13 Mar 1997
00:04 Conversing minimally, listening to R&B
and classic-rock stations as they waft into and out of range, they roll
on.
In Alamo, they pull into a car wash and quickly rinse off as
much Area 51 as they can. They change
the tires, dumping them where a Group recovery team can find them once the sun
comes up. They would ordinarily attach
an encrypted note to any recoverable items, but James doesn’t want to tip their
hand too far just yet. “My Negro-Sense
is tingling. Something is weird about
tonight.” He feels weird, too, unusually
tired—perhaps that’s understandable—and a little sick. He hasn’t yet told Harold the whole story,
and now that the superficial forensic caretaking has been seen to, maybe it’s
time to bring him up to speed.
02:43 They pull into a truck stop, populated
sparsely by truckers and a motley collection of what the cousins take to be tweakers
of various kinds, gamblers distraught over their losings, drunks bounced from
other establishments. Situated among the
other dregs, they debrief, generally unconcerned about the listening of those
too drugged or self-absorbed to be credible witnesses. Nonetheless, James uses code to review the
events, knowing that this area teems with Area 51 obsessives.
“OK, so it was a long haul.
But uneventful. In that sense, it
was inconclusive, I guess…no way to tell whether the suit…uh, met with
everyone’s approval, or there was just no one around to disapprove.”
Harold nods.
Evidently James had seen no masts or tripods on which ground-surveillance
radar antennas or motion detectors could be mounted.
“So I get to the…party.
And it’s hoppin. There’s stuff
going on upstairs and downstairs, you know?”
Harold gets it: activity on the
ground and in the airspace.
“I get to do some group photos, and things…seem pretty
interesting.” James falters, on the
verge of delivering banality. He’s
definitely fatigued beyond what he would expect. He’s never had to low-crawl for as long as he
has tonight, in one go, but he has certainly marched greater distances and done
more intense workouts. Perhaps the
stress and the long preparation, the anticipation, the early wakeup have
contributed to his condition. And he’s
probably more dehydrated than he realizes.
“So you got some good shots.
Fantastic,” Harold goads. He has
two modes of blending in: affect a heavy
southern black dialect and get lost among the other southern blacks in a crowd,
or affect a bland southern or midwestern accent and get lost among everybody in
a crowd. He’s going for the second
option now, but he’s tired too, and he’s not exactly nailing it.
James hangs his head and draws some deep breaths, trying to gather
his wits. “Okay, so I’m getting some
shots of the upstairs crowd, when this party crasher shows up. Before I know what’s going on, the crasher
has taken over the whole party. The
whole upstairs scene…got totally ate up.”
Harold’s just gonna have to puzzle over this wording until he can provide
more context. “Disappeared. So the downstairs partygoers have to send this
delegation to find everybody. Then the
bouncers showed up and started…showing me the door. So I had to bail.”
Harold’s still mystified, but he gathers at least that the
scramble signal had less to do with Washington being spotted onsite than with
some kind of abnormal activity taking place at the Area that compelled him to
leave in a hurry. The suit may well have
worked. “But you got some good shots,
right?”
“I got some good shots, man.
You won’t believe it. But…we
really should get them developed as soon as possible.”
James is having trouble focusing, not just on his words but
on the surroundings. His eyes are
fatigued and blurring, and he cannot resolve the facial features of the nearest
denizens of the café. Under these
conditions, his paranoia is heightened.
He withholds further account while orange juice and pancakes are
served. He forgoes coffee, hoping to nap en route to the next
checkpoint. He wolfs down bacon and eggs
along with the pancakes, not so much out of appetite—which is rapidly waning,
being replaced by mild nausea—as out of necessity. Protein, vitamins, fats, carbohydrates. He’s heading off the cravings that he
suspects are just hours, or minutes, away, and he intends to try to sleep
through their onset.
He chases everything with two glasses of ice water, and,
full to near-nausea, he follows a troubled Harold back out into the parking
lot. He does not notice—cannot actually
see—which heads turn to note their exit, which eyes follow them back to the
van.
04:16 They roll on, eating up Route 93 with a
purpose, but watching the speed limit.
They can be in Las Vegas within two hours, there to get thoroughly lost
in the all-night traffic tumult. Their actual
objective is a motel in Boulder City, one of two safe houses the Group operates
in the area (the other being a brothel in Pahrump, which they deem too far to
drive tonight).
Harold knows James should sleep, but is increasingly alarmed
by his rapid loss of energy.
Intuitively, he feels a need to keep James talking, to prevent him from
passing out. He maintains a steady,
low-grade chatter intended to draw out responses at the rate of one every
couple of minutes.
“So no problems with the suit, man?”
James is lying tilted back in his seat, with his eyes closed
and his hands clasped in his lap. He
shakes his head. Harold makes a mental
note of an idea for an enhancement:
telemetry, or at least some kind of data-logging scheme. They could embed a microcontroller somewhere
in the pump circuitry and keep track of the suit’s operational parameters while
in use.
A minute later:
“Nobody saw you onsite, right?”
James shakes his head again.
Another minute: “So,
your, uh, upstairs party. Did you get
any good infrared?”
James nods.
Another minute later, just as James starts to snore: “No leaks?
Hotspots? Cold spots?”
James startles, choking on the snore, then shakes his
head. “’S all good, man.”
Harold leans over a bit, adding physical emphasis to the
concern in his voice. “Man, you all
right? You didn’t get snake bit out
there, did you?”
James opens his eyes wide.
This is a new thought, and a concerning one. Any pit viper to be found in the Nevada
desert capable of inflicting serious harm would have a painful (and therefore
immediately noticeable) bite, with the possible exception of the Mojave
rattlesnake (whose range extends just about to the environs of Groom Lake). He struggles to remember whether the Type A
(neurotoxic) or the type B (haemotoxic) population was predominant in southern
Nevada. A serious bite from a heavily-neurotoxic
rattlesnake might numb the affected area immediately, and it might go entirely
unnoticed in the excitement of an escape from Area 51. The symptoms of serious neurotoxic
envenomation—blurred vision, muscle weakness—were consistent with his current
condition. “Pull over,” he says.
He removes his boots and his clothing and checks all his
extremities. Harold looks over his neck
and back with a flashlight.
No bites. No
stings. Just a few minor abrasions and a
rash on his right forearm. The skin
feels irritated, like windburn, and there are some light blisters breaking out
in a roughly rectangular pattern.
“What is that?” asks Harold.
“Poison ivy?”
James shakes his head.
“Sunburn.”
07:32 They arrive at the motel. Harold checks in and leaves a coded message
at the front desk, which the manager will forward to regional support. Compartmentalization will ensure that it
doesn’t reach Group headquarters, at least not this morning. Harold’s paranoia has never been as
pronounced as James’, but he’s taking no chances now. Under normal circumstances, the Pahrump crew
would receive his “arrival” message, drive over today in the “original van,”
the A.I. I, and drive out in the A.I. II with the dune buggy still loaded,
to be taken to a secure underground garage for repainting and holding for a
later date. However, the cousins cannot
risk transferring their new cargo, nor revealing it to Group personnel just
yet. They have to assess the situation
and figure out what’s going on and whom to tell. And the assessment must wait until they’ve
rested up. The message’s contents,
therefore, translate to “Stay put.
Proceeding solo as per Plan C.”
Harold has to walk James to the room as if he were a
stumbling, muttering drunkard, a not unlikely scenario for a small-town motel
just south of Sin City. James collapses
on one of the beds, then manages to unlace his boots and pull them off. He’s already dreaming, or maybe
hallucinating. He hears, or rather
feels, a slow shuffle rhythm…or maybe it’s just the grinding of his teeth. As he floats on the bed, feeling himself
rising into Heaven, he passes through clouds on which some of his favorite
bluesmen are standing and playing. He
comes abreast of a cloud on which sits Muddy Waters, a guitar strapped across
his back and a harmonica in his mouth.
Of course he does, because angels play—
“Harp,” he says, and loses consciousness.
13 Mar 97
They cannot bring in one of their field doctors, for fear of alerting the Group hierarchy, and are suitably paranoid about seeing a professional within James’ insurance network. The manager of the safe house, sympathetic to their needs, and having more than one set of shady connections, has gone underground to find a criminal doctor. Some spare Group medical equipment, and what Harold suspects is recently-stolen supply from a hospital (a few IV saline solution bags, needles and catheters), is brought to their room.
13:21 The doctor puzzles over the symptoms; he’s seen gunshot wounds and knife wounds, dehydration and drug overdoses, attempted murder by asphyxiation and blunt force trauma, but this is outside his normal purview. After an hour or so of interviewing James and examining the weird burn on his wrist, he offers a tentative diagnosis: radiation poisoning. Alerted to the clandestine nature of this visit--the Washingtons provide convincing government ID cards and hint strongly that the exposure occurred during law-enforcement activities--he assures them that he must, by law, observe confidentiality, and will do what he can to avoid involving other medical personnel without their consent. He has to perform some additional research to come up with figures for a suspected dose, for which he leaves and heads to the nearest library, there to use the public computers for Internet access.
16:04 The doctor returns, having had to spend more time than anticipated performing this research. James’ symptoms—including his nausea, which has intensified in the time since he’s been awake—do indeed suggest radiation poisoning, but they’re an odd mishmash which don’t fall neatly into any of the dosage regimes the doctor has identified. As near as he can tell, James has received, some time within the past 12 hours, a dose of ionizing radiation between 1 and 2 Grays, but possibly more. His advice is to seek hospitalization in case the dose is greater than that; failing this, to simply rest, force fluids and electrolytes, keep as well-fed as possible, and take antioxidant vitamins and iodine tablets.
The safehouse manager pays the doctor out of petty cash, and he leaves. James and Harold discuss the diagnosis. James reviews the previous evening in greater detail. They review the video recordings, in visible and infrared light. Harold interfaces James’ damaged palmtop with his laptop, and offloads and studied the data it recorded, including the spike in ambient radiation.
The scenario they hash out, from James’ recollections, the data, and the videotapes is as follows. James arrived at an overlook just as a flight test was in progress. The craft in question was capable of maneuvers and vertical movement not typical of aerodynamic craft. In their opinion, it was either a spacecraft, possibly of extraterrestrial origin, or an aircraft with spacecraft capability. While he was recording the proceedings, another, larger craft arrived and docked with the first, or, possibly, retrieved it using a tractor beam. This was, from the point of view of the Dreamland personnel, an unexpected development, one that merited an immediate alert response. Aircraft were dispatched to intercept the larger craft. Although James didn’t observe any chase planes, the infrared tape shows the lights of jet engines, at least two, moving toward the Craft right at the end of the recording: two F-16s or similar one-seater planes angling in on it. The recording ends well before the time the helicopters have begun to follow, though.
As the Craft made its escape, it passed directly over James, as if it knew he were there. This was unfortunate, because it drew the response in his direction, and because he’d stopped recording before it passed overhead, during which time a recording would provide irrefutable evidence of its existence. Also, evidently, because in passing, it dosed him with ionizing radiation of a kind that was confounding to a diagnosis. Even more odd, however, was the way the dose was confined. If the burn on his wrist is any indication, he was given a very precise, specific dose, which gives him hope that it’s not going to be a long-term health problem. Whatever had happened, the Craft seemed interested in getting James’ attention—and in helping him and Harold escape—and he surmised that the skin burn was some kind of message.
They discuss the diagnosis further.
James spurns the iodine advice. “That’s for fallout,” he says. “It’s supposed to keep you from absorbing radioactive strontium. I haven’t been bombed. Iodine won’t do a damn thing.” Vitamins, on the other hand, are a good idea.
14 Mar 97
10:15 After bringing breakfast back to the room and sternly watching James eat until satisfied at the consumption, Harold sets out for the library to bone up on particle physics. James rests, cycling between napping and watching television news. Something interesting has taken place the night before, a UFO sighting in the desert outside Phoenix, and James is captivated by the description of a black, triangle-shaped craft with a row of regularly-spaced lights along the side. The UFO was sighted slowly making its way past the city, headed roughly south…roughly in the direction they were heading, in other words, and on a line tracing their expected route from here to southern Arizona.
14:30 Based on their combined understanding of physics, radiation exposure, and the events of the previous night, they hash out an estimate of the situation. A focused, directed beam of electromagnetic and / or particle radiation had struck him briefly in an area of exposed skin as he was standing inert, watching the Craft pass. Some combination of photodisintegration, photofission, and particle / antiparticle pair production caused burns in his skin, and, presumably, the release of radioisotopes into his bloodstream. Gamma radiation would be the only kind of EM capable of causing either effect, unless particle radiation (of a kind they could only guess at) were also involved. Only a combination of direct, but brief, exposure to high-frequency EM and secondary effects such as photodisintegration can account for his range of symptoms; his initial exposure was quite low, barely enough to sicken him, but the radioactive fragments of atoms in his skin, cracked open by the hard gamma rays, are now compounding that exposure. His blood might be full of fission byproducts by now, for all he knows. He regrets having scorned the advice to take iodine, and asks Harold to retrieve some from the van’s survival kits.
Harold does this, returning also with their homebrew Geiger counter. They run this over James and the clothing he was wearing at check-in. James registers nothing unusual, within the limits of the machine’s precision, except around his wrist, which provokes a slightly more energetic response. As a control, they also gauge Harold and the motel room. Everything in here is of course slightly radioactive, this being southern Nevada, and there is nothing to distinguish James from the background other than the slightly higher click rate around his wrist. What they need is a precision instrument, not one cobbled together from hobbyist parts, but like what they might find at Group headquarters or any of its secondary command stations.
James doesn’t appear, at any rate, to be highly radioactive. If photofission or photodisintegration has occurred within his skin, it was a trivial amount. The exposure had been--presumably carefully--metered and calibrated, presumably to create just the burn on his skin and little more. James' illness may be due to nothing more than a slight error on the part of the irradiator.
This is something they desperately need a Group doctor to confirm, though, and they decide, finally, that they will have to come in.
This is something they desperately need a Group doctor to confirm, though, and they decide, finally, that they will have to come in.
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