The Extinction Event (33 page)

“There are three kinds of near-Earth asteroids,” Keating said. “
Amors
, which approach Earth from outside its orbit.
Apollos
, which cross Earth's orbit, and
Atens
, which approach Earth from within its orbit.”

Keating gestured to Jack and Caroline to get inside a cage on a mechanical arm, which lifted them thirty feet in the air, halfway up the telescope.

“There's no privacy,” Keating said. “Not in the offices. Not in the hallways. Up here, we can talk.”

They could see bolts the size of a baby's fist.

“If an asteroid did hit the Earth,” Keating said, “if we did end, I wonder, will everything end with us? Was Bishop Berkeley right? Without the observer there is nothing to observe?”

“If we aren't around to perceive?” Caroline said. “It's the end of the world?”

“It's,” Keating said, “the end of reality.”

“What if God is the observer?” Jack asked.

“If there is a God,” Keating said, “or a God who perceives. Or a God who cares.”

“You think God's just a blind watchmaker?” Caroline asked.

“If we're lucky,” Keating said.

“No,” Caroline said emphatically. “If we are lucky, there's a God who holds us in his hand and—”

“No hymns, please,” Keating said.

“God is not a crutch,” Caroline said.

“You think God, if there is a God, needs an audience to exist?” Keating asked

“God's not that crippled,” Jack said, “and neither are we.”

“No,” Keating said, “we're not! That's the point. What if the Anthropic principle is right? That the universe was made just so we could exist. We were the whole reason the universe came into being.”

“And if we're gone?” Caroline said.

“It all goes,” Keating said. “The pyramids and Mozart and Yankee Stadium—”

“Stalin and Mao and Hitler and what's left of a three-year-old who stepped on a cluster bomb,” Jack said, thinking of Shapiro.

“Everything that makes us human,” Caroline said. “The good and the bad.”

Below them, the scientists and tech support looked miniature. As they moved, they made patterns that they were unaware of but that Jack could see.

That Jack could impose on them.

“But, even without the asteroid, it will all end eventually,” Keating said. “The sun will go out. The solar system will fall apart. The galaxy. The universe.”

“And then what?” Jack asked.

“The Mad Hatter's tea party,” Keating said.

Keating turned to face Jack.

“Something's coming,” Keating said.

Jack was watching a man in a beige sweater and jeans who was entering the dome, drop a file folder.

“Coming?” Jack asked absently.

Far below, papers fluttered to the floor.

“What do you mean?” Jack asked.

The man who had dropped the folder bent over to pick up the papers.

When Keating didn't answer, Jack turned to look at Keating—and at Caroline who blinked rapidly.

“Something's coming?” Caroline said.

Jack saw the image from the video of a vast shadow moving across the face of the Earth.

“How big?” Jack asked.

“Big,” Keating said.

“When?” Caroline asked.

“Soon,” Keating said.

“How soon?” Caroline asked. “How much time do we have? Is the government going to send up missiles? Blow it up?” To Jack she said, “I've got to tell Dixie. Nicole.”

Caroline interrupted herself. She stood, her mouth open.

“Now,” Keating said, “you understand?”

Looking at Caroline's face, Jack got it, too.

“Frank found out,” he said.

“While checking you out,” Caroline said, “about the electrical pollution.”

“And he tried to blackmail you about
this
,” Jack said. “Not about electrical pollution. About—what's coming. He tried to blackmail the government.”

“What would happen if news of this leaked out?” Keating asked. “Panic. Death and destruction. The end of civilization.”

“Which will come from the asteroid anyway,” Jack said.

“But in the meantime,” Keating said. “All the suffering.”

“Your contempt for
The People
,” Jack said, “is not as great as you claimed.”

“I have no contempt for individuals,” Keating said. To Caroline, Keating said, “You know you can't tell anyone.
Ever
. That's what Frank couldn't understand.”

Caroline studied Keating's face.

“You're suffering,” she said.

“Now that you know,” Keating said, “you will, too. Every time you hear a happy father talk about seeing his son grow up to play baseball. Every time you hear a couple plan on having kids.”

For the first time since they had entered the dome, Keating looked up. At the heavens.

“Unless you can understand that the asteroid isn't tragic,” Keating said. “When the end is coming and everybody is still worrying about getting and spending, status and territory, it's comic. Or unless you can accept consciousness is just a machine fueled by glucose. Or that realities are like matrushka dolls, one within the other forever—from microcosm to macrocosm. I want to feel that. But I can't. I only see the loss…”

“What if you're wrong,” Caroline said. “What if the meteor, asteroid, or whatever deviates by a hair up there and, hundreds of thousands of miles later, misses us?”

“That's a possibility,” Keating said.

They were silent.

“Old men have apocalyptic dreams,” Keating said. “They think the world's going to end with them. Usually, they're wrong.”

Another silence.

“And in the meantime?” Keating said.

“You killed your own daughter?” Jack said.

When Keating answered, he was hoarse: “One or two people die so hundreds of millions won't suffer. So for some uncertain time they will have Bach, Yankee Stadium, and each other.”

“What do you do about us?” Jack asked.

“What we chose to do before,” Keating said, “wasn't my decision.”

“And now?” Caroline asked.

“Oh,” Keating said, “as far as I'm concerned you have free will to choose what you will do. If you tell, it leads to chaos; if you cover it up, cover up Frank's death, Jean's death … even Robert's death—”

“All the other deaths,” Caroline said.

“—there's no justice,” Keating said.

“How many deaths will it take?” Jack asked.

“To protect the world from itself?” Keating asked.

“Don't people have a right to know?” Jack asked. “A right to choose how to react to the news? Just like you do?”

“And, now,” Keating said, “just like you do.”

He looked from Jack to Caroline.

“No one should have to suffer,” he said. “And they'll suffer if they know.”

“Eventually, whatever we choose,” Jack said, “things are going to end.”

“Then,” Keating said, “what do you care?”

“Because,” Jack said, “Frank was my friend.”

“Robert and Jean were my children,” Keating said.

“You're going to let us go?” Caroline said.

“On August 25, AD 79, Mount Vesuvius exploded,” Keating said. “There was a rain of burning lava, which buried people and made them immortal. Our sacrifice—the asteroid—will leave no trace of us behind. Not immortality, just extinction.”

A second time, Caroline asked, “You're going to let us go?”

“I always thought King Lear doesn't go mad at the end of the play, but is crazy at the beginning,” Keating said. “All that hoopla about his daughters performing. And, during the play, he gets sane. In the storm on the heath, he is quiet, not shouting, not raging. He finally understands,
Man is just a poor forked creature,
negotiating with God like Abraham over how many to save in Sodom. Increasingly sane. Until, by the end of the play, he has no illusions left. Just
never, never, never, never, never.
If this thing comes, there will be no saving remnant.”

A third time: “You're going to let us go?”

This time, Keating nodded.

“Frank was damage control because he found out about what's coming,” Keating said. “You were damage control because you found out about Frank. I can't have you killed here. Now. Too many witnesses. Most of the people who work here don't know what's going to happen. They're all working on their projects. And, once you leave…”

Keating shrugged.

“After you, what damage control will be necessary?” Keating asked. “Your brother, Mr. Slidell? How much does your uncle know, Caroline? Your sister? What would they do to find out what happened to you. And the whore? Her boyfriend? How many others?”

For the first time, Keating seemed old. Defeated.

“Do you think I loved my daughter less than my son?” Keating asked. “I didn't want Jean to get hurt. That was a mistake. There have been too many mistakes. Only your friend Frank was supposed to be dealt with. Only because he refused to cooperate.”

“And Stickman?” Jack asked.

Keating gave Jack a blank look.

“Jean's Pakistani friend,” Jack said.

“Oh, yes,” Keating said.

He was silent.

“Did he also refuse to cooperate?” Jack asked.

“Things take on a life of their own,” Keating said. “I'm not a monster. I didn't want anything to happen to you.”

“Because,” Caroline said, “you thought we'd cooperate?”

“I told them you would not be as foolish as Frank,” Keating said.

“They'll be watching us?” Caroline said. “Listening to us? At work? On the street? At home? In bed?”

Keating nodded.

“You'll be living as I grew up,” he said. “In a small town in which everyone knew everyone else's business.”

“And,” Jack said, “what happens if you think we're going to tell?”

“It's an insecure world,” Keating said.

*   *   *

Outside, the sky was clear. There was no wind.

“Remember Dixie's story about the night life of the gods?” Jack said. “About the scientist and the leprechaun who wondered if there was a place for them in this world?”

Jack saw a flicker in the sky.

“A shooting star,” Jack said. “I'm not as comfortable seeing it as I would have been yesterday. Make a wish.”

Instead of making a wish, Caroline said, “I missed my period.”

The world stopped.

And started again.

Jack kissed her.

And kissed her again.

“So what do we do?” Caroline asked.

About Keating. About the asteroid. About Frank's death. And Jean's. And Robert's. And all the others'.

About their baby.

Jack didn't want to live in a disenchanted world.

He wanted to believe in UFOs and Peter Pan and vampires and ghosts in motels. And in asteroids that hang above us on a thread, just as there is always something hanging over us. Life can always end in a moment. And in the meantime—

Hand in hand, Jack and Caroline faced the future, which like any other future could be the beginning of the end.

They had to give their lives meaning by what they chose to do.

Above them, along with the asteroid, was a heaven, glorious with stars.

“What can we do?” Caroline asked again.

Quoting Dixie, Jack said, “Be kind.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Black
is an award-winning journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and producer. His novel
Like Father
was named a notable book of the year by
The New York Times
and listed as one of the seven best novels of the year by
The Washington Post. The King of Fifth Avenue
was named a notable book of the year by
The New York Times, New York
magazine, and the Associated Press.

Mr. Black received the Edgar Allan Poe Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime Book for
Murder at the Met
. His second Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination was for “Happily Ever After,” an episode of
Law & Order
. His third Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination was for “Carrier,” also an episode of
Law & Order
.

He won a Writers Guild of America Award for
The Confession
. He was also nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for an episode of
Hill Street Blues
. He received an American Bar Association Certificate of Merit for “Nullification,” a controversial episode of
Law & Order
about militia groups, which the
Los Angeles Times
called an example of “the new Golden Age of television.”

Among his other awards, he has received a National Endowment of the Arts grant in fiction,
Playboy
's Best Article of the Year Award,
Best Essays of the Year 1986
Honorable Mention,
Forward
's Book of the Year Special Mention, and an
Atlantic Monthly
“First” award for fiction. He has received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for
The Plague Years,
a book based on a two-part series that he wrote for
Rolling Stone
that won a National Magazine Award in Reporting and the National Association of Science Writers Award.

Researching articles,
David Black
has risked his life a number of times, including being put under house arrest by Baby Doc's secret police in Haiti, infiltrating totalitarian therapy cults, being abandoned on a desert island, and exposing a white slave organization in the East Village.

Among the television shows he has produced and written are the Sidney Lumet series
100 Centre Street,
which was listed as one of the ten best shows of the year, the Richard Dreyfuss series
The Education of Max Bickford, Monk, CSI: Miami,
the new
Kojak, Hill Street Blues, EZ Streets, Miami Vice, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Trial by Jury,
the original
Law & Order,
which received an Emmy nomination for Best Dramatic Show and a
Golden Globe
nomination, and
Cop Shop
, an innovative PBS series filmed in one-take, three-camera real time, which won a Prism Award in 2005. He has been nominated for the PGA Golden Laurel Award.