing sites.

He realized that he would have to work hard to develop his reawakened telepathic powers. In particular, Wedderkind foresaw an urgent need to perfect a blocking technique that employed a diversionary segment of irrelevant experience to screen off the knowledge he wished to conceal rather than the telltale ‘fog'. If he was going to find himself surrounded by a host of open-minded telepaths, a little mild deception might come in handy…

With Connors and Fraser aboard, and Colonel Buzz Bricker at the controls, Air Force One took off from Andrews AFB at 10 A.M. Thursday and headed eastward across the Atlantic on a route that would pass over the Azores.

It was the first time Connors had been face to face with Fraser for more than an hour without a table between
them. The President had intended him to go alone, but after their midnight meeting, Fraser had asked to go along on the trip. This time, at least, they were agreed on the course of action to follow.

Before leaving, Connors had reread the background material Greg Mitchell had compiled on Fraser. Just reading about him had been an exhausting experience. Not content with collecting good grades in law and economics, Fraser had been a star football player at Oregon State, had served with distinction in the Marines, played good golf, had helped crew one of the yachts in the 1970 America's Cup Race, was a keen fisherman, strong swimmer, ran three miles every morning, and enjoyed chopping down trees with an axe.

Connors had never played football, couldn't bear golf, preferred boats with engines, found his fish in restaurants, could just keep himself afloat with a floundering breast stroke, had lately been having problems running up his own stairs, and the nearest he'd got to an axe in the last twenty years was a stereo version of ‘Woodchopper's Ball'. Still, his record was not one of total failure. With single-minded determination, Connors
had
made the UCLA tennis team but only because he was even more determined to make the women's singles champion. At the end of the season she had announced her engagement to a thirty-year-old dentist. Totally disgusted, Connors abandoned sports and went back to the college library and the more rewarding pursuit of girls with glasses.

Connors had viewed the forty-eight-hour trip with mixed feelings, but fortunately, Fraser had brought four Defense Department aides with him. Apart from some initial desultory conversation, Fraser spent a lot of the trip working with his aides on a sackful of papers. It gave Connors time to review the files on Crusoe, CAMPFIRE, and Commissar, and to work out exactly what he was
going to say to the Russians. He reflected for a moment on the curious way in which his life had been dogged by the letter C: the choice of his own surname; California, the state in which he'd spent his first years in America; the name of his first wife and the name of the girl he might yet marry – and now Crusoe…

Just after the Azores had drifted past the starboard wing, Fraser left his shirt-sleeved colleagues and came over to Connors. ‘May I join you?'

‘Sure…'

Fraser sat down and loosened his striped tie. ‘Boy, have we got problems…'

‘The fade-out?'

‘Yeah… when those short waves go, the shit really hits the fan.'

‘Yes, I can imagine.'

‘I wonder if you can,' said Fraser.

‘I've been on the NSC and the Special Action Group for two years,' said Connors. ‘That does give me some idea of the workings of the military establishment.'

‘Do you realize that without radar and radio it's practically impossible to hold this country together, let alone defend it? And globally, by the time that last three-week fade-out ended, we'd lost our grip on the whole situation. But I mean totally. If the Russians hadn't played it straight down the middle – '

‘At least I got that bit right,' said Connors. ‘They're in as bad shape as we are.'

‘Don't kid yourself,' growled Fraser. ‘They're not geared up the way we are. Do you know how many of their tanks have radios? One in four.'

‘But at least their Red ant heaps didn't swarm all over us.'

‘Not last time. But don't write off that possibility. We don't know how long this new fade-out is going to last –
or whether the Russians will go along with us. If these guys sense an opportunity to screw us, they will. Look at the way they covered up the second spacecraft.'

‘And the way we broke the agreement to ban reconnaissance overflights. That's going to take some explaining when I lay the photographs of Commissar on the table.'

‘You'll think of something,' said Fraser. ‘Listen, the only reason they didn't try it was because they don't have anything to match the SR-71A. The dummies went
banco
on photographic satellites. Fat lot of good that did them. And what about Crusoe? You and the Old Man led the big clam-up on that.'

‘Weren't we right?'

‘Absolutely. It just proves my point. When it comes down to the real nitty-gritty, all this talk about trust and mutual understanding between us and the Russians turn, out to be plain hogwash.'

‘You know why we decided to keep quiet. Crusoe's landing created an entirely new situation. We didn't know how
we
would react, let alone the Russians. Especially under the impact of the fade-out. That altered the whole balance of power that formed the basis of the agreements we'd reached.'

‘My words to the President exactly,' said Fraser. ‘Except that in my opinion, the agreements aren't worth the paper they're written on. I put my faith in a big gun and a strong dollar.'

‘Yes… the trouble is, we don't seem to be able to have both.'

Fraser didn't say anything. Winning congressional approval of his Defense budget was just
one
of his current problems. And now, with the renewed fade-out, the billions of dollars already invested in advanced electronic-based weapons systems was looking, at least temporarily, like a total write-off. Without a big gun, and with the
dollar weakening under the economic impact of the fade-out, the only way for the United States to avoid trouble was to make friends and influence people. And that meant using the relationships people like Connors had helped the President build with the Communists.

‘Do you think they're going to buy this bluff of yours?' asked Fraser.

‘I think we have a more than even chance.'

‘Well, if it comes off, it will be one hell of a double play.' There was a hint of grudging admiration in Fraser's voice. ‘Still, I suppose you people understand better than we do just how their minds work.'

Connors ignored this veiled reference to his middle-European origins. He had, after all, only been six years old when following the collapse of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, his parents had brought him to America after a perilous crossing of the Austrian border under fire from a Red Army patrol that had killed three other refugees travelling with them. ‘The point is this, if the Russians do agree with our proposition, can you guarantee that a nuclear bomb is going to destroy these spacecraft?'

‘What else do you suggest we use?' asked Fraser.

‘But is a fifty-kiloton weapon going to be big enough?'

‘The Russians can use what they like,' said Fraser. ‘We've calculated the size we need. What do you want us to do, use fifty megatons and destroy half of the midwest?'

‘No. I trust your experts. It's just that we may only get one bite at the apple.'

‘What makes you say that?' asked Fraser.

‘I don't know. It was just a thought.'

Fraser grinned. ‘Crusoe's finally got you worried too.'

‘There's never been a time when I wasn't worried,' said Connors. ‘Even so, I think it was right to give Arnold and his boys a chance to try to find out something about it.'

Fraser shook his head. ‘We should have blown it up in orbit. We had a whole week while it was circling around. Our radar was locked on to it, there was no fade-out. We couldn't have missed.'

‘It still could have been dangerous. Supposing Crusoe had been stuffed with radioactive cobalt? The debris could have poisoned the atmosphere and killed us all.'

‘Could we be in any greater danger than we are now?' asked Fraser.

‘But Mel, with what we know now, do you honestly believe that we could have blown Crusoe up before he landed? Our satellites were knocked out by a burst of radiation. A missile could have been deactivated in the same way.'

‘I'm not prepared to consider that kind of proposition,' said Fraser. ‘If we allow ourselves to think for one moment that Crusoe is indestructible, then we might as well all jump out of the window.'

‘Oh, come on, Mel,' said Connors, ‘I'm with you one hundred per cent on this, but if we're going to drop a nuclear bomb on him, we
have
to consider the possibility that it's not going to blow him out of the ground. That means considering that the fade-out might not be a prelude to takeoff but a permanent fixture. I know the problems would be gigantic, but we could adapt. We'd find
some
kind of solution. We'd have to. It certainly wouldn't be the end of the world.'

Fraser eyed him. ‘All I can say is you've got a funny view of it. You remember we asked the Hudson Institute to prepare various scenarios on the basis of a prolonged fade-out?'

Connors nodded.

‘I got a sneak preview of their preliminary assessments,' said Fraser. ‘Catastrophic…'

‘In that case everything had better go according to
plan,' said Connors. ‘If the Russians play ball, by next Friday we'll have seen the last of Crusoe and an end of our uncertainties.'

‘That moment can't come soon enough for me.'

‘Weren't you
ever
curious to know more about Crusoe?' asked Connors. ‘I find it amazing that you never wanted to come to Crow Ridge and take a firsthand look at Crusoe and Friday. After all, an event like this is not likely to happen again, not in our lifetimes anyway.'