The Nexus Colony (38 page)

B
ill Korbett was sitting in the stiff-backed chair in a waiting room somewhere off the main hallway.

Ted Payne told him that the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be with him shortly, that they had some other business to attend to before Korbett briefed them on Operation Rookery. Korbett was surprised that the Joint Chiefs were going to be there. They’d all be with him “in a little while,” which usually meant, “sit down and relax, because it’s going to be a long wait.” Although what other business could have been more priority than what had happened two days ago on the Antarctic continent, Korbett couldn’t fathom.

The room was mesmerizing, the motif fashioned after some by-gone era in American history. Korbett marveled at the reverent quietude. You could have heard a pin drop. He peered outside through the single window which overlooked a garden. Korbett had been so nervous when he entered the White House grounds that he neglected to reconnoiter which wing the staff agents had taken him to. Ted Payne had been waiting inside the room, more hyper than Korbett had ever remembered the man to have been. Maybe it was the continuing crisis the President was facing with North Korea, but then again, that didn’t have anything to do with Ted Payne. Maybe it was this thing in Antarctica that he was going to tell the President about. Maybe it was because Ted Payne was the asshole Korbett always knew he was when the man was around somebody else with more power. Whatever.

It was a sunny day outside and the temperature wasn’t all that cold. A welcome change. A good day to reflect on the balmy days ahead. Korbett stared out into the peaceful garden and went over in his head the details of the whole episode.

They, his whole stateside team—Eli Maislin, Rula Koslovsky, Anton Vandergrif, Willard Darbury—they’d spent the last eighteen hours sorting through the landslide of information that had suddenly piled up from the whole project. And was still piling up. Where the hell was it when they needed it in a timely fashion? The debriefing of the field team, which had arrived from Antarctica only six hours ago, was the easy part. How to answer the questions from the President and the Joint Chiefs was what had Korbett so tense. That’s why he chose to wear his military uniform and stars. It always made him feel more in control.

General Korbett sorted through his head all the things they had been discussing in preparation for the briefing. They were trying to anticipate the questions.

Why did you go into this mission low tech?
Because to go in high-tech wasn’t feasible. This wasn’t supposed to be a military operation. The mission objective was to find the source of the artifacts, not end up storming an alien complex. Besides, high-tech computerized gear—mini-cams, and all the rest of that electronic bullshit—you needed a communications link. The cold temperatures would have rendered the stuff useless anyway.

Why wasn’t the information more timely?
Because you need satellites to communicate anything out of Antarctica.
You could have utilized our satellites more effectively. Why didn’t you?
Because you don't have enough satellites in a polar orbit, you assholes, and I don't design your satellite program.

Why no photographs?
We had some, but
The Visitors
took them away. Just like they always do. They never let us have them. You know that.

Why’d they only abduct four from your group. They could have taken everybody. Why didn’t they?
Korbett wished they could answer this one. When we first started snooping around the glacier for the source of the artifacts,
The Visitors
could have stopped us right there and then. They didn’t. Instead, they pulled off more of their horrifying pranks to get our attention. They’ve been doing that in modern times since World War II for more than sixty years now and we still haven’t figured out why. It’s almost as if they’re taunting us, prodding us forward, and tempting us by fueling our curiosity. In retrospect, it now seems like they deliberately led us to their colony where they let us witness with our own eyes what they had been keeping secret for thousands of years. Only to wipe out all the evidence.

They weren’t going to allow us any souvenirs for sure. They even stole all the photography equipment and then played games with it. Erased whatever pictures were there. They let us observe only with our eyes and then describe what it is that we
think
we saw, understanding all too well how fickle the human mind can be. And when you really stop to think about it, what did we really see there?
Nothing.
There was nothing in the sense that we gained any more understanding about them than we’re already confused about. Oh sure, everyone’s account of the strangeness inside the structures speaks of a technology far beyond our comprehension. But how in the hell are we ever going to know anything more about it? We have only men’s recollections.

But we managed to fool them on one account. Hilliard Grimes managed to smuggle a few of those strange nodules into his pocket pouches. When we find out what’s inside them, maybe we can get a few answers. But more than likely, it will only add on a few more questions.

The abductees. In a few days, the hypnotic regression sessions will start to find out if there are any suppressed recollections of what happened to them during their “missing time.” They had to have been in that enormous mother ship the Russians reported. When they were plunked down at Vostok, none of them could remember a damn thing.

Simple, seemingly unimportant things. Like the box. Artifact number one. Not debris like the other original artifacts. The alien structure was split open to reveal an empty corridor. It was logical that broken pieces would eventually surface. But Abbott’s people reported that there was nothing else located in the corridor. It was absent of any other devices or debris. Very sterile, unobtrusive. Yet this box had been found on the surface along the glacial flow, just as if it had been a part of the debris along the glacial conveyer belt. Speculation now indicates it shouldn’t have been there. Or, in the least, wasn’t a part of the debris flow. Coincidence? That box was probably the real reason they went back out in the first place. Bait?

And all the other pieces of the “message” puzzle. Like when the communiqué was received from Marsh to get them out. Abort the mission. Oh, Abbott sent a message all right. Somewhere around seven thirty Greenwich Mean Time, or so they claim. Well beyond the close of the satellite communications window. Korbett received a message somewhere shortly before seven. The times didn’t match up. Korbett insisted that considering the confusion and the trauma, they had the timeframe all screwed up in their minds. No way, they insisted. Not the same wording on the message, anyway. Regardless, nobody could find out who passed along the message to Korbett, since it would have had to have been relayed from some other base station.

Then this Ruger fellow claims to have sent out a message requesting evacuation. Nobody ever got that one. Abbott sent a message to Korbett to come get the body, then received a reply back from Korbett to stay put, and that a plane was on the way to pick up the body. Not only did Korbett never get that message, he never responded as such. The damn plane was dispatched from McMurdo, but nobody could recall who even ordered the aircraft out. All the flight crew remembers is that they just went out to the hanger, got on, and took off.

The whole damn exchange of communications was shrouded in mystery. Totally out of sync. Totally out of context. There was no doubt in Korbett’s mind who had orchestrated the whole thing. But how these pieces of the puzzle fit into
their
agenda was still being conjectured.

And then to compound the matter, there is the body. It was out of place, out of time. When word first came through about its discovery, it probably caused the biggest stir since Roswell. Korbett and Maislin were accompanied up to Bethesda by a whole entourage of Ted Payne’s people as they awaited the arrival of the frozen body from Puntas Arenas. And then there must have been twenty people on the medical team conducting the examination and autopsy. It was thawed out enough by then for the team to start carving away at it. Korbett remembered every disappointing detail…

The medical team had been at it a very long time. Korbett and Maislin had stood in the viewing gallery along with everyone else for over an hour before they knew anything at all. Korbett’s patience was ebbing, but there was little else he could have done at the time but wait. Finally, the man who had been earlier identified as the lead forensic pathologist looked up from the autopsy table at Korbett and Maislin. There was a look of bewilderment on his face. Either things hadn’t gone right or they’d found something.

“What’s going on down there?” Korbett had asked him when the doctor finally came into the gallery some time later.

“I’d say at this point, you boys can lay claim to finding a common variety of caveman,” the doctor said.

“
Not alien
?” Maislin had asked, although they all had already anticipated the reply.

“Not nearly,” the man had answered. “This one’s as human as they get. Or rather, as
earthly
as they get. This one will give the anthro boys a lot of research, though. I’m no expert in anthropology, but I’d guess its Cro-Magnon or somewhere modern along those lines.”

“What the hell’s it…
he
, doing in Antarctica?” Korbett commented.

“Good question,” the doctor responded. He looked at both men. His facial expression told Korbett that there was something more.

“You haven’t told us everything,” Korbett said.

The doctor had hesitated for a moment, contemplating, then nodded his head affirmatively. He turned and looked through the glass at the carved-up body down on the metal table. Other doctors were still milling around the autopsy table. “You’re right,” he had replied. “There is something more. That’s what’s got us all puzzled.”

“
What?
for Christ’s sake,” Korbett had responded somewhat impatiently, then apologized.

The doctor sloughed it off. “Antarctic man here…well, he’s had his appendix surgically removed.”

There had been a moment’s silence, Korbett not quite sure what the doctor meant by that. Finally he asked, “That all that unusual?”

“Well…” the doctor had replied, “Yeah. Actually it is. I guess a lot of these early man specimens have been found to have had organs and appendages removed. Always a butcher job, though.”

“But not the appendix,” Maislin had commented.

“Not to my knowledge,” the doctor replied. “But it’s not so much the appendix.” He looked at Korbett.

“What is it then?” Korbett inquired, controlling his patience.

“It’s the way it was removed.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was cut out,” the doctor had said. “No marks. No visible scar, although that might have withered. It was surgically removed by an extremely skilled surgeon.”

“How skilled?” Maislin inquired.

“Like I’m talking a precision cut so perfect that I’d like to have
that
guy on my staff.”

“Could they
do
that back then?” Maislin asked.

The doctor shook his head. “I doubt it very much. There’s only one procedural technique that I know of that even comes close to being able to perform
that
precise a surgery.”

“What might that be?” Korbett had asked.

“Laser technology, gentlemen,” the doctor had replied.

Somebody other than Korbett could have explained away the presence of the caveman, but the issue of the missing appendix only served to complicate the matter. There had to be a connection between the two—caveman and alien…Antarctica—but Korbett was glad it wasn’t going to be him who had to try to explain it to the President and the Joint Chiefs. For that matter, he wasn’t sure even if
anybody
was going to be able to explain it. The whole thing was out of sync. Antarctic ice was supposed to have been there for a million years. If this “caveman” was indeed modern man, he couldn’t have existed like this a million years ago. So much for modern science.

Korbett was most impressed, however, by Mike Ruger. Even in the short time he had spoken with him, Ruger seemed to have a level of integrity that was a cut above most people Korbett had known in his lifetime. Rula Koslovsky had called Ruger,
wholesome and commanding.
The man had an incredible sense of resolution. Bill Korbett admired that quality in people. Few had it. These were the kind of people who were able to survive no matter how bad the odds got. God only knows we’re
all
going to be called up to that level of resolution some day in the future.

Ruger had respect for everything, not just people. He may be a man of few words, but those words so far seem to convey profound meanings. It was Ruger who said to them a few hours ago at the briefing:
I think The Ice is only something temporary. It just seems to us like it’s been here for all time. But it’ll go away some day. I got the feeling that’s how those aliens are regarding us humans.

Mike Ruger was an interesting man. He was right about what he had said. Korbett recalled the last few minutes of conversation before he departed for the White House and the briefing with the President. His team—they were
all
right in what they had said, not just Ruger.

Rula Koslovsky put it succinctly:
We do not yet know their purpose, nor have we yet figured out their agenda. We only understand that we are yet to be deceived.

Vandergrif said:
To what self-serving purpose they have come is still far beyond the human purview.

Maislin’s comments put it well into perspective. Perhaps it was as Eli had suggested:
Maybe we, in our arrogance, are laying claim to
that which truly is not ours to claim. We accidentally stumbled onto one of their colonies, they tried to discourage us from exploring it, and then when we persisted, they scared the living shit out of us!