ghost comes out of the unconscious mind

To grope my sill: It moans to be reborn!

The figure at my back is not my friend;

The hand upon my shoulder turns to horn

Theodore Roethke

KURTZ AND UNDERHILL

1

The only thing in the cps area was a little beer n deer store called Gosselin's Country Market. Kurtz's cleaners began arriving there shortly after the snow began to fall. By the time Kurtz himself got there, at ten-thirty, support was starting to appear. They were getting a grip on the situation.

The store was designated Blue Base. The barn, the adjacent stable (dilapidated but still standing), and the corral had been designated Blue Holding. The first detainees had already been deposited there.

Archie Perlmutter, Kurtz's new aide-de-camp (his old one, Calvert, had died of a heart attack not two weeks before - goddam bad timing), had a clipboard with a dozen names on it. Perlmutter had arrived with both a laptop computer and a Palm Pilot only to discover that electronic gear was currently FUBAR in the Jefferson Tract: tucked up beyond all recognition. The top two names on the clipboard were Gosselins: the old man who ran the store and his wife.

'More on the way,' Perlmutter said.

Kurtz gave the names on Pearly's clipboard a cursory look, then handed it back. Big recreational vehicles were being parked behind them; semi trailers were being jacked and leveled; light poles were going up. When night came, this place would be as well-lighted as Yankee Stadium at World Series time.

'We missed two guys by this much,' Perlmutter said, and held up his right hand with the thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch apart. 'They came in for supplies. Principally beer and hot dogs.' Perlmutter's face was pale, with a wild pink rose blooming in each cheek. He had to raise his voice against the steadily increasing noise level. Helicopters were coming in two by two and landing on the blacktop lane that eventually made its way out to Interstate 95, where you could go north toward one dull town (Presque Isle) or south toward any number of other dull towns (Bangor and Derry, for starters). The helicopters were fine, as long as their pilots didn't have to depend on all the sophisticated navigational equipment, which was also FUBAR.

'Did those fellows go in or out?' Kurtz asked.

'Back in,' Perlmutter said. He could not quite bring himself to meet Kurtz's eyes; he looked everywhere but. 'There's a woods road, Gosselin says it's called the Deep Cut Road. It's not on the standard maps, but I have a Diamond International Paper survey map that shows '

'That's fine. Either they'll come back out or stay in. Either way, it's fine.'

More helicopters, some unshipping their .50s now that they were safely away from the wrong eyes. This could end up being as big as Desert Storm. Maybe bigger.

,You understand your mission here, Pearly, don't you?' Perlmutter most definitely did. He was new, he wanted to make an impression, he was almost jumping up and down. Like a spaniel that smells lunch, Kurtz thought. And he did it all without making eye contact. 'Sir, my job is triune in nature.'

Triune, Kurtz thought. Triune, how about that?

'I am to a, intercept, b, turn intercepted persons over to medical, and c, contain and segregate pending further orders.'

'Exactly. That's - '

'But sir, beg your pardon, sit, but we don't have any doctors here yet, only a few corpsmen, and - '

'Shut up,' Kurtz said. He didn't speak loudly, but half a dozen men in unmarked green coveralls (they were all wearing unmarked green coveralls, including Kurtz himself) hesitated as they went double-timing on their various errands. They glanced toward where Kurtz and Perlmutter were standing, then got moving again. Triple-time, As for Perlmutter, the roses in his cheeks died at once. He stepped back, putting another foot between himself and Kurtz.

'If you ever interrupt me again, Pearly, I'll knock you down. Interrupt me a second time and I'll put you in the hospital. Do you understand?'

With what was clearly a tremendous effort, Perlmutter brought his gaze up to Kurtz's face. To Kurtz's eyes. He snapped off a salute so crisp it almost crackled with static electricity. 'Sir, yes sir!'

'You can quit that too, you know better.' And when Perhnutter's gaze began to drop: 'Look at me when I'm talking to you, lad?die.'

Very reluctantly, Perlmutter did so. His complexion was now leaden. Although the noise of the helicopters lined up along the road was cacophonous, it somehow seemed very quiet right here, as if Kurtz traveled in his own weird air-pocket. Perlmutter was convinced that everyone was watching them and that they could all see how terrified he was. Some of it was his new boss's eyes - the cataclysmic absence in those eyes, as if there were really no brain behind them at all. Perlmutter had heard of the thousand-yard stare, but Kurtz's seemed to go on for a million yards, maybe light-years.

Yet somehow Perlmutter held Kurtz's gaze. Looked into the absence. He was not off to a good start here. It was important - it was imperative - that the slide be stopped before it could become an avalanche.

'All right, good. Better, anyway.' Kurtz's voice was low but Perlmutter had no problem hearing him despite the overlapping chunter of the helicopters. 'I'm going to say this to you Just once, and only because you're new to my service and you clearly don't know your asshole from your piehole. I have been asked to run a phooka operation here. Do you know what a phooka is.

'No,' Perlmutter said. It caused him almost physical pain not to be able to say No sir.

'According to the Irish, who as a race have never entirely crawled from the bath of superstition in which their mothers gat them, a phooka is a phantom horse that kidnaps travelers and carries them away on its back. I use it to mean an operation which is both covert and wide open. A paradox, Perlmutter! The good news is that we've been developing contingency plans for just this sort of clusterfuck since 1947, when the Air Force first recovered the sort of extraterrestrial artifact now known as a flashlight. The bad news is that the future is now and I have to face it with guys like you in support. Do you understand me, buck?'

'Yes, s . . . yes.'

'I hope so. What we've got to do here, Perlmutter, is go in fast and hard and utterly phooka. We're going to do as much dirtywork as we have to and come out as clean as we can clean yes, Lord, and smilin . . .'

Kurtz bared his teeth in a brief smile of such brutally satiric intensity that Perlmutter felt a little like screaming. Tall and stoop?-shouldered, Kurtz had the build of a bureaucrat. Yet something about him was terrible. You saw some of it in his eyes, sensed some of it in the still, prim way he held his hands in front of him . . . but those weren't the things that made him scary, that made the men call him Old Creepy Kurtz. Perlmutter didn't know exactly what the really scary thing was, and didn't want to know. What he wanted right now - the only thing he wanted - was to get out of this conversation with his ass on straight. Who needed to go twenty or thirty miles west to make contact with an alien species? Perlmutter had one standing right here in front of him.

Kurtz's lips snapped shut over his teeth. 'On the same page, are we?'

'Yes.'

'Saluting the same flag? Pissing in the same latrine?'

'Yes.'

'How are we going to come out of this, Pearly?'

'Clean?'

'Boffo! And how else?'

For one horrible second he didn't know. Then it came to him. 'Smiling, sir.'

'Call me sir again and I'll knock you down.'

'I'm sorry,' Perlmutter whispered. He was, too.

Here came a school bus rolling slowly up the road with its offside wheels in the ditch and canted almost to the tipover point so it could get past the helicopters. MILLINOCKET SCHOOL DEPT was written up the side, big black letters against a yellow background. Commandeered bus. Owen Underhill and his men inside. The A-team. Perlmutter saw it and felt better. At different times both men had worked with Underhill.

'You'll have doctors by nightfall,' Kurtz said. 'All the doctors you need. Check?'

'Check.'

As he walked toward the bus, which stopped in front of Gosselin's single gasoline pump, Kurtz looked at his pocket-watch. Almost eleven. Gosh, how the time flew when you were having fun. Perlmutter walked with him, but all the cocker spaniel spring had gone out of Perlmutter's step.

'For now, Archie, eyeball em, smell em, listen to their tall tales, and document any Ripley you see. You know about the Ripley, I assume?'

'Yes.'

'Good. Don't touch it.'

'God, no!' Perlmutter exclaimed, then flushed.

Kurtz smiled thinly. This one was no more real than his shark's grin. 'Excellent idea, Perlmutter! You have breathing masks?'

'They just arrived. Twelve cartons of them, and more on the w - '

'Good. We want Polarolds of the Ripley. We need mucho documentation. Exhibit A, Exhibit B, so on and so forth. Got it?'

'Yes.'

'And none of our . . . our guests get away, right?'

'Absolutely not.' Perlmutter was shocked by the idea, and looked it.

Kurtz's lips stretched. The thin smile grew and once more became the shark's grin. Those empty eyes looked through Perlmutter - looked all the way to the center of the earth, for all Perlmutter knew. He found himself wondering if anyone would leave Blue Base when this was over. Except Kurtz, that was.

'Carry on, Citizen Perlmutter. In the name of the government, I order you to carry on.'

Archie Perlmutter watched Kurtz continue on toward the bus, where Underhill - a squat jug of a man - was climbing off. Never in his life had he been so utterly delighted to see a man's back.

2

'Hello, boss,' Underhill said. Like the rest, he wore a plain green coverall, but like Kurtz, he also wore a sidearm. Sitting in the bus were roughly two dozen men, most of them just finishing an early lunch.

'What have they got there, buck?' Kurtz asked. At six-foot-six he towered above Underhill, but Underhill probably outweighed him by seventy pounds.

'Burger King. We drove through. I didn't think the bus would fit, but Yoder said it would, and he was right. Want a Whopper? They're probably a little on the cold side by now, but there must be a microwave in there someplace.' Underhill nodded toward the store.

'I'll pass. Cholesterol's not so good these days.'

'Groin okay?' Six years before, Kurtz had suffered a serious groin-pull while playing racquetball, This had indirectly led to their only disagreement. Not a serious one, Owen Underhill judged, but with Kurtz, it was hard to tell. Behind the man's patented game-face, thoughts came and went at near light-speed, agendas were constantly being rewritten, and emotions were turning on a dime, There were people - quite a few of them, actually - who thought Kurtz was crazy. Owen Underhill didn't know if he was or not, but he knew you wanted to be careful around this one. Very.

'As the Irish might put it,' Kurtz said, 'me groin's foine.' He reached between his legs, gave his balls a burlesque yank, and favored Owen with that teeth-baring grin.

'Good.'

'And you? Been okay?'

'Me groin's foine,' Owen said, and Kurtz laughed.

Now coming up the road, rolling slowly and carefully but having an easier time than the bus, was a brand-new Lincoln Navigator with three orange-clad hunters inside, hefty boys all three, gawking at the helicopters and the double-timing soldiers in their green coveralls. Gawking at the guns, mostly. Vietnam comes to northern Maine, praise God. Soon they would join the others in the Holding Area.

Half a dozen men approached as the Navigator pulled up behind the bus, with its stickers reading BLUE DEVIL PRIDE and THIS VEHICLE STOPS AT ALL RR CROSSINGS. Three lawyers or bankers with their own cholesterol problems and fat stock portfolios, lawyers or bankers pretending to be good old boys, under the impression (of which they would soon be disabused) that they were still in an America at peace. Soon they would be in the barn (or the corral, if they craved fresh air), where their Visa cards would not be honored. They would be allowed to keep their cell phones. They wouldn't work this far up in the willywags, but hitting REDIAL might keep them amused.

'You plugged in tight?' Kurtz asked.

'I think so, yes.'

'Still a quick study?'

Owen shrugged.

'How many people in the Blue Zone altogether, Owen?'

'We estimate eight hundred. No more than a hundred in Zones Prime A and Prime B.'

That was good, assuming no one slipped through. In terms of possible contamination, a few slips wouldn't matter - the news, at least so far, was good on that score. In terms of information management, however, it would not be good at all. It was hard to ride a phooka horse these days. Too many people with videocams. Too many TV station helicopters. Too many watching eyes.

Kurtz said, 'Come inside the store. They're setting me up a 'Bago, but it's not here yet.'

'Un momento,' Underhill said, and dashed up the steps of the bus. When he came back down, he had a grease-spotted Burger King sack in his hand and a tape recorder over his shoulder on a strap.

Kurtz nodded toward the bag. 'That stuff'll kill you.'

'We're starring in The War of the Worlds and you're worried about high cholesterol?'

Behind them, one of the newly arrived mighty hunters was saying he wanted to call his lawyer, which probably meant he was a banker. Kurtz led Underhill into the store. Above them, the flashlights were back, running their glow over the bottoms of the clouds, jumping and dancing like animated characters in a Disney cartoon.

3

Old Man Gosselin's office smelled of salami, cigars, beer, Musterole, and sulfur - either farts or boiled eggs, Kurtz reckoned. Maybe both. There was also a smell, faint but discernible, of ethyl alcohol. The smell of them. It was everywhere up here now. Another man might have been tempted to ascribe that smell to a combination of nerves and too much imagination, but Kurtz had never been overburdened with either. In any case, he did not believe the hundred or so square miles of forestland surrounding Gosselin's Country Market had much future as a viable ecosystem. Sometimes you just had to sand a piece of furniture down to the bare wood and start again.

Kurtz sat behind the desk and opened one of the drawers. A cardboard box with CHEM/U.S./IO UNITS stamped on it lay within. Good for Perlmutter. Kurtz took it out and opened it. Inside were a number of small plastic masks, the transparent sort that fitted over the mouth and nose. He tossed one to Underhill and then put one on himself, quickly adjusting the elastic straps.

'Are these necessary?' Owen asked.

'We don't know. And don't feel privileged; in another hour, everyone is going to be wearing them. Except for the John Q's in the Holding Area, that is.'

Underhill donned his mask and adjusted the straps without further comment. Kurtz sat behind the desk with his head leaning back against the latest piece of OSHA paperwork (post it or die) taped to the wall behind him.

'Do they work?' Underhill's voice was hardly muffled at all. The clear plastic did not fog with his breathing. It seemed to have no pores or filters, but he found he could breathe easily enough.

'They work on Ebola, they work on anthrax, they work on the new super-cholera. Do they work on Ripley? Probably. If not, we're tucked, soldier. In fact, we may be tucked already. But the clock is running and the game is on. Should I hear the tape you've doubtless got in that thing over your shoulder?'

'There's no need for you to hear all of it, but you ought to taste, I think.'

Kurtz nodded, made a spinning motion in the air with his forefinger Oike an ump signalling a home run, Owen thought), and leaned back further in Gosselin's chair.

Underhill unslung the tape recorder, set it on the desk facing

Kurtz, and pushed PLAY. A toneless robot voice said: 'NSA radio intercept. Multiband. 62914A44. This material is classified top secret. Time of intercept 0627, November fourteen, two-zero-zero-one. Intercept recording begins after the tone. If you are not rated Security 91 Clearance One, please press STOP now.'

'Please,' Kurtz said, nodding. 'Good. That'd stop most unauthor?ized personnel, don't you think?'

There was a pause, a two-second beep, then a young woman's voice said: 'One. Two. Three. Please don't hurt us. Ne tious blessez pas.' A two-second silence, and then a young man's voice said. 'Five. Seven. Eleven. We are helpless. Nous sommes sans d��fense. Please don't hurt us, we are helpless. Ne nous faites - '

'By God, it's like a Berlitz language lesson from the Great Beyond,' Kurtz said.

'Recognize the voices?' Underhill asked.

Kurtz shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

The next voice was Bill Clinton's. 'Thirteen. Seventeen. Nine?teen.' In Clinton's Arkansas accent, the last one came out Nahnteen. 'There is no infection here. Il n'y a pas d'infection ici.' Another two?-second pause, and then Tom Brokaw spoke from the tape recorder. 'Twenty-three. Twenty-seven. Twenty-nine. We are dying. On se meurt, on cr��ve. We are dying.'

Underhill pushed STOP. 'In case you wondered, the first voice is Sarah Jessica Parker, an actress. The second is Brad Pitt.'

'Who's he?'

'An actor.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Each pause is followed by another voice. All the voices are or would be recognizable to large segments of the people in this area. There's Alfred Hitchcock, Paul Harvey, Garth Brooks, Tim Sample - he's a Maine-style humorist, very popular - and hundreds of others, some of which we haven't identified.'

'Hundreds of others? How long did this intercept last?'

'Strictly speaking, it's not an intercept at all but a clear-band transmission which we have been jamming since 0800. Which means a bunch of it got out, but we doubt if anyone who picked it up will have understood much of it. And if they do - ' Underhill gave a little What can you do shrug. 'It's still going on. The voices appear to be real. The few voiceprint comparisons that were run are identical. Whatever else they are, these guys could put Rich Little out of business.'

The whup-whup-whup of the helicopters came clearly through the walls. Kurtz could feel it as well as hear it. Through the boards, through the OSHA poster, and from there into the gray meat that was mostly water, telling him to come on come on come on, hurry up hurry up hurry up. His blood responded to it, but he sat quietly, looking at Owen Underhill. Thinking about Owen Underhill. Make haste slowly; that was a useful saying. Especially when dealing with folks like Owen. How's your groin, indeed.

You fucked with me once, buck, Kurtz thought. Maybe didn't cross my line, but by God, you scuffed at it, didn't you? Yes, I think so. And I think you'll bear watching.

'Same four messages over and over,' Underhill said, and ticked them off on the fingers of his left hand. 'Don't hurt us. We're helpless. There's no infection here. The last one - '

'No infection,' Kurtz mused. 'Huh. They've got their nerve, don't they?'

He had seen pictures of the reddish-gold fuzz growing on all the trees around Blue Boy. And on people. Corpses, mostly, at least so far. The techs had named it Ripley fungus, after the tough broad Sigourney Weaver had played in those space movies. Most of them were too young to remember the other Ripley, who had done the 'Believe It or Not' feature in the newspapers. 'Believe It or Not' was pretty much gone, now; too freaky for the politically correct twenty-first century. But it fit this situation, Kurtz thought. Oh yes, like a glove. Made old Mr Ripley's Siamese twins and two-headed cows look positively normal by comparison.

'The last one is We're dying,' Underhill said. 'That one's inter?esting because of the two different French versions accompanying the English. The first is straightforward. The second - on cr��ve - is slangy. We might say "Our goose is cooked."' He looked directly at Kurtz, who wished Perlmutter were here to see that yes, it could be done, 'Are they cooked? I mean, assuming we don't help them along?'

'Why French, Owen?'

Underhill shrugged. 'It's still the other language up here.'

'Ah. And the prime numbers? just to show us we're dealing with intelligent beings? As if any other kind could travel here from another star system, or dimension, or wherever it is they come from?'

'I guess so. What about the flashlights, boss?'

'Most are now down in the woods. They disintegrate fairly rapidly, once they run out of juice. The ones we've been able to retrieve look like soup cans with the labels stripped off. Considering their size, they put on a hell of a show, don't they? Scared the living hell out of the locals.'

When the flashlights disintegrated, they left patches of the fungus or ergot or whatever the hell it was behind. The same seemed true of the aliens themselves. The ones that were left were just up there standing around their ship like commuters standing around a broken-down bus, bawling that they weren't infectious, il n'y a pas d'infection ici, praise the Lord and pass the biscuits. And once the stuff was on you, you were most likely - what had Owen said? A cooked goose. They didn't know that for sure, of course, it was early yet, but they had to make the assumption.

'How many ETs still up there?' Owen asked.

'Maybe a hundred.'

'How much don't we know? Does anybody have any idea?' Kurtz waved this aside. He was not a knower; knowing was someone else's department, and none of those guys had been invited to this particular pre-Thanksgiving party.

'The survivors,' Underhill persisted. 'Are they crew?' 'Don't know, but probably not. Too many for crew; not enough to be colonists; nowhere near enough to be shock-troops.'

'What else is going on up here, boss? Something is.'

'Pretty sure of that, are you?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

Underhill shrugged. 'Intuition?'

'It's not intuition,' Kurtz said, almost gently. 'It's telepathy.'

'Say what?'

'Low-grade, but there's really not any question about it. The men sense something, but they haven't put a name on it yet. Give them a few hours and they will. Our gray friends are telepaths, and they seem to spread that just as they spread the fungus.'

'Holy fucking shit,' Owen Underhill whispered.

Kurtz sat calmly, watching him think. He liked watching people think, if they were any good at it, and now there was more: he was hearing Owen think, a faint sound like the ocean in a conch shell.

'The fungus isn't strong in the environment,' Owen said. 'Neither are they. What about the ESP?'

'Too soon to tell. If it lasts, though, and if it gets out of this pine-tree pisspot we're in, everything changes. You know that, don't you?'

Underhill knew. 'I can't believe it,' he said.

'I'm thinking of a car,' Kurtz said. 'What car am I thinking of?'

Owen looked at him, apparently trying to decide if Kurtz was serious. He saw that Kurtz was, then shook his head. 'How should I . . .' He paused. 'Fiat.'

'Ferrari, actually. I'm thinking of an ice cream flavor. Which f - '

'Pistachio,' Owen said.

'There you go.'

Owen sat another moment, then asked Kurtz - hesitantly - if Kurtz could tell him his brother's name.

'Kellogg,' Kurtz replied. 'Jesus, Owen, what kind of name is

that for a kid?'

'My mother's maiden name. Christ. Telepathy.'

'It's going to fuck with the ratings of Jeopardy and Wants to Be a Millionaire, I can tell you that,' Kurtz said, then repeated, it gets loose.'

From outside the building there came a gunshot and a scream. 'You didn't have to do that!' someone cried in a voice filled with outrage and fear. 'You didn't have to do that!'

They waited, but there was no more.

'The confirmed grayboy body-count is eighty-one,' Kurtz said. 'There are probably more. Once they go down, they decompose pretty fast. Nothing left but goo . . . and then the fungus.' 'Throughout the Zone?'

Kurtz shook his head. 'Think of a wedge pointing east. The thick end is Blue Boy. Where we are is about the middle of the wedge. There are a few more illegal immigrants of the gray persuasion wandering around east of here. The flashlights have mostly stayed over the wedge area. ET Highway Patrol.'

'It's all toast, isn't it?' Owen asked. 'Not just the grayboys and the ship and the flashlights - the whole fucking geography.'

'I'm not prepared to speak to that just now,' Kurtz said.

No, Owen thought, of course you're not. He wondered immedi?ately if Kurtz could read his thought. There was no way of telling, certainly not from those pale eyes.

'We are going to take out the rest of the grayboys, I can tell you that much. Your men will crew the gunships and your men only. You are Blue Boy Leader. Got that?'

'Yes, sir.'

Kurtz did not correct it. In this context, and given Underhill's obvious distaste for the mission, sir was probably good. 'I am Blue One.'

Owen nodded.

Kurtz got up and drew out his pocket-watch. It had gone noon.

'This is going to get out,' Underhill said. 'There are a lot of U.S. citizens in the Zone. There's simply no way to keep it quiet. How many have those . . . those implants?'

Kurtz almost smiled. The weasels, yes. A good many here, a few more over the years. Underhill didn't know, but Kurtz did. Nasty little fellows they were. And one good thing about being the boss: you didn't have to answer questions you didn't want to answer.

'What happens later is up to the spin doctors,' he said. 'Our job is to react to what certain people - the voice of one of them is probably on your tape - have determined is a clear and present danger to the people of the United States. Got it, buck?'

Underhill looked into that pale gaze and at last looked away,

'One other thing,' Kurtz said. 'Do you remember the phooka?'

'The Irish ghost-horse.'

'Close enough. When it comes to nags, that one's mine. Always has been. Some folks in Bosnia saw you riding my phooka. Didn't they?'

Owen chanced no reply. Kurtz didn't look put out by that, but he looked intent.

'I want no repeat, Owen. Silence is golden. When we ride the phooka horse, we must be invisible. Do you understand that?'

'Yes.'

'Perfect understanding?'

'Yes,' Owen said. He wondered again how much of his mind Kurtz could read. Certainly he could read the name currently in the front of Kurtz's mind, and supposed Kurtz wanted him to. Bosanski Novi.

4

They were on the verge of going, four gunship crews with Owen Underhill's men from the bus replacing the ANG guys who had brought the CH-47s this far, they were cranking up, filling the air with the thunder of the rotors, and then came Kurtz's order to stand down.

Owen passed it on, then flicked his chin to the left. He was now on Kurtz's private corn channel.

'Beg pardon, but what the fuck?' Owen asked. If they were going to do this thing, he wanted to do it and get it behind him. It was worse than Bosanski Novi, worse by far. Writing it off by saying the grayboys weren't human beings just did not wash. Not for him, anyway. Beings that could build something like Blue Boy - or fly it, at least - were more than human.

'It's none of mine, lad,' Kurtz said. 'The weather boys in Bangor say this shit is moving out fast. It's what they call an Alberta Clipper. Thirty minutes, forty-five, max, and we're on our way. With our nav gear all screwed up, it's better to wait if we can . . . and we can. You'll thank me at the other end.'

Man, I doubt that.

'Roger, copy.' He flicked his head to the right. 'Conklin,' he said. No rank designations to be used on this mission, especially not on the radio.

'I'm here, s . . . I'm here.'

'Tell the men we're on hold thirty to forty-five. Say again, thirty to forty-five.'

'Roger that. Thirty to forty-five.'

'Let's have some jukebox rhythm.'

'Okay. Requests?'

'Go with what you like. Just save the Squad Anthem.' 'Roger, Squad Anthem is racked back.' No smile in Conk's voice. There was one man, at least, who liked this as little as Owen did. Of course, Conklin had also been on the Bosanski Novi mission in '95. Pearl jam started up in Owen's cans. He pulled them off and laid them around his neck like a horse-collar. He didn't care for Pearl jam, but in this bunch he was a minority.

Archie Perlmutter and his men ran back and forth like chickens with their heads cut off. Salutes were snapped, then choked off, with many of the saluters sneaking did-he-see-that looks at the small green scout copter in which Kurtz sat with his own cans clamped firmly in place and a copy of the Derry News upraised. Kurtz looked engrossed in the paper, but Owen had an idea that the man marked every half-salute, every soldier who forgot the situation and reverted to old beast habit. Beside Kurtz, in the left seat, was Freddy Johnson. Johnson had been with Kurtz roughly since Noah's ark grounded on Mount Ararat. He had also been at Bosanski, and had undoubtedly given Kurtz a full report when Kurtz himself had been forced to stay behind, unable to climb into the saddle of his beloved phooka horse because of his groin-pub.

In June of '95, the Air Force had lost a scout pilot in NATO's no-fly zone, near the Croat border. The Serbs had made a very big deal of Captain Tommy Callahan's plane, and would have made an even bigger one of Callahan himself, if they caught him; the brass, haunted by images of the North Vietnamese gleefully parading brainwashed pilots before the international press, made recovering Tommy Callahan a priority.

The searchers had been about to give up when Callahan contacted them on a low-frequency radio band. His high-school girlfriend gave them a good ID marker, and when the man on the ground was queried, he confirmed it, telling them his friends had started calling him The Pukester following a truly memorable night of drinking in his junior year.

Kurtz's boys went in to get Callahan in a couple of helicopters much smaller than any of the ones they were using today. Owen

Underhill, already tabbed by most (including himself, Owen sup?posed) as Kurtz's successor, had been in charge. Callahan's job was to pop some smoke when he saw the birds, then stand by. Underhill's job - the phooka part of it - had been to yank Callahan without being seen. This was not strictly necessary, so far as Owen could see, but was simply the way Kurtz liked it: his men were invisible, his men rode the Irish horse.

The extraction had worked perfectly. There were some SAMs fired, but nothing even close - Milosevic had shit, for the most part. It was as they were taking Callahan on board that Owen had seen his only Bosnians: five or six children, the oldest no more than ten, watching them with solemn faces. The idea that Kurtz's directive to make sure there were no witnesses might apply to a group of dirtyface kids had never crossed Owen's mind. And Kurtz had never said anything about it.

Until today, that was.

That Kurtz was a terrible man Owen had no doubt. Yet there were many terrible men in the service, more devils than saints, most certainly, and many were in love with secrecy. What made Kurtz different Owen had no idea - Kurtz, that long and melancholy man with his white eyelashes and still eyes. Meeting those was hard because there was nothing in them - no love, no laughter, and absolutely no curiosity. That lack of curiosity was somehow the worst.

A battered Subaru pulled up at the store, and two old men got carefully out. One clutched a black cane in a weather-chapped hand. Both wore red-and-black-checked hunting overshirts. Both wore faded caps, one with CASE above the bill and the other with DEERE. They looked wonderingly at the contingent of soldiers that descended upon them. Soldiers at Gosselin's? What in the tarnal? They were in their eighties, by the look of them, but they had the curiosity Kurtz lacked. You could see it in the set of their bodies, the tilt of their heads.

All the questions Kurtz had not voiced. What do they want? Do they really mean us harm? Will doing this bring the harm? Is it the wind we sow to bring the whirlwind? at was there in all the previous encounters ?the flaps, the flashlights, the falls of angel hair and red dust, the abductions that began in the late sixties - that has made the powers that be so afraid? Has there been any real effort to communicate with these creatures?

And the last question, the most important question: Were the grayboys like us? Were they by any definition human? Was this murder, pure and simple?

No question in Kurtz's eyes about that, either.

5

The snow lightened, the day brightened, and exactly thirty-three minutes after ordering the stand-down, Kurtz gave them a go. Owen relayed it to Conklin and the Chinnies revved hard again, pulling up gauzy veils of snow and turning themselves into momentary ghosts. Then they rose to treetop level, aligned themselves on Underhill ?Blue Boy Leader - and flew west in the direction of Kineo. Kurtz's Kiowa 58 flew below them and slightly to starboard, and Owen thought briefly of a troop of soldiers in a John Wayne movie, bluelegs with a single Indian scout riding his pony bareback off to one side. He couldn't see, but guessed Kurtz would still be reading the paper. Maybe his horoscope. 'Pisces, this is your day of infamy. Stay in bed.'

The pines and spruces below appeared and disappeared in vapors of white. Snow flew against the Chinook's two front windows, danced, disappeared. The ride was extremely rough - like a ride in a washing machine - and Owen wouldn't have had it any other way. He clapped the cans back on his head. Some other group, maybe Matchbox Twenty. Not great, but better than Pearl Jam. What Owen dreaded was the Squad Anthem. But he would listen. Yes indeed, he would listen.

In and out of the low clouds, vapory glimpses of an apparently endless forest, west west west.

'Blue Boy Leader, this is Blue Two.'

'Roger, Two.'

'I have visual contact with Blue Boy. Confirm?'

For a moment Owen couldn't, and then he could. What he saw took his breath away. A photograph, an image inside a border, a thing you could hold in your hand, that was one thing. This was something else entirely.

'Confirm, Two. Blue Group, this is Blue Boy Leader. Hold your current positions. I say again, hold your current positions.'

One by one the other copters rogered. Only Kurtz did not, but he also stayed put. The Chinooks and the Kiowa hung in the air perhaps three quarters of a mile from the downed spacecraft. Leading up to it was an enormous swath of trees that had been whacked off in a slanted lane, as if by an enormous hedge-clipper. At the end of this lane was a swampy area. Dead trees clutched at the white sky, as if to snatch the clouds open. There were zig-zags of melting snow, some of it turning yellow where it was oozing into the damp ground. In other places there were veins and capillaries of open black water.

The ship, an enormous gray plate nearly a quarter of a mile across, had torn through the dead trees at the center of the swamp, exploding them and casting the splintery fragments in every direction. The Blue Boy (it was not blue at all, not a bit blue) had come to rest at the swamp's far end, where a rocky ridge rose at a steep angle. A long arc of its curved edge had disappeared into the watery, unstable earth. Dirt and bits of broken trees had sprayed up and littered the ship's smooth hull.

The surviving grayboys were standing around it, most on snow-covered hummocks under the upward-tilted end of their ship; if the sun had been shining, they would have been standing in the crashed ship's shadow. Well . . . clearly there was someone who thought it was more Trojan Horse than crashed ship, but the surviving grayboys, naked and unarmed, didn't look like much of a threat. About a hundred, Kurtz had said, but there were fewer than that now; Owen put the number at sixty. He saw at least a dozen corpses, in greater or lesser states of red-tinged decay, lying on the snow-covered hummocks. Some were facedown in the shallow black water. Here and there, startlingly bright against the snow, were reddish-gold patches of the so-called Ripley fungus . . . except not all of the patches were bright, Owen realized as he raised his binoculars and looked through them. Several had begun to gray out, victims of the cold or the atmosphere or both. No, they didn't survive well here not the grayboys, not the fungus they had brought with them.

Could this stuff actually spread? He just didn't believe it.

'Blue Boy Leader?' Conk asked. 'You there, boy?'

'I'm here, shut up a minute.'

Owen leaned forward, reached under the pilot's elbow (Tony Edwards, a good man), and flicked the radio switch to the common channel. Kurtz's mention of Bosanski Novi never crossed his mind; the idea that he was making a terrible mistake never crossed his mind; the idea that he might have seriously underestimated Kurtz's lunacy never crossed his mind. In fact, he did what he did with almost no conscious thought at all. So it seemed to him later, when he cast his mind back and reexamined the incident not just once but again and again. Only a flip of the switch. That was all it took to change the course of a man's life, it seemed.

And there it was, loud and clear, a voice none of Kurtz's laddie-bucks would recognize. They knew Eddie Vedder; Walter Cronkite was a different deal. '-here. Il n'y a pas d'infection ici.' Two seconds, and then a voice that might have belonged to Barbra Streisand: 'One hundred and thirteen. One hundred and seventeen. One hundred and nineteen.'

At some point, Owen realized, they had started over counting primes from one. On the way up to Gosselin's in the bus, the various voices had reached primes in the high four figures.

'We are dying,' said the voice of Barbra Strelsand. 'On se meurt, on cr��ve.' A pause, then the voice of David Lettertman: 'One hundred and twenty-seven. One hundred - '

'Belay that!' Kurtz cried. For the only time in the years Owen had known him, Kurtz sounded really upset. Almost shocked. 'Owen, why do you want to run that filth into the ears of my boys? You come back and tell me, and right now.'

'Just wanted to hear if any of it had changed, boss,' Owen said. That was a lie, and of course Kurtz knew it and at some point would undoubtedly make him pay for it. it was failing to shoot the kids all over again, maybe even worse. Owen didn't care. Fuck the phooka horse. If they were going to do this, he wanted Kurtz's boys (Skyhook in Bosnia, Blue Group this time, some other name next time, but it always came back to the same hard young faces) to hear the grayboys one last time. Travelers from another star system, perhaps even another universe or time-stream, knowers of things their hosts would never know (not that Kurtz would care). Let them hear the grayboys one last time instead of Pearl Jam or Jar of Flies or Rage Against the Machine; the grayboys appealing to what they had foolishly hoped was some better nature.

'And has it changed?' Kurtz's voice crackled back. The green Kiowa was still down there, just below the hanging line of gunships, its rotors beating at the split top of a tall old pine Just under it, making it ruffle and sway. 'Has it, Owen?'

'No,' he said. 'Not at all, boss.'

'Then belay that chatter. Daylight's wasting, praise Jesus.' Owen paused, then said, with careful deliberation: 'Yes, sir.'

6

Kurtz sat bolt-upright in the Kiowa's right seat - 'ramrod-straight' was how they always put it in the books and movies. He had donned his sunglasses in spite of the day's niild gray light, but Freddy, his pilot, still only dared to look at him from the corners of his eyes. The sunglasses were wraparounds, hipster-hodaddy shades, and now that they were on, you couldn't tell where the boss was looking. You certainly couldn't trust the way his head was pointing.

The Derry News lay on Kurtz's lap (MYSTERIOUS SKYLIGHTS, MISSING HUNTERS SPARK PANIC IN JEFFERSON TRACT, read the headline). Now he picked up the paper and folded it carefully. He was good at this, and soon the Derry News would be folded into what Owen Underhill's career had just become: a cocked hat. Underhill no doubt thought he would face some sort of disciplinary action - Kurtz's own, since this was a black-ops deal, at least so far - followed by a second chance. What he didn't seem to realize (and that was probably good; unwarned usually meant unarmed) was that this had been his second chance. Which was one more than Kurtz had ever given anyone else, and one he now regretted. Bitterly regretted. For Owen to go and pull a trick like that after their conversation in the office of the store after he had been specifically warned . . .

'Who gives the order?' Underhill's voice crackled in Kurtz's private comlink.

Kurtz was surprised and a little dismayed by the depth of his rage. Most of it was caused by no more than surprise, the simplest emotion, the one babies registered before any other. Owen had zinged him a good one, putting the grayboys on the squad channel like that; just wanted to hear if any of it had changed indeed, that was one you could roll tight and stick up your ass. Owen was probably the best second Kurtz had ever had in a long and complicated career that stretched all the way back to Cambodia in the early seventies, but Kurtz was going to break him, just the same. For the trick with the radio; because Owen hadn't learned. It wasn't about kids in Bosanski Novi, or a bunch of babbling voices now. It wasn't about following orders, or even the principle of the matter. It was about the line. His line. The Kurtz Line.

Also, there was that sir.

That damned snotty sir.

'Boss?' Owen sounding Just a tad nervous now, and he was right to sound nervous, Jesus love him. 'Who gives - '

'Common channel, Freddy,' Kurtz said. 'Key me in.'

The Kiowa, much lighter than the gunships, caught a gust of wind and took a giddy bounce. Kurtz and Freddy ignored it. Freddy keyed him wide.

'Listen up, boys,' Kurtz said, looking at the four gunships hanging in a line, glass dragonflies above the trees and beneath the clouds. Just ahead of them was the swamp and the vast pearlescent tilted dish with its surviving crew - or whatever they were - standing beneath its aft lip.

'Listen now, boys, Daddy's gonna sermonize. Are you listening? Answer up.'

Yes, yes, affirmative, affirm, roger that (with an occasional sir thrown in, but that was all right; there was a difference between forgetfulness and insolence).

'I'm not a talker, boys, talking's not what I do, but I want you to know that this is not repeat not a case of what you see is what you get. What you see is about six dozen gray, apparently unsexed humanoids standing around naked as a loving God made them and you say, some would say anyway, "Why, those poor folks, all naked and unarmed, not a cock or a cunt to share among em, pleading for mercy there by their crashed intergalactic Trailways, and what kind of a dog, what kind of a monster could hear those pleading voices and go in just the same?" And I have to tell you, boys, that I am that dog, I am that monster, I am that post-industrial post-modern crypto-fascist politically incorrect male cocka-rocka warpig, praise Jesus, and for anyone listening in I am Abraham Peter Kurtz, USAF Retired, serial number 241771699, and I am leading this charge, I'm the Lieutenant Calley in charge of this particular Alice's Restaurant Massacree.'

He took a deep breath, eyes fixed on the hovering helicopters.

'But fellows, I'm here to tell you that the grayboys have been messing with us since the late nineteen-forties, and I have been messing with them since the late nineteen-seventies, and I can tell you that just because a fellow comes walking toward you with his hands raised saying I surrender, that doesn't mean, praise Jesus, that he doesn't have a pint of nitroglycerine shoved up his ass. Now the big old smart goldfish who go swimming around in the think-tanks, most of those guys say the grayboys came when we started lighting off atomic and hydrogen bombs, that they came to that the way bugs come to a buglight. I don't know about that, I am not a thinker, I leave the thinking to others, leave it to the cabbage, cabbage got the head on him, as the saying goes, but there's nothing wrong with my eyes, fellows, and I tell you those grayboy sons of bitches are as harmless as a wolf in a henhouse. We have taken a good many of them over the years, but not one has lived. When they die, their corpses decompose rapidly and turn into exactly the sort of stuff you see down there, what you lads call Plpley fungus. Sometimes they explode. Got that? They explode. The fungus they carry - or maybe it's the fungus that's in charge, some of the think-tank goldfish believe that might be the case - dies easily enough unless it gets on a living host, I say again living host, and the host it seems to like the best, fellows, praise Jesus, is good old homo sap. Once you've got it so much as under the nail of your little finger, it's Katie bar the door and Homer run for home.'

This was not precisely the truth - not precisely anywhere near the truth, as a matter of fact - but nobody fought for you as ferociously as a scared soldier. This Kurtz knew from experience.

'Boys, our little gray buddies are telepathic, and they seem to pass this ability on to us through the air. We catch it even when we don't catch the fungus, and while you might think a little mind-reading could be fun, the sort of thing that would make you the life of the party, I can tell you what lies a little farther down that road: schizophrenia, paranoia, separation from reality, and total I say again TOTAL FUCKING INSANITY. The think-tank boys, God bless em, believe that this telepathy is relatively short-acting right now, but I don't have to tell you what could happen in that regard if the grayboys are allowed to settle in and be comfortable. I want you fellows to listen to what I'm going to say now very carefully? want you to listen as if your lives depended on it, all right? When they take us, boys - say again, when they take us - and you all know there have been abductions, most people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are lying through their asshole neurotic teeth, but not all - those who are let go have often undergone implants. Some are nothing but instruments - transmitters, perhaps, or monitors of some sort - but some are living things which eat their hosts, grow fat, and then tear them apart. These implants have been put in place by the very creatures you see down there, milling around all naked and innocent. They claim there's no infection among them even though we know they are infected right up the ying-yang and the old wazoo and everywhere else. I have seen these things at work for twenty-five years or more, and I tell you this is it, this is the invasion, this is the Super Bowl of Super Bowls, and you fellows are on defense. They are not helpless little ETs, boys, waiting around for someone to give them a New England TEL phone card so they can phone home, they are a disease. They are cancer, praise Jesus, and boys, we're one big hot radioactive shot of chemotherapy. Do you hear me, boys?' No affirmatives this time. No rogers, no I-copy-thats. Raw cheers, nervous and neurotic, jigging with eagerness. The comlink bulged with them.

'Cancer, boys. They are cancer. That's the best I can put it, although as you know, I'm no talker. Owen, do you copy?'

'Copy, boss.' Flat. Flat and calm, damn him. Well, let him be cool. Let him be cool while he still could. Owen Underhill was all finished. Kurtz raised the paper hat and looked at it admiringly. Owen Underhill was over.

'What is it down there, Owen? What is it shuffling around that ship? What is it forgot to put on their pants and their shoes before they left the house this morning?'

'Cancer, boss.'

'That's right. Now you give the order and in we go. Sing it out, Owen.' And, with great deliberation, knowing that the men in the gunships would be watching him (never had he given such a sermon, never, and not a word of it preplanned, unless in his dreams), he turned his own hat around backward.

7

Owen watched Tony Edwards turn his Mets cap around so that the bill pointed down the nape of his neck, heard Bryson and Bertinelli racking the .50s, and understood this was really happening. They were going hot. He could get in the car and ride or stand in the road and get run down. Those were the only choices Kurtz had left him.

And there was something more, something bad he remembered from long ago, when he had been - what? Eight? Seven? Maybe even younger. He had been out on the lawn of his house, the one in Paducah, his father still at work, his mother off somewhere, probably at the Grace Baptist, getting ready for one of her endless bake sales (unlike Kurtz, when Randi Underhill said praise Jesus, she meant it), and an ambulance had pulled up next door, at the Rapeloews'. No siren, but lots of flashing lights. Two men in jumpsuits very much like the coverall Owen now wore had gone running up the Rapeloews' walk, unfolding a gleaming stretcher. Never even breaking stride. It was like a magic trick.

Less than ten minutes later they were back out with Mrs Rapeloew on the stretcher. Her eyes had been closed. Mr Rapeloew came along behind her, not even bothering to close the door. Mr Rapeloew, who was Owen's Daddy's age, looked suddenly as old as a grampy. It was another magic trick. Mr Rapeloew glanced to his right as the men loaded his wife into the ambulance and saw Owen kneeling on his lawn in his short pants and playing with his ball. They say it was a stroke! Mr Rapeloew called. St Mary's Memorial! Tell your mother, Owen! And then he climbed into the back of the ambulance and the ambulance drove away. For the next five minutes or so Owen continued to play with his hall, throwing it up and catching it, but in between throws and catches he kept looking at the door Mr Rapeloew had left open and thinking he ought to close it. That closing it would be what his mother called a Christian Act of Charity.

Finally he got up and crossed to the Rapeloews' lawn. The Rapeloews had been good to him. Nothing really special ('Nothing to get up in the night and write home about,' his mother would have said), but Mrs Rapeloew made lots of cookies and always remembered to save him some; many were the bowls of frosting and cookie-dough he had scraped clean in chubby, cheery Mrs Rapeloew's kitchen. And Mr Rapeloew had shown him how to make paper airplanes that really flew. Three different kinds. So the Rapeloews deserved charity, Christian charity, but when he stepped through the open door of the Rapeloews' house, he had known perfectly well that Christian charity wasn't the reason he was there. Doing Christian charity did not make your dingus hard.

For five minutes - or maybe it was fifteen minutes or half an hour, the time passed like time in a dream - Owen had just walked around in the Rapeloews' house, doing nothing, but all the time his dingus had been just as hard as a rock, so hard it throbbed like a second heartbeat, and you would think something like that would hurt, but it hadn't, it had felt good, and all these years later he recognized that silent wandering for what it had been: foreplay, The fact that he had nothing against the Rapeloews, that he in fact liked the Rapeloews, somehow made it even better. If he was caught (he never was), he could say I dunno if asked why he did it, and be telling the God's honest.

Not that he did so much. In the downstairs bathroom he found a toothbrush with Dick printed on it. Dick was Mr Rapeloew's name. Owen tried to piss on the bristles of Mr Rapeloew's toothbrush, that was what he wanted to do, but his dingus was too hard and no piss would come out, not a single drop. So he spat on the bristles instead, then rubbed the,pit in and put the brush back in the toothbrush holder. In the kitchen, he poured a glass of water over the electric stove-burners. Then he took a large china serving platter from the sideboard. 'They said it was the stork,' Owen said, holding the platter over his head. 'It must be a baby, because he said it was a stork.' And then he heaved the platter into the comer, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. Once that was done he had fled from the house. Whatever had been inside him, the thing that had made his dingus hard and his eyeballs feel too big for their sockets, the shattering sound of the plate had broken it, popped it like a pimple, and if his parents hadn't been so worried about Mrs Rapeloew, they almost certainly would have seen something wrong with him. As it was, they probably just assumed that he was worried about Mrs R., too. For the next week he had slept little, and what sleep he did get had been haunted by bad dreams. In one of these, Mrs Rapeloew came home from the hospital with the baby the stork had brought her, only the baby was black and dead. Owen had been all but consumed with guilt and shame (never to the point of confessing, however; what in God's name would he have said when his Baptist mother asked him what had possessed him), and yet he never forgot the blind pleasure of standing in the bathroom with his shorts down around his knees, trying to piss on Mr Rapeloew's toothbrush, or the thrill that had gusted through him when the serving platter shattered. If he had been older, he would have come in his pants, he supposed. The purity was in the senselessness; the joy was in the sound of the shatter; the afterglow was the slow and pleasurable wallow in remorse for having done it and the fear of being caught. Mr Rapeloew had said it was a stork, but when Owen's father came in that night, he told him it was a stroke. That a blood-vessel in Mrs Rapeloew's brain had sprung a leak and that was a stroke.

And now here it was again, all of that.

Maybe this time I will come, he thought. It'll certainly be a lot goddam grander than trying to piss on Mr Rapeloew's toothbrush. And then, as he turned his own hat around: Same basic concept, though.

'Owen?' Kurtz's voice. 'Are you there, son? If you don't roger me right now, I'm going to assume you either can't or won't - '

'Boss, I'm here.' Voice steady. In his mind's eye he saw a sweaty little boy holding a china serving platter over his head. 'Boys, are you ready to kick a little interstellar ass?'

A roar of affirmation that included one goddam right and one let's tear em up.

'What do you want first, boys?'

Squad Anthem and Anthem and Fucking Stones, right now!

'Anyone want out, sing out.'

Radio silence. On some other frequency where Owen would never go again, the grayboys were pleading in famous voices. Starboard and below was the little Kiowa OH-58. Owen didn't need binoculars to see Kurtz with his own hat now turned around, Kurtz watching him. The newspaper was still on his lap, now for some reason folded into a triangle. For six years Owen Underhill had needed no second chances, which was good because Kurtz didn't give them - in his heart Owen supposed he had always known that. He would think about that later, however. If he had to. One final coherent thought flared in his mind - You're the cancer, Kurtz, you - and then died. Here was a fine and perfect darkness in its place.

'Blue Group, this is Blue Boy Leader. Come in on me. Com?mence firing at two hundred yards. Avoid hitting the Blue Boy if possible, but we are going to sweep those motherfuckers clean. Conk, play the Anthem.'

Gene Conklin flicked a switch and racked a CD in the Discman sitting on the floor of Blue Boy Two. Owen, no longer inside himself, leaned forward in Blue Boy Leader and cranked the volume.

Mick Jagger, the voice of the Rolling Stones, filled his earphones. Owen raised his hand, saw Kurtz snap him a salute - whether sarcastic or sincere Owen neither knew nor cared - and then Owen brought his arm down. As Jagger sang it out, sang the Anthem, the one they always played when they went in hot, the helicopters dropped, tightened, and flew to target.

8

The grayboys - the ones that were left - stood beneath the shadow of their ship which lay in turn at the end of the shattered aisle of trees it had destroyed in its final descent. They made no initial effort to run or hide; in fact half of them actually stepped forward on their naked toeless feet, squelching in the melted snow, the muck, and the scattered fuzz of reddish-gold moss. These faced the oncoming line of gunships, long-fingered hands raised, showing that they were empty. Their huge black eyes gleamed in the dull daylight.

The gunships did not slow, although all of them heard the final transmissions briefly in their heads: Please don't hurt us, we are helpless, we are dying. With that, twining through it like a pigtail, came the voice of Mick Jagger: 'Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man Of wealth and taste; I've been around for many a long year, stolen many man's soul and faith . . .'

The gunships heeled around as briskly as a marching band doing a square turn on the fifty-yard line of the Pose Bowl, and the .50s opened up. The bullets plowed into the snow, struck dead branches from already wounded trees, struck pallid little sparks from the edge of the great ship. They ripped into the bunched grayboys standing with their arms upraised and tore them apart. Arms spun free of rudimentary bodies, spouting a kind of pink sap. Heads exploded like gourds, raining a reddish backsplash on their ship and their shipmates - not blood but that mossy stuff, as if their heads were full of it, not really heads at all but grisly produce baskets. Several of them were cut in two at the midsection and went down with their hands still raised in surrender. As they fell, the gray bodies went a dirty white and seemed to boil.

Mick Jagger confided: 'I was around when Jesus Christ had His moment of doubt and pain . . .'

A few grays, still standing under the lip of the ship, turned as if to run, but there was nowhere to go. Most of them were shot down immediately. The last few survivors - maybe four in all - retreated into the scant shadows. They seemed to be doing something, fiddling with something, and Owen had a horrible premonition.

'I can get them!' came crackling over the radio. That was Deforest in Blue Boy Four, almost panting with eagerness. And, anticipating Owen's order to go for it, the Chinook dropped almost to ground-level, its rotors kicking up snow and muddy water in a filthy blizzard, battering the underbrush flat.

'No, negative, belay that, back off, resume station plus fifty!' Owen shouted, and whacked Tony's shoulder. Tony, looking only slightly odd in the transparent mask over his mouth and nose, yanked back on the yoke and Blue Boy Leader rose in the unsteady air. Even over the music - the mad bongos, the chorus going Hoo-hoo, 'Sympathy for the Devil' hadn't played through to its conclusion even a single time, at least not yet - Owen could hear his crew grumbling. The Kiowa, he saw, was already small with distance. Whatever his mental peculiarities might be, Kurtz was no fool - And his instincts were exquisite.

'Ah, boss ' Deforest, sounding not just disappointed but on fire.

'Say again, say again, return to station, Blue Group, return - '

The explosion hanmered him back in his seat and tossed the Chinook upward like a toy. Beneath the roar, he heard Tony Edwards cursing and wrestling with the yoke. There were screams from behind them, but while most of the crew was injured, they lost only Pinky Bryson, who had been leaning out the bay for a better look and fen when the shockwave hit.

'Got it, got it, got it,' Tony yammered, but Owen thought it was at least thirty seconds before Tony actually did, seconds that felt like hours. On the sound systems, the Anthem had cut off, a fact that did not bode well for Conk and the boys in Blue Boy Two.

Tony swung Blue Boy Leader around, and Owen saw the windscreen Perspex was cracked in two places. Behind them someone was still screaming - Mac Cavanaugh, it turned out, had somehow managed to lose two fingers.

'Holy shit,' Tony muttered, and then: 'You saved our bacon, boss. Thanks.'

Owen barely heard him. He was looking back at the remains of the ship, which now lay in at least three pieces. It was hard to tell because the shit was flying and the air had turned a hazy reddish-orange. It was a little easier to see the remains of Defor?est's gunship. It lay canted on its side 'in the muck with bubbles bursting all around it. On its port side, a long piece of busted rotor floated in the water like a 'ant's canoe-paddle. About fifty yards away, more rotors protruded, black and crooked, from a furious ball of yellow-white fire. That was Conklin and Blue Boy Two.

Graggle and bleep from the radio. Blakey in Blue Boy Three. 'Boss, hey boss, I see '

'Three, this is Leader. I want you to - '

'Leader, this is Three, I see survivors, repeat, I see Blue Boy Four survivors, at least three no, four I am going down to - '

'Negative, Blue Boy Three, not at all. Resume station plus fifty - belay that, station plus one-fifty, one-five-oh, and do it now!'

'Ah, but sir boss, I mean . . . I can see Friedman, he's on fucking fire'

'Joe Blakey, listen up.'

No mistaking Kurtz's rasp, Kurtz who had gotten clear of the red crap in plenty of time. Almost, Owen thought, as if he knew what was going to happen.

'Get your ass out of there now, or I guarantee that by next week you'll be shovelling camel-shit in a hot climate where booze is illegal. Out.'

Nothing more from Blue Boy Three. The two surviving gunships pulled back to their original rally-point plus a hundred and fifty yards. Owen sat watching the furious upward spiral of the Ripley fungus, wondering if Kurtz had known or just intuited, wondering if he and Blakey had cleared the area in time. Because they were infectious, of course; whatever the grayboys said, they were infectious. Owen didn't know if that justified what they had just done, but he thought the survivors of Pay Deforest's Blue Boy Four were most likely dead men walking. Or worse: live men changing. Turning into God knew what.

'Owen.' The radio.

Tony looked at him, eyebrows raised.

'Owen.'

Sighing, Owen flicked the toggle over to Kurtz's closed channel with his chin. 'I'm here, boss.'

9

Kurtz sat in the Kiowa with the newspaper hat still in his lap. He and Freddy were wearing their masks; so were the rest of boys in the attack group. Likely even the poor fellows now on the ground were still wearing them. The masks were probably unnecessary, but Kurtz, who had no intention of contracting Ripley if he could avoid it, was the big cheese. Among other things, he was supposed to set an example. Besides, he played the odds. As for Freddy Johnson . . . well, he had plans for Freddy.

'I'm here, boss,' Underhill said in his phones.

'That was good shooting, better flying, and superlative thinking. You saved some lives. You and I are back where we were. Right back to Square One. Got that?'

'I do, boss. Got it and appreciate it.'

And if you believe it, Kurtz thought, you're even stupider than you look.

10

Behind Owen, Cavanaugh was still making noises, but the volume was decreasing now. Nothing from Joe Blakey, who was maybe coming to understand the implications of that gauzy red-gold whirl?wind, which they might or might not have managed to avoid.

'Everything okay, buck?' Kurtz asked.

'We have some injuries,' Owen replied, 'but basically five-by. Work for the sweepers, though; it's a mess back there,'

Kurtz's crowlike laughter came back, loud in Owen's head?phones.

11

'Freddy - '

'Yes, boss.'

'We need to keep an eye on Owen Underhill.'

'Okay.'

'If we need to leave suddenly - Imperial Valley - Underhill stays here.'

Freddy Johnson said nothing, just nodded and flew the heli?copter. Good lad. Knew which side of the line he belonged on, unlike some.

Kurtz again turned to him.

'Freddy, get us back to that godforsaken little store and don't spare the horses. I want to be there at least fifteen minutes before Owen and Joe Blakey. Twenty, if possible.'

'Yes, boss.'

'And I want a secure satellite uplink to Cheyenne Mountain.'

'You got it. Take about five.'

'Make it three, buck. Make it three.'

Kurtz settled back and watched the pine forest flow under them. So much forest, so much wildlife, and not a few human beings - most of them at this time of year wearing orange. And a week from now ?maybe in seventy-two hours - it would all be as dead as the mountains of the moon. A shame, but if there was one thing of which there was no shortage in Maine, it was woods.

Kurtz spun the cocked hat on the end of his finger. If possible, he intended to see Owen Underhill wearing it after he had ceased breathing.

'He just wanted to hear if any of it had changed,' Kurtz said softly.

Freddy Johnson, who knew which side his bread was buttered on, said nothing.

12

Halfway back to Gosselin's and Kurtz's speedy little Kiowa already a speck that might or might not still be there, Owen's eyes fixed on Tony Edward's right hand, which was gripping one branch of the Chinook's Y-shaped steering yoke. At the base of the right thumbnail, fine as a spill of sand, was a curving line of reddish-gold. Owen looked down at his own hands, inspecting them as closely as Mrs. Jankowski had during Personal Hygiene, back in those long-ago days when the Rapeloews had been their neighbors. He could see nothing yet, not on his, but Tony had his mark, and Owen guessed his own would come in time.

Baptists the Underhills had been, and Owen was familiar with the story of Cain and Abel. The voice of thy brother's blood cried unto me from the ground, God had said, and he had sent Cain out to live in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden. With the low men, according to his mother. But before Cain was set loose to wander, God had put a mark upon him, so even the low men of Nod would know him for what he was. And now, seeing that red-gold thread on the nail of Eddie's thumb and looking for it on his own hands and wrists, Owen guessed he knew what color Cain's mark had been.