“How could they create an artifact that is a mirror to our souls?” Elverda asked, stepping toward him. “They must have known something about us. They must have been here when there were human beings existing on Earth.”
Dorn regarded her silently.
“They may have been here much more recently than you think,” Elverda went on, coming closer to him. “They may have placed this artifact here to communicate with us.”
“Communicate?”
“Perhaps it is a very subtle, very powerful communications device.”
“Not an artwork at all.”
“Oh yes, of course it is truly an artwork. All works of art are communications devices, for those who possess the soul to understand.”
Dorn seemed to ponder this for long moments. Elverda watched his solemn face, searching for some human expression.
Finally he said, “That does not change my mission, even if it is true.”
“Yes it does,” Elverda said, eager to save him. “Your mission is to preserve and protect this artifact against Humphries and anyone else who would try to destroy it—or pervert it to his own use.”
“The dead call to me,” Dorn said solemnly. “I hear them in my dreams now.”
“But why be alone in your mission? Let others help you. There must be other mercenaries who feel as you do.”
“Perhaps,” he said softly.
“Your true mission is much greater than you think,” Elverda said, trembling with new understanding. “You have the power to end the wars that have destroyed your comrades, that have almost destroyed your soul.”
“End the corporate wars?”
“You will be the priest of this shrine, this sepulcher. I will return to Earth and tell everyone about these wars.”
“Humphries and others will have you killed.”
“I am a famous artist, they dare not touch me.” Then she laughed. “And I am too old to care if they do.”
“The scientists—do you think they may actually learn how to communicate with the aliens?”
“Someday,” Elverda said. “When our souls are pure enough to stand the shock of their presence.”
The human side of Dorn’s face smiled at her. He extended his arm and she took it in her own, realizing that she had found her own salvation. Like two kindred souls, like comrades who had shared the sight of death, like mother and son they walked up the tunnel toward the waiting race of humanity.
THE MAN WHO. . .
Of all the new capabilities that science has offered humankind, none are so powerful as genetic engineering. When we take the very material of life itself into our hands and begin to tinker with it, we put ourselves on Nietzsche’s tightrope between immortality and oblivion. The Man Who. . . looks into one possible use of “the new biology” in a field that has been quick to adapt for its own purposes such new technologies as television and computers: the field of politics.
“He doesn’t have cancer!”
Les Trotter was a grubby little man. He combed his hair forward to hide his baldness, but now as I drove breakneck through the early Minnesota morning, the wind had blown his thinning hair every which way, leaving him looking bald and moon-faced and aging.
And upset as hell.
“Marie, I’m telling you, he doesn’t have cancer.” He tried to make it sound sincere. His voice was somewhere between the nasality of an upper-register clarinet and its Moog synthesis.
“Sure,” I said sweetly. “That’s why he’s rushed off to a secret laboratory in the dead of night.”
Les’ voice went up still another notch. “It’s not a secret lab! It’s the Wellington Memorial Laboratory. It’s world-famous. And. . . goddammit, Marie, you’re enjoying this!”
“I’m a reporter, Les.” Great line. Very impressive. It hadn’t kept him from making a grab for my ass, when we had first met. “It’s my job.”
He said nothing.
“And if your candidate has cancer. . .”
“He doesn’t.”
“It’s news.”
We whipped past the dead bare trees with the windows open to keep me from dozing. It had been a long night, waiting for Halliday at the Twin Cities Airport. A dark horse candidate, sure, but the boss wanted all the presidential candidates covered. So we drew lots and I lost. I got James J. Halliday, the obscure. When his private jet finally arrived, he whisked right out to this laboratory in the upstate woods.
I love to drive fast. And the hours around dawn are the best time of the day. The world’s clean. And all yours. . . a new day coming. This day was starting with a murky gray as the sun tried to break through a heavy, late-winter overcast.
“There’s ice on the road, you know,” Les sulked.
I ignored him. Up ahead I could see lighted buildings.
The laboratory was surrounded by a riot-wire fence. The guard at the gate refused to open up and let us through. It took fifteen minutes of arguing and a phone call from the guard shack by Les before the word came back to allow us in.
“What’d you tell them?” I asked Les as I drove down the crunchy gravel driveway to the main laboratory building.
He was still shivering from the Cold. “That it was either see you or see some nasty scare headlines.”
The lab building was old and drab, in the dawning light. There were a few other buildings farther down the driveway. I pulled up behind a trio of parked limousines, right in front of the main entrance.
We hurried through the chilly morning into the lobby. It was paneled with light mahogany, thickly carpeted, and warm. They had paintings spotted here and there—abstracts that might have been amateurish or priceless. I could never figure them out.
A smart-looking girl in a green pantsuit came through the only other door in the lobby. She gave me a quick, thorough inspection. I had to smile at how well she kept her face straight. My jeans and jacket were for warmth, not looks.
