Strangers

The crawlthrough that Jack had cut in the chainlink fence was small, but none of themJack, Dom, or Gingerwas a large person, so they all squeezed onto the grounds of Thunder Hill without difficulty, having pushed the rucksacks full of equipment ahead of them.

At Jack's direction, Dom and Ginger stayed close to the fence until he had a chance to study the immediate landscape through the Star Tron nightvision device. He was searching for posts on which surveillance cameras and photoelectriccell alarm systems might be rigged. Though blowing snow made the inspection more difficult than it would have been in better weather, he located two poles on which were mounted cameras that covered this portion of the Thunder Hill perimeter from different angles. He believed the lenses of both cameras were filmed with snow, though due to the storm he could not be certain. He saw no evidence of photoelectric systems to detect movement across this part of the meadow.

Next, from a zippered pocket, he withdrew a walletsize devicean extremely sophisticated variation of a voltameter. It could detect the passage of electric current through a line without making contact with that line, although it could not measure the strength of the current.

He turned toward the open meadow, putting his back to the fence. Crouching, he held the object out at arm's length, about two feet above the ground, and moved slowly forward. The voltage detector would register a current from lines buried as deep as eighteen inches underground, unless they were sheathed in pipes. The kind of lines he was looking for were neither that deep nor sheathed. Even the foot of new and old snow would not measurably affect the device's performance. He edged forward only about three yards before the detector began beeping softly and flashing its amber light.

He halted immediately, stepped back a couple of feet, and called Dom and Ginger to his side. They huddled together, and Jack said, "There's a pressuresensitive alarm grid buried an inch or two under the ground. It starts about ten feet inside the fence, and I'm sure it runs parallel to the fence all around the facility. It's a web of wiressealed in thin plasticthat carry a lowvoltage current. It's designed so the connections of some of the wires will be broken and the current interrupted if anything above a certain weightoh, say fifty poundssteps on them. The weight of the snow doesn't affect it because that's evenly distributed. It reacts to localized pressurelike a footstep."

“Even I weigh more than fifty pounds,” Ginger said. "How wide's this alarm grid?"

“At least eight or ten feet,” Jack said. "They want to be sure that if someone immensely clever like me should come along and detect the system, it'll be impossible just to jump across it."

“I don't know about you,” Dom said, “but I can'tfly across.”

“I'm not so sure you can't,” Jack said. "I mean, if you had time to explore that power Of yours . . . If you can levitate chairs, why couldn't you levitate yourself?" He saw this suggestion had startled Dom. "But you haven't time to learn to control your power, so we'll have to rely on what's gotten us this far."

“What's that?” Ginger asked.

“My genius,” Jack said with a grin. "Here's what we'll do. We'll walk along the perimeter, staying in the safe ground between the fence and the alarm grid, until we find a place where there's a big sturdy tree standing twenty or thirty feet deeper in the meadow, well beyond the width of the grid."

“Then?” Dom asked.

“You'll see.”

“What if we don't find a tree?” Ginger asked.

“Doc,” Jack said, "I had you pegged as a gogetting optimist. If I say we need a tree, I'd expect you to tell me we'll find a forest and have a thousand to choose from."

They found the tree only three hundred yards down the slope toward the valley floor. It was a huge pine of such age and character that it offered the thick and widely separated limbs that Jack required. It towered eighty feet or higher, a snowdusted monolith looming out of the storm, and it was thirty or thirtyfive feet back from the fence, well beyond the farther edge of the alarm grid.

Using the Star Tron again, Jack studied the massive pine until he found exactly the right branch. It had to be sturdy, yet not much higher than the fence, with which it would form the opposing stanchions of a rope bridge. He put the Star Tron away again.

From one of the rucksacks, he removed the fourpronged grappling hook that had been one of the many items on Ginger's and Faye's shopping list when they had visited Elko earlier in the day. Tied to the hook was a hundredfoot length of hawserlaid nylon rope, fivesixteenths of an inch in diameter, the kind made for serious climbers and capable not only of holding one of them but of supporting all their weight at the same time.

He tested the knot where the line tied to the hook, though he had tested it a dozen times before. He arranged the coil of rope at his feet, stepping on the loose end to prevent the entire length from being carried away when he pitched the grappling hook, but leaving most of it free to pay out. “Stand aside,” he said. Dangling the hook from his right hand on two feet of line, he began to swing it around and around, faster, faster, until the whoosh of it cutting the air was even louder than the storm wind. When he felt the velocity was right, he let go with his right hand, and the rope slipped loosely through his left hand, trailing after the grapple. The hook arced up and out into the storm. Though it had sufficient mass and momentum to be unbothered by the wind, it fell short of its target by about three feet.

Jack reeled it back through the snow, churning the virgin mantle. He had to jerk on it a few times and then patiently finesse it when it got caught on something. He was not concerned about dragging it across the buried pressuresensitive grid, for it was not nearly heavy enough to trigger that alarm. In a minute or two he had it in hand again. Without having been told what to do, Dom had knelt and coiled the rope once more as it came in. Now Jack was ready to try again.

His second pitch landed just where he wanted it. The hook firmly snared the target branch.

With the grapple securely planted, he took the other end of the rope to the nearest fence post. He slipped it through the chainlink about seven feet off the ground, wrapped it around the post, threaded it through the chainlink on the other side, and all the way around the post again. He pulled on it with all his strength, until the line between the post and the distant tree was taut. Then he enlisted Dom's and Ginger's help to keep it taut while he knotted it tightly to the post.

As a result, they had a rope bridge that was seven feet off the ground where it began at the fence, angling up to a height of about nine feet at the tree. That slight incline, even over a mere thirtyfive feet, would make the crossing more difficult, but it was as near to level as Jack could make it.

He jumped high, grabbed the line with both hands, swung his body back and forth a few times to get momentum, then kicked up and threw his legs over the rope, crossing his ankles atop it. Like a playful koala bear clinging to the underside of a horizontal branch, he hung with his face turned skyward and his back parallel to the ground. By extending his arms behind him and pulling himself on the line and by alternately scrunching his legs up and extending them while keeping his ankles locked, he could inchworm along with no danger of touching the ground. He demonstrated the technique for Dom and Ginger. Before he reached the danger zone defined by the pressuresensitive alarm grid, he let go first with his feet, then with his hands, and dropped to the ground.

Dom tried getting onto the line. He attained a handgrip with his first jump. But he needed a full minute to swing his legs up and over, though he did it, then dropped back to the ground.

Ginger, only fivetwo, had to be given a boost to get a proper handgrip. But to Jack's surprise she required no assistance to kick up and wrap her legs over the line without delay.

“You're in pretty good shape,” Jack told her.

“Yes, well,” she said, swinging back to the ground, "that's because every Tuesday, on my day off, I eat buckets of vareniki, several pounds of graham cracker cake, and enough blintzes to sink a ship. Diet, Jack. That's the key to fitness."

Shrugging his arms through the straps on one of the rucksacks and buckling it in place on his back, Jack said, "Okay, now, I'll cross the rope bridge first with the two heaviest bags, which leaves one sack for each of you. Ginger, you'll come second. Dom, you'll bring up the rear. When you come across, the rope will sag more the closer you get to the center of the span, even as taut as we've made it, but don't worry. It won't droop far enough to put you in contact with the ground and set off the alarm. Keep your feet locked around the line, and for God's sake don't accidentally let go with both hands at the same time as you're pulling yourself along. Try to make it all the way to the tree, just to be safe. But if your arms and legs give out, you can come down ten or twelve feet this side of the pine if you must, which'Il probably be past the other end of the alarm grid."

“We'll make it all the way,” Ginger said confidently. "It's only thirty or thirtyfive feet.."

“In just ten feet,” Jack said, fastening the second rucksack to his chest, "you'll feel as if your arms are coming out of their sockets. In fifteen feet, you'll feel as if they have come out of their sockets."

Something about Brendan Cronin's reaction to his rector's death had jolted Leland Falkirk. When the young priest demanded to be given time and privacy to deliver the last rights to Stefan Wycazik, there had been a fierce fire of indignation in his eyes and such hot grief in his voice that his humanity could not be in doubt.

Leland's fear of alien possession was voracious, eating him alive. He had seenand others had discoveredstrange things inside that starship, enough to justify his fear if not his total paranoia. But even he found it difficult to believe that Cronin's anguish was the clever playacting of an inhuman intelligence in disguise.

Yet. Cronin, with his bizarre powers, was one of two prime suspects, one of the two witnesses most likely to have been taken over, the other being Dominick Corvaisis. Where did the healing and telekinesis come from if not from an alien puppetmaster living within the man's body?

Leland was confused.

With powdery snow pluming up around his feet, he walked away from the kneeling priest, then stopped and shook his head and tried to clear his thoughts. He saw the other six witnesses by Jack Twist's Cherokee, still under guard. He saw his soldiers caught between the need to do their duty as they were told and a confusion worse than Leland's own. He saw the stranger who had been with Wycaziknow up and moving around, miraculously whole. That healing seemed wonderful, an event calling for celebration, not fear; a blessing, not a curse. But Leland knew what lay inside Thunder Hill. That dark knowledge put things in a different perspective. The healing was a ruse, clever misdirection to make him think the benefits of cooperation with the enemy were too great to justify resistance. They were offering an end to pain. And perhaps an end to all death other than that too sudden to be avoided. But Leland knew the very essence of life was pain. It was dangerous to believe escape from suffering was possible. Dangerous, because such hopes were routinely destroyed. And the pain following in the wake of shattered hopes was far worse than it would have been if you had just faced it and endured it in the first place. Leland believed that painphysical, mental, emotionalwas the core of the human condition, that survival and sanity depended upon embracing pain rather than resisting it or dreaming of escape. You had to thrive on pain to avoid being defeated by it, and anyone who came along with an offer of transcendence must be greeted with disbelief, contempt, and deep distrust.

Leland was no longer confused.

The big Army truckJorja supposed it was a troop transporthad hard metal benches along both sides and also against the forward wall that separated the driver's compartment from the rear. Dangling leather loops, riveted to the walls at regular intervals, provided those on the benches with something to hang on to when the ride got rough or steep. Father Wycazik's corpse had been laid on the forward bench and secured with lines that tied under the seat and then to the wall straps, forming a rope basket to restrain the body's movement. Everyone elseJorja, Marcie, Brendan, Ernie, Faye, Sandy, Ned, and Parkersat on the side benches. Usually, the rear doors were held shut only by the interior latch, allowing soldiers to get out quickly in case of an accident or other emergency. But this time Colonel Falkirk himself slid the bolt into place on the outside. The sound of it made Jorja think of prison cells and dungeons, and filled her with despair. A fluorescent light was set in the ceiling, but Falkirk did not order it lit; they were forced to ride in darkness.

Although Ernie Block had endured the night remarkably well thus far, everyone had expected him to come apart when he was locked in the pitchblack bay of the truck. But he sat beside Faye, holding her hand, and coped. He had periodic bouts of anxiety marked only by spells of hyperventilation, which he quickly overcame. "I'm beginning to remember the jets Dom spoke of," Ernie said soon after they got in the truck, before it started to move. "There were at least four, swooping low, two very low . . . and then something else happened I can't recall . . . but after that, I remember getting in the motel van and driving like hell down toward I-80 ... out toward the special place along the highway that means so much to Sandy, too. That's all so far. But the more I remember . . . the less afraid I am of the dark."

The colonel put no guards in with them. He seemed to think it would be dangerous for even two or three heavily armed soldiers to ride in their company.

Before herding them into the truck, the colonel had seemed on the brink of ordering their execution, right there along Vista Valley Road. Jorja's stomach had knotted painfully with fear. Finally Falkirk calmed down, though Jorja was not convinced he would let them live once they arrived wherever they were going.

He had demanded to know where Ginger, Dom, and Jack had gone. At first, no one would respond, which infuriated him. He placed his hand on Marcie's head and quietly told them what pain he would put the child through if they continued to be difficult. Ernie had spoken at once, cursing Falkirk as a disgrace to his uniformand reluctantly revealing that Ginger, Dom, and Jack had gone west from the Tranquility, heading for Battle Mountain, Winnemucca, and ultimately Reno. "We were afraid all the routes to Elko would be watched,“ Ernie said. ”We didn't want to put all our eggs in one basket." It was a lie, of course. For a moment Jorja wanted to scream at Ernie not to jeopardize her daughter's life with transparent lies, but she realized Falkirk had no way of knowing for sure that it was a phony story. The colonel was suspicious. But Ernie provided more details of the route Jack was supposedly following, and at last Falkirk sent four of his men to check it out.