That Nietzsche Thing (10 page)

“Well, thanks for your help O’Day,” I said.
But thanks didn’t really didn’t cover it.

“Are you going to tell me where you got that
DNA string?” O’Day asked, still chuckling to himself.

“Maybe someday,” I answered. “Over a beer.
But for right now...”

“I know, I know. Police business.”

“Right. Well...talk to you later, alright?” I
said, eager to dive into Dark’s book. “I’ve got some reading to
do.”

“Yeah, me too,” O’Day agreed. Then, almost as
an after through, asked, “You want any credit in this? I mean,
decoding
Dark’s Last Novel
...”

“Hell no!” I answered quickly. “I don’t know
anything about jack shit, okay?”

“Right. Right.”

“You enjoy yourself,” I said. “But watch out
for crazed Rosicrucians. They’re going to be pissed.”

O’Day laughed. “I will.”

Chapter 14

The first important thing to know about
Dark’s Last Novel
is that it wasn’t a novel at all. It was,
in truth, a journal of his wartime years, spent as a correspondent
for the
Stars and Stripes
and other papers. Everyone assumed
it was a novel, because that was how Dark had presented it. But it
was no work of fiction. Or perhaps, not intentionally a work of
fiction.

The first one hundred and fifty or sixty
pages of it I’ll skip over. While it’s an interesting chronicle of
his wartime experience, including trips to both the Europe and
Pacific theaters, those sections of the book really have nothing to
do with Vivan Montavez’s murder, the Rosicrucians, or Q.

The book gets interesting right around page
one-hundred and sixty-eight, when he’s state-side after the war,
covering the declassified parts of the Manhattan Project, post
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for the
Chicago Tribune
.

He’s no science fiction writer yet. Not at
this point. He hasn’t published even a single story, but his
writings on the scientific aspects of the Manhattan Project are
starting to get his creative juices flowing. The journal contains
some interesting observations that are plainly seeds of ideas that
would appear later in his books, like
War of the Planets.
This is some pretty far-fetched stuff, like nuclear small arms and
the effects of prolonged radiation exposure on the human body.

But his writing on the Manhattan Project
swiftly begins to look tame compared to the sections of the journal
that obviously led Dark to encrypt his book in its unusual fashion.
These sections start with a midnight knocking on his motel room
door. It’s his Army public relations handler, a Lieutenant Owen. He
manhandles Dark into his clothes and hurries him into a waiting
Jeep. As they’re speeding off into the desert, the Lieutenant
starts to explain – well, I don’t need to paraphrase. You can read
Dark’s words for yourself:

#

The Jeep careened down the narrow highway at
an ungodly speed. Its substandard, government-issued headlights
were insufficient to illuminate the road before us. One errant
tumbleweed, one slow-moving Gila monster in the road and we’d all
be on our way to perdition. I told the Corporal behind the wheel
repeatedly to slow down, but he was deaf to my protests. Perhaps my
words were drowned out by Lieutenant Owen’s ceaseless stream of
prattle, and the screaming of the desert wind in our ears.

“The General requested you specifically,
Albert,” Lieutenant Owen screamed back at me as the Jeep teetered
and totted back and forth across the two lane highway.

“I have no idea what could be so important
that he had to get me up in the middle of the night!” I hollered
back.

Owen shrugged, his epaulets bobbing.

“I am not of the habit of being at the
General’s beck and call,” I added, but Owen had returned his
attention to the road. The driver swerved to avoid something and
the Jeep momentarily picked itself up onto its two left wheels. I
hung tight to the seat-back before me, fearing greatly for my
life.

“But the General said you’ll be the only one
able to make head or tail of what he’s got!” Owen yelled back.
“Says it’s right up your alley! You like spacemen stories right?
Flash Gordon?”

My mother always told me that no good ever
came from drinking whiskey. Here was definite proof. One evening,
the General and I had split a bottle of Wild Turkey. After a pint,
I’d started in on my theories of genetic variation and the possible
applicability to radiation resistance. After a quart, I was
painting with a decided broader brush, filling the General’s ear
with the possibilities of extraterrestrial intelligence, vis-a-vis
the military’s preparedness for an alien invasion.

Obviously, I’d made an impression.

While I did not expect the General to have
engineered a race of nuclear supermen, or that the earth was
teetering at the precipice of an alien attack, the reference to
Flash Gordon caught my attention.

With the neighboring desert still aglow with
the nuclear fallout of the Manhattan Project, a myriad of
interesting mutations could easily have appeared in the surrounding
flora and fauna. My imagination leapt at the idea of, perhaps, a
new, undiscovered species of fern. Or perhaps a two-headed
goat.

My imagination could hardly conceive of what
I was actually about to see.

The Jeep swung off the highway and onto a
dirt track. Even in the dark, I was able to get a rudimentary hold
of my bearings. We were somewhere beyond the edge of the airfield,
at the extreme limit of 1728’s northern border. (Sasha: 1728 was
the PO Box Number for the Los Alamos Facility in Santa Fe. Dark
uses it throughout his book as a code name for the lab.) We were
well out onto the mesa here, as far from the dormitory facilities
as humanly possible. I was vaguely aware of a cluster of mechanical
workshops below my plane as I had flown in to 1728, but I’d never
thought to explore so far from the main laboratories, even if my
access had allowed it.

Hurtling toward the perimeter’s razor wire
fence, I could see a gate flanked by machine gun nests. Beyond,
lights in the workshops flickered in the pitch black of the desert.
I could easily have been on the dark side of the moon, for all the
civilization I could see.

The Jeep skidded to a half in the brackish
sand before the chain link gate. An MP with a Grease Gun looked
over our identification papers. He gave my press pass a good, long
look. The men behind the machine guns looked nervous, and their
Brownings were pointing directly at us.

Presently, the MP seemed satisfied, and he
waved our Jeep through the gate. The driver exercised no less
caution driving within the compound than he’d shown on the public
highway. Thirty seconds after clearing the front gate, Owen and
myself were before a nondescript prefabricated workshop, with
blacked-out windows. Two more MP’s with Grease Guns guarded its
door. They looked cold in the desert night air. Cold or
nervous.

“Did the General drag me out of bed this
evening because he has Ming the Merciless locked up in a tool
shed?” I quipped to Owen as I stepped down out of the Jeep. Owen
didn’t even crack a smile as he knocked the dust of the desert off
his uniform. “But if you have Superman, in there, locked up with
kryptonite chains, I should warn you, I will inform Beetle Bailey.”
When the Lieutenant fixed me with a po-faced stare, I started to
worry about exactly what they did had locked up in the
workshop.

“Now, Albert, I don’t need to remind you that
what you see in there is of the utmost confidence,” Owen said,
pointing at the door.

“I know,” I dismissed. “As always, I write
nothing that isn’t approved by the censors.”

“No,” Owen corrected, gravely. “You don’t
understand: Nothing you see here can even reach the censors,
alright? This whole operation is strictly off the books.”

I raised an eyebrow. Now I was painfully
curious about what they had inside. “You have my word,” I said,
giving Owen the Cub Scout salute.

Owen nodded. “Good. Then come on.”

The workshop contained nothing by a blinding,
white-hot light. At least, as I stepped through the door, that was
all I could see. I blinked and covered my face, but the shift from
dark desert to burning glare blistered my eyeballs. I could hear a
voice speaking to me, but I couldn’t tear my attention away from
the light to listen. As my eyes began to adjust, the voice began to
resolve to the familiar, gruff monotone of General Groves.

“Dark, good that you could make it,” he
barked. Every word that the General uttered sounded like an order,
if it was or it wasn’t.

“What’s that light?” I asked, blinking at the
swirling red blob before my eyes.

“You’ll see,” the General said,
cryptically.

“Turn it off,” I asked, holding my hand
before my face.

“Can’t. Too dangerous. You’ll see.”

I blinked, attempting to make the blob before
my eyes resolve into the head of General Groves.

“It’s very late for games like this,
General,” I said, turning from the light. My eyes were adjusting, I
could make out the silhouettes of drill presses and lathes. A
standard machine shop. I looked back and could just make out the
source of the bright, scalding light. A brace of large, focused
spotlights, like those used in motion picture production.

They sat at the four corners of a quadrangle,
beaming down on an inert, raggedy figure, slumped in a wooden chair
at the epicenter of the lamp’s heat. The man’s hands were chained
behind him, and his head of wild, unkempt locks hung down,
obscuring his face. The need for such brilliant illumination on
such a wretched sight escaped me.

“What? Who?” I looked at the General in
incomprehension. “What’s going on? Who is this man?”

The General signaled with his right hand and
a lab-coated technician appeared out of the shadows and handed him
a clipboard. As my eyes continued to compensate for the contrast of
light and darkness, I could see more lab-coats skulking in the
shadows. There seemed to be quite a few of them, actually,
operating various devices, some of it very high technology for a
simple machine shop.

The General looked at the clipboard and read,
“Private First Class Michael Elton.” And he handed the clipboard
back to the technician.

“I’m sorry? He’s one of ours?” I asked in
confusion. My first instinct had been that the wretched man,
shackled to the chair was some sort of POW.

“Perhaps,” the General growled. From his
uniform he removed a pouch of tobacco and began to fill his cheek.
“The dog tags check out. But the face doesn’t match the file.”

“And impostor then?” I took a step forward,
looking closer at the man in the chair. The lights were so bright,
and his condition was so wizened. His skin appeared to be literally
cooking in the bright lights, small whiffs of smoke rising up off
of his hunched shoulders. The lights were hot, but...

“I wouldn’t get any closer if I was you,” the
General warned around his mouth full of chew. “The lights keep him
docile, but don’t let it fool you, he’d still dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” I scampered back.
“Contagious?”

“Perhaps,” the General said, wearily. “We
just don’t know. That’s why I called for you, Dark.”

“What? Why? I’m no doctor.”

“No,” General Groves pointed at the mess of
dirty hair and flesh slumped in the chair. “And he doesn’t need
one. He has no pulse.”

“Pulse?” I said in shock.

“Right.”

“No heartbeat?”

“Nope. None.”

“He’s dead.”

“Sure enough.”

“Then, how is he dangerous?”

“Dead, maybe. But nobody’s told him
that.”

“What?” I asked the General in
incomprehension. I moved a little closer to the hunched figure,
sure there was nothing to fear from a dead body. I’d seen my share.
I was at Dachau when the Allies liberated it. But as my shadow fell
across the prisoner, he stirred in his chair, perhaps sensing my
presence.

“He’s not dead!” I screamed, leaping
back.

“I tell you, he’s got no pulse!” the General
dismissed. “His skin is as cold as ice.”

“But...he’s still...alive?”

“And dangerous,” the General corrected.
“Without these lights, he’d break those chains and kill us
all.”

“That’s...that’s not possible.”

“Yet, here he is. My question to you, Dark,”
the General stepped in the light, letting the burning white glare
form a halo around his peaked cap. “Is what the hell is he?”

“I just don’t—” I stammered, “I can’t
understand...” In the bright lights, I’d begun to turn pale and
perspire. The General had brought me outside for a cigarette. We
stood in the frigid desert night, as my shaking fingers reflexively
brought the burning ember to my lips. “Is this because of...” I
gestured south toward the Trinity site.

“No,” Graves said, spitting tobacco into the
dirt. “This was dumped on our doorstep. Nobody else knew what to do
with him. And 1728 is supposed to be expanding its scientific
portfolio...”

“But there’s nothing scientific about the
walking dead!” My voice echoed in the desert night.

“Calm down, Dark,” the General ordered. “If
you’ve got nothing to contribute, you can head back to your
hotel.”

“No, no,” I shook my head, rapidly smoking
the last of my cigarette. I stomped it out in the sand and quickly
lit another one. “I’m sorry, it’s just the shock, that’s all.”
Slowly, my journalistic instincts were returning to me. “What’s his
story? If he’s not a nuclear superman, what is he?”

“As I said, Dark, we just don’t know,” the
General said, looking off into the night.

“Well, where did the Army find him? How was
he captured?”

“You ever hear of the island of
Tori-shima?”