After he had cleared security at LAX, Elliot Anders found a relatively quiet spot and called Phil Traynor’s parents in Illinois.  Phil’s mother, Elaine, who was only in her late forties, sounded drained and listless when she answered.

“Mrs. Traynor?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Elliot Anders.  I’m calling from Los Angeles.”

“Yes.  Yes, Dr. Anders.”  He heard the hopefulness in her voice and the return of energy and he moved quickly to steel her with honesty.

“I don’t have any news of Phil,” Elliot explained.  “But I just wanted you and Robert to know that I am heading to Africa to find him and be with him and see if we can get out of there together.”

“You are?  You are, Dr. Anders?”

“Yes, I am.  I can’t tell you how things are going to go but I am going to try.”

Elliot heard a man’s voice in the background of the call and knew that it was Phil’s stern father who had hoped his son might also become a farmer and love the land and what it produced.

“It’s Dr. Anders,” Elliot heard Elaine Traynor explain while holding the phone away from her mouth.  “He’s going to Africa and he says he’s going to find Phil and bring him home.”

“Well, he can’t do that,” Robert Traynor said.  “It’s not possible.”

“Actually, Mrs. Traynor?  Actually, please tell Robert that the ban on travel into Africa has been lifted.  They are allowing volunteers to go in with relief supplies.  They just won’t guarantee a return trip until the situation has stabilized.  I’m going to find Phil and we’ll hang out together until it’s time for us to come home.”

“Oh, Dr. Anders.  That would be wonderful if you could make that happen.”

“I can assure you I am going to try harder than I have ever tried anything.  I am confident Phil is still with the tribe in Mali and he’s just lost contact because of a lack of gasoline to run the generator.  Maybe Phil and I can get our electricity back at the village and we’ll get an email to one of his friends to contact you both and let you know our status.”

“Oh, thank you, so much, Dr. Anders.  Please tell Phil we love him and miss him and we’ll be waiting for him.  Everything is normal here, tell him.  Of course, I don’t suppose that will make him want to come home much after he’s been somewhere like Africa.  But it’s still home.”

“I’m sure he’ll be back in Illinois very soon, Mrs. Traynor.  I have to go they’re calling my flight to London.  Good-bye and I hope to be in touch soon.”

“Good-bye, Dr. Anders.  Thank you for calling.  And good luck and please tell Phil how much we love him and can’t wait to see him again.”

Elliot slept fitfully on the long flight to London and he drank too much wine.  He had just slipped into a nice, deep dream when the A380’s wheels barked across the runway’s surface at Heathrow and he looked out his window just in time to see the brief flutter of the great wings as they bent toward the earth.  The only luggage he had carried was a backpack with a change of clothes and a few personal effects.  Customs was quick and in less than thirty minutes he was at curbside hailing a limo driver to take him to the Manchester Airport.

Commercial aviation into Manchester had been halted and the airport was being used as a staging ground for aircraft arriving from around the world to begin their one way journeys down to Africa.  Makeshift signs had been erected and temporary electronic billboards guided volunteers and vehicles to specific areas for enlistment in various tasks and aircraft assignment for transport.  A web site URL, SaveAfrica.com, flashed on illuminated advertisements where airlines normally posted their logos and terminal information.

Elliot paid the driver in American currency and jumped out at curbside with his backpack and computer bag.  Inside the terminal, gates were serving as staging areas for flights to different African countries.  There was no longer any security checkpoint and he walked into a mass of people that reminded him of lunch hour in Manhattan.  He had no idea what to do.  There seemed no organization and the energy in the building was feeding a sense of chaos.

Momentarily, Elliot stopped and went to a window along the tarmac.  Outside, in the dullish light were more aircraft than he had ever seen assembled in one location.  There had to be hundreds of jumbo jets and military cargo transports.  Double-trailered lorries moved slowly beneath the wings and were offloading thousands upon thousands of crates into cargo holds.  No takeoffs or landings were apparent but there was intensive preparation for departure.  The U.N. logo was slapped haphazardly on almost every tailfin and freight trailer and colorful uniforms of soldiers and airmen from probably every civilized nation were represented in the hundreds of people moving among the airplanes and trucks.  How they intended to effectively coordinate any of this was beyond Elliot’s ability to comprehend but he just wanted a flight to get him as close as possible to Mali.  He approached an American wearing sand-colored fatigues left over from the most recent conflict with the Persian Gulf states.

“Excuse me, sir?”  Elliot placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and noticed his officer’s stars.

“I’m sorry?”  The man spun around almost defensively and Elliot quickly withdrew his hand.

“Pardon me, but I’m wondering where I might go to volunteer.  Do you have any idea?”

“Actually, I think you might be a bit late,” the general said.  “I don’t know that there are any more seats on any of the passenger jets or even cargo flights.  The response has been a bit beyond amazing.  Either people are brutally optimistic or they just don’t give a damn about things they don’t control.  I have no idea.”

“Surely,” Elliot said, “there must be some way for me to get to Africa.  Where do I sign up?”

“You can use your computer you’re carrying there and go on the web site you see plastered all over these walls and sign up for flights to a particular country.  But I think they only have waiting lists now.”  The U.S. Army officer smiled at two young women who passed pulling wheeled travel cases.  “Or, you might run down to Southampton where all of the merchant freighters and government vessels are disembarking with their loads.  Might be easier to jump one of those than a plane.”

“Nowhere here to sign up?  In the terminal?”

“Yep, Gates 43 and 44 but the lines are long and I don’t think you’ll have much luck for several days.  Good luck, though.”

“Thank you, sir.”

When he reached the queues, Elliot was astonished by hundreds of people waiting patiently to get their names on manifests.  It was as if they were eagerly signing up to commit suicide.  Along the concourse, he discovered there were large acrylic maps of the various African countries, types of relief scheduled for delivery, locations of arrival, and modes of transport.  When he found Mali, he saw that only one flight; an American C-130 was scheduled and it was due to leave for Bomako.  Elliot had no intention of wasting hours in line hoping to get a trip that ended close to Mali or logging onto a web site that put him on a standby list.  He was determined to find the pilot of the Bomako flight and convince him of his value to the trip.

He walked down the concourse and noticed people were freely moving in and out of the terminal and down to the tarmac through various stairways and exits.  Normally, these were secured but no one seemed concerned about who was hanging around the terminal.  There were finally dangers more perilous than those threatened by unnamed terrorists.  Elliot strolled down the jetway for Gate 18 and opened the door to the maintenance stairs to gain access to the tarmac.

Outside, he flagged down a man driving a golf cart carrying two large ice chests balanced on the back where clubs were usually lashed.

“Sorry,” Elliot said.  “But I was wondering if you could tell me where I might find the plane that is carrying relief supplies to Mali?”

The man, pinkish and trim against the pale sky, smiled.  “Seriously, sir?  Look around you.  What chance do you think there is that I might know which of these hundreds of planes are going to where?  Mali?”

“Yeah, I just thought I’d ask.”

“Sorry, sir.  I’m just an errand boy and I’m delivering drinks and ice to U.N. workers offloading the lorries.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“Of course.”

Elliot’s next step was to watch for men wearing military flight suits or the traditional jackets of commercial airlines.  He figured he could pick out pilots easily because even if they were not in uniform they were likely going to be wearing leather jackets.  One of them might know where to find the Mali C-130 or its pilot.  He stopped a half dozen men and his assessment had been correct because they were all pilots but not one of them knew which aircraft was bound for Mali.  However, a Russian who spoke precise, clipped English phrases, directed Elliot to an office in the baggage operations area where a clerk of some type was on a laptop scheduling departures.

Curled over his keyboard and squinting through reading glasses, the man shuffled through piles of paper and then entered data onto the screen.  Elliot stood beside him waiting for his presence to be acknowledged.

“Oh, hello,” the man said, barely looking up from his work.

“Hello.”  Elliot did not want to sound either anxious or overly earnest.

“Odd, idn’t it?”  The man’s knobby fingers and veined hands danced across the keys with an indiscernible purpose.

“How’s that?” Elliot asked.

“Oh, just this airport.  I ’s’pose we’re the only one in the world to schedule all departures and no arrivals, eh?”

“Hadn’t thought of it,” Elliot sighed.

“Well, as long as there are people willing to donate themselves and whatever else, I guess we’ll be having a few inbound.  But we’re clearing all of these out of here down to the continent in the next twenty four hours.”

“That’s going to be quite a task.”

“That it will.  It’s why I’m busy as hell.  I’m sorry.  But did you need something?”

“Yes, one of the pilots said you might be able to help me find the plane to Mali.”

“I can, indeed, do just that.  It’s an American C-130 just down the line there.  There’s his tail number.”  One hand came away from the keyboard and poked down at a blue sheet of paper. “Just dropped off his final manifest.”

“May I borrow a pen?”

“Certainly.”

Elliot wrote down the identification numbers and letters.

“Thank you.”

“Certainly.  If you have business with the fella, though, you’d better get after it.  We start takeoff sequences tonight and he’s second for departure at about 0800 GMT.”

“I guess I’d better go see him then,” Elliot said as he stepped back outside onto the tarmac.

Initially, Elliot had expected little difficulty getting aboard a flight but when he arrived in the industrial city of Manchester and saw the activity at the airport and the thousands of people determined to help, he worried there might not be space.  The journey to Mali, however, seemed to have minimal appeal and there was still room for passengers in the cargo bay.

“You’ll have to set in the netting,” the pilot, a former crop duster from Bakersfield, California explained.  “I’m loaded with grain, satellite dishes, computers, and medicine but not many people.  I guess Mali isn’t that romantic to all of us fatalists.”

“That’s not me, sir.  I’ve worked there as a researcher and I am going to look for my assistant living among one of the indigenous tribes.  He was stuck there when the travel ban was imposed.”

“What’d you say your name was?”

“Elliot Anders.”

“And you do what?”

“I’m a scientist.  I was doing research on tribal histories and traditions.”

“And you are risking your life to go back?”

“If we don’t stop whatever it is that is going on in Africa it won’t matter if we are there or in Bakersfield, will it?” Elliot asked.

“I suppose that’s right.”

“What about you?”  Elliot thought the pilot was too young to be surrendering to destiny and had the look of a man who had thrived in the out of doors.

“My wife’s gone.  Cancer.  We never got to have kids.  This is something I can do, you know?  Flew these things for the California National Guard for years.”  He laid a hand against the green fuselage.  “Come on.  Let’s go get your paperwork processed.  We’re southbound in a few hours.”

The trip down the continent was loud and tiring.  Tropical storms bumped them from below and without the passenger module on the plane there was little insulation from engine howl.  Elliot was unable to have conversations with the seven other souls on board.  A few of them had introduced themselves before the tail ramp had been lifted and they occasionally smiled when he looked in their direction.  During the ten hours flying he nodded off to sleep for a few minutes at a time and tried to read a paperback crime novel by an author he had never heard of.  When the storms broke apart and the ride smoothed out Elliot stood up to look out the small ports at the tiny lights of Africa and their pathetic attempt to hold back the tropical darkness.

Their arrival in Bomako the next morning was burdened with a palpable disappointment by the airport workers and hungry locals who greeted the C-130.  Perhaps, Elliot thought, they had expected a massive airlift or they knew of the numerous ships and planes bound for the more populous and cultured African cities.  The C-130’s captain tried to assure them more help was coming and this shipment was just a beginning.  The Bomako airport seemed to Elliot as though it were as sagging and defeated as the Mali men who offloaded the cargo and doled out the medicine and food to waiting U.N. drivers.  In a matter of minutes, though, Elliot discovered the two men in a battered Toyota Tacoma who were to deliver medicine to the Dogon villages east of Bomako.  He tossed his backpack into the truck bed, slipped his computer strap over his shoulder, and climbed in to settle down with a bottle of water for breakfast.  The Tacoma was rattling eastward before Elliot even realized he had failed to say good-bye and thank you to the Bakersfield crop duster who had taken him aboard the C-130.

After several hours, he looked over the cab of the pickup to see the dirt road that approached the Cliffs of Bandiagara near Yougo Dogouru and Elliot motioned for the driver to stop.  He got out of the truck when he saw the familiar spire of the Bini Shrine.  He thanked the two U.N. workers who were driving another ten miles into a more central location for distribution of the medicine.  Elliot walked slowly into the village looking for Ammonu, the Hogon priest-chief, or Abu-Ri, the Hogon from the next village over who had acquired some English.  Elliot did not know how Ammonu might respond to his return after he had been discovered inside the crevasses of the Yougo Rock but when he leaned his head into the Hogon’s hut the old man stepped excitedly into the late afternoon sun and began jabbering away in a Dogon dialect.  Frustrated, Elliot smiled and listened as Ammonu pointed in the direction of the Yougo Rock and then back toward the escarpment that formed the cliffs.  He understood a few words like Nommo and Yougo and he thought he heard a quick reference to Po Tolo, which was the Dogon term for Digitarria, the star where Nommo lived.

Ammonu motioned for Elliot to follow him and they began walking in the direction of the Cliffs of Bandiagara a few hundred yards from where the Hogon lived.  When they got to one of the switchback trail heads leading down to the river, Ammonu stopped walking but continued pointing at the sky and excitedly waving his hands.  Elliot had begun to wonder how he was going to get away from Ammonu and find Abu-ri with his limited English when he saw a white man in cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a blue tee shirt walking up the trail from the river.  The man, who appeared to be in his 30s, had sandy blonde hair and stubble across his tanned face, put out his hand to Elliot as he approached.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”  Elliot tried to mask his surprise at the presence of another westerner among the Dogon.  “I’m Elliot Anders.  I’ve been living and researching here among the tribe for a few years.”

“Yes.  Yes.  I’ve heard of you, Dr. Anders.  I’m Ethan Medford.  I’ve only been here a few days.”

Ammonu had at last fallen silent as the two men before him spoke in a language he did not comprehend.  Medford saw the confusion on Elliot’s face and answered a question before it was asked.

“I’m a translator,” he continued.  “I was working at U.N. offices in Capetown.  I’ve sort of always had a facility for languages and was raised mostly in Africa.  My parents were Peace Corps volunteers.”

“And you speak the Dogon dialects?”

African Sunset

“Yes, a few of them, oddly enough.  My folks were here during a couple of years of drought and I picked it up from the kids.  The U.N. sent me up here for a few weeks to see if any assistance was needed helping the Dogon deal with the outside world.  But I don’t think they are going to be needing much.  They seem to be doing just fine.”

“I don’t think the stupidity of the outside world gets in here much,” Elliot agreed.

“Yes, yes,” Medford said.  “They’ve got great crops this year and I’ve seen no sign of this Slims Disease.  Everyone looks healthy.  I’m going to be leaving in a few days, I suspect.”

“Sorry to hear that.  I imagine I will be here a while.  But say, you haven’t seen my assistant in any of the villages, have you?  His name’s Phil Traynor.”

“No, I’m sorry.  I’m the only outsider I know of but I assume someone brought you here.”

“Yes, I came with a U.N. truckload of medical supplies.  They went up the river.  But you’ve heard nothing of the other American since you’ve arrived?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I’m wondering if you might understand Ammonu here.  He’s been trying to tell me something and I haven’t got a clue what it is.”

“I can, certainly.  Let me ask if he knows of your assistant’s whereabouts.  What did you say his name was?”

“Phil Traynor.”

Medford began speaking with Ammonu in the guttural and strangely mellifluous sounds that were the Dogon tongue and in a matter of seconds Ammonu resumed his almost uncontrolled babbling.  Medford appeared to listen carefully as Ammonu pointed at the sky repeatedly.  After a few minutes, Medford raised his palm and seemed to ask the Hogon for a moment to explain.  He turned to Elliot Anders.

“I don’t know much about this culture, I’m afraid, Dr. Anders.  I learned the language, as I told you, as a boy and we left and I never got curious about these people because we were always moving into other tribal areas when I was young.  So, if this translation doesn’t make sense, I apologize.”

“Of course.  Please, what is it?”

“Well, he said your Traynor went with Nommmo to live on Digitaria, which seems to be a star, is it not, where Nommo lives?  Nommo I gather is the Dogon’s god and I do recall references to stories about him from my parents.”

Elliot said nothing as he tried to process this absurdity.  Medford looked at him waiting for some kind of a response.

“Look,” Elliot said.  “Can you ask him again?  See if he has details.  It’s just a little far-fetched, don’t you think?”

“Obviously.”  Medford smiled and resumed talking to Ammonu for a few minutes and then turned back to Elliot.  “Well, he said the Yougo Rock was glowing red so they knew Nommo was coming and when he did he appeared right here where we are standing.  Traynor apparently walked up this same path to meet Nommo when he came down out of the sky and then he, well, for lack of a better translation, he went back into the sky with Nommo and went to live on Digitaria.”

“There’s no mistaking what he is saying?  No chance of mistranslating?”

“No, he’s pretty clear,” Medford explained.  “He seems to have witnessed the entire event.”

“What could have actually happened, I wonder.”

“Can’t say.  But I can keep asking questions, if you like.  He said a few people from other tribal families also left with Nommo.  I can ask him to direct you to them and we can try to find out what happened there.”

“No, thank you.  That won’t be necessary.  It’s not a theory worth investigating, is it?  I appreciate your help.”

“No worries.  I’ve got to walk over a couple of villages but perhaps we can talk later.  I’ll probably be leaving in a few days, as I mentioned.”

“Of course,” Elliot said as he shook Medford’s hand.  “I am pretty easy to find.”

“Perhaps I’ll see you later this evening.  I’ve a nice safari tent over there with a small gas stove and a bit of wine.  We might have some hot food later.”

“That would be wonderful.  Thank you.”

“Later on, then.”

Ammonu followed Medford away from the escarpment and Elliot turned and looked down at the languid Niger River.  What in the hell had happened to Phil Traynor?  He could not tell Phil’s conservative Christian parents that their son had simply gone to a distant star to live with a tribal god.  Elliot doubted such a thing had happened but he had no idea what to believe. All of the years he had researched this very possibility, the data he had accumulated pointing in the direction of other intelligences, was now being tested by the Hogon’s astounding narrative.  Elliot had to ask himself exactly what it was that he believed.  Was Nommo real?  How would he ever explain the disappearance of Phil Traynor to anyone, much less his parents?  Elliot was the one person outside the Dogon tribe who ought to have the intellectual capacity to believe Ammonu’s story and he chastised himself for almost immediately and intuitively scoffing at the Hogon.

Elliot took the trail down to the river and thought about Phil.  This was his place.  In the evenings, the graduate student used to love to sit on the rocks and dip his feet and watch the Dogon families gathering in the shadow of the cliffs.  There was no sunset here; only the purplish darkness cast out over the river by the escarpment as the sun dropped below the ridgeline above.  Elliot found a smooth boulder on the water’s edge where he had once seen Phil relaxing and he sat atop the great stone and gazed up and down the green dark river.

The Dogon had nice lives, Elliot thought.  They grew their own food, lived all of their days with their families, and had no susceptibility to the complexities and ambitions of the civilized world.  Their children ran through tropical forests and swam in the sunshine and people were healthy and smiling.  Their burial and marriage rituals were colorful and sacred and they never found reason to question their faith in their god.  As oblivious as they seemed to the perils encroaching on their idyllic isolation, Elliot doubted that mattered.  Slims Disease was unlikely to reach back into the Great Bend of the Niger River.

Both scientists and Christian creationists had long believed that life had begun in Africa.  Paleontologists presented fossilized skulls to make their case and Christians cited scripture that made many of them think the Garden of Eden had been located in Africa.

“If life began here,” Elliot told himself, “it seemed unlikely it would end here.”

The beautiful simplicity of the Dogon’s lives and their exquisite happiness gave him hope.  He would search further for Phil and perhaps they would be reunited.  Maybe, though, the young Illinois farmer’s son had taken a chance and done what had been described by Ammonu.  Elliot easily saw Phil climbing aboard a strange conveyance and allowing his curiosity to carry him into the unknown.  That’s exactly who Phil Traynor was.

There was no denying to himself, however, that Elliot was worried for the world and humankind.  Too many people walked the planet, disease was rampant and viruses were mutating, there was hunger and pollution and desperation, wars over resources, and a nameless, shapeless dread seemed to drape all of humanity’s aspirations.  Elliot believed it was possible that humans had simply blown what they had been given.  There was the great possibility that whoever or whatever had created human beings had decided the game was over and Slims Disease was a designer virus to save the earth from the ravages of greed.  Elliot often contemplated that everything he had seen and learned in his life was quite possibly the product of chaos and evolution and humanity’s existence was little more than a statistical outcome prompted by the size of the universe.  He no longer trusted his education and experience, though, and feared that science, religion, and all of human history might need to be rethought.  The mysteries moving through the cosmos might be even greater than those long identified by the great minds.

While he was not watching, darkness had fallen and Elliot’s eyes swept the distance where the first band of stars rose over the Bongo Plains.  He realized he no longer felt anxiety for Phil or himself and that he was acquiring the wisdom to accept all of those things beyond either his understanding or control.

“We probably are not given to know,” Elliot concluded, as he looked up at brightening Sirius and thought about the possibility of his friend alive and moving among the stars.

“Maybe, as usual,” he told himself, “Phil is ahead of everyone again.  He’s gone home and the rest of us will be summoned soon.”

And as he stared in silence at the darkening African night, a dot of light in the sky brightened and appeared to grow as it moved swiftly in his direction.

Elliot Ander’s book, Monumental Proof, turned into an even bigger bestseller than anyone might have anticipated.  Elliot discovered that it gave him a chance to talk about history and Egypt and Africa in a complex manner and that for the first time in his career as a writer and researcher people were truly listening.  In the past, he had felt his books had enjoyed modest success because readers were looking for real life adventure and stories of discovery but he was suddenly encountering interviewers and audiences and readers who were eager for understanding.  They knew that travel to Africa had been banned because of a generally inexplicable disease and that there were scattered reports that it was beginning to spread to the Americas.  But they did not have Elliot’s experience and knowledge of Africa and their questions ranged far beyond his controversial science regarding the Great Pyramid.  He had been there and he was suddenly their expert.

Slogging from city to city and hotel to hotel he began to experience the notion of meaningfulness and purpose in his life that transcended the personal and yet he was also beginning to feel disconnected.  Faces gathered in front of him almost in an amorphous singularity and their questions rose out of the crowd sometimes like an assault, as if he were responsible for the presently incurable disease.  His interaction with the world was confined to journalist interviews, book talks and signings, airline employees, hotel desk clerks, limo drivers, and the internet.  Whenever he had a free moment, he thought about Phil Traynor and how Elliot had, inadvertently, possibly sent his young assistant to an early death.  Elliot knew, of course, it was not his fault but fate seemed especially cruel by stranding Phil and leaving Elliot to live his life of relative adulation and luxury in America.  The visit he had paid to Phil’s parents and the subsequent phone calls were emotional and he felt inadequate in his efforts to reunite them with their son.  In fact, he had to admit he had made no real attempts to do that beyond his inquiries of relevant government officials.  Phil’s parents called Elliot at least twice a week hoping for news or insight but Elliot never had anything to offer.

At the end of another week of appearances, Elliot found himself at the Holiday Inn in Santa Monica, California.  He was to speak at the Barnes and Noble just off of the promenade that evening and had been told by his publisher that they were anticipating an overflow crowd.  Elliot Anders loved California, not necessarily what it had become, but for the kind of dreams it had always symbolized.  Often, he had thought about having been among the soldiers coming home from World War II who had ventured out west as ideas and opportunity were blossoming or he daydreamed about having been with Mark Twain when he arrived in San Francisco in the 1800s.  California’s beauty and potential back then, Elliot thought, must have been incomprehensible and staggering to the senses.

What it was now was not too bad, either.    He loved the ocean and how it drew people.  Elliot put on a pair of Bermuda shorts, a tee shirt, and some old Nikes and crossed the PCH to walk on the Santa Monica pier.  Children were squawking and giggling on the carousel and reaching their arms out to their parents as they whirled past on porcelain ponies.  Haze obscured the hills to the north toward Malibu but the ocean’s roll was loud and blue-white from beneath his feet to beyond the reach of his eyes.  Elliot watched the young couples gathering in the deepening evening and wondered what they thought about as they stared out at the great seam made by the water and the sky.  Were they worried for the future or were they simply oblivious like his generation had been?  Why in the hell did everyone have to learn everything over and over again?  Our interests, understandably, are always in ourselves and the people we love but he wondered whether mankind could last if it did not think more broadly.

Elliot shook his head and laughed at himself for ponderous thinking.  He walked back down the pier and along the boardwalk toward Venice for a mile or so and sat on the beach and waited for night.  A few stars lifted up out of the water and he watched the sky and the offshore twinkle of passing ships before returning to the hotel.

As was his habit, when Elliot entered his room he picked up the TV remote and clicked to CNN.  He liked the white noise of world events in the background whether he was sleeping or working on his laptop computer.  He opened the top of his Fujitsu notebook and pointed his web browser toward Amazon to see how his book was listing.  Absurdly, he thought, Monumental Proof remained the top selling book in the country.  When he scanned the list he noticed that several other books about Africa, both contemporary and historical, were in the top 100, including Beryl Markham’s remarkable West With the Night. An aviatrix in the 1920s, Markham had made her living as an African bush pilot in the nascent days of aircraft and in 1936 became the first person to solo across the Atlantic from East to West.  Markham’s autobiographical narrative of her years in Africa, which had remained in the top 5000 selling books from the day Amazon was founded, had been called by Ernest Hemingway some of the finest prose he had ever read.  The failing health of the continent’s population seemed to be spurring her posthumous literary career.

Elliot checked a few of the news web sites to see if there were any developments regarding Africa’s status but found nothing beyond meaningless political babble from the U.S. and the U.K.  As he always did, he went to the Drudge Report to see the conservative twist Matt Drudge was putting on world events when he noticed a short paragraph about books.  Drudge often reported book sales by listing how many had been scanned in a particular week.  Usually, he did this only when political books like screeds from Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly were doing well so that he might affirm the beliefs of the American right.  Instead, Elliot saw that Monumental Proof had scanned almost 50,000 copies in the past week.  He was astounded.  His publisher had told him the book was doing exceedingly well and was expected to remain number one on most lists for several weeks but he had not been given any numbers.  These were unrealistic Harry Potter figures and Elliot was humbled.

When he turned away from his computer and looked at the television Elliot saw that CNN had switched to a live discussion by the United Nations.  The president of the general assembly, Antonio Hurenberg of Germany, was in the midst of what sounded to Elliot like a technical explanation.

“…………in London, Abu Dhabi, and Lisbon.  These will be the only three global cities where relief flights and ships will be cleared to the African continent.  If the full assembly approves this resolution by the security council, nations willing to donate aircraft, medicine, ships, food, technology, construction materials, or whatever else may be deemed as essential to the quarantined Africans, will be asked to assemble those resources in these three designated cities for transshipment to the continent.”

Immediately, Elliot was confused.  Were they changing their minds and allowing Africa to interact with the outside world?  Hurenberg, a former actor who had become president of Germany before moving onto the international stage, appeared to be losing his poise.  Lean and elegant in his tailored suits, the white-haired Hurenberg had always seemed the confident leader the UN had needed in the decade it spent recovering from the battering it took from the Bush administration.

“Members,” Hurenberg continued, “We do not know the future of Africa or even of our own world.  The volunteers who assemble to travel to Africa may never return home.  They may fall ill and die upon their arrival.  Each of them may be committing a final act of humanity by sacrificing themselves.  But this is the only solution we can presently manage.  We ask the nations of the world to send their materiel and volunteers to Abu Dhabi, London, and Lisbon where they will be dispatched to Africa.  If we solve this crisis, cure this spreading disease, these committed caregivers of the planet may some day return to their families in health and safety and with the glory of knowing they were part of saving humanity.  If we fail to find a cure, there may be nothing for them to return to and they will have given themselves to an honorable effort.”

United Nations Building, New York City

Hurenberg paused, raised a kerchief to his nose, and turned his head away in a dramatic gesture Elliot thought perfect for a former movie star.

“I ask your vote now,” he said, “on the Security Council resolution.  And I ask god to offer us grace and mercy as we attempt to save others and ourselves.”

As the members cast their votes, a prematurely gray newscaster whose stylishness almost exceeded that of the U.N. president’s came on the air to offer details of the resolution.

“This may be the most historical moment in this body’s history, perhaps in our nation’s, maybe in the world’s,” he said with disturbing overstatement.  “What the U.N. is expected to approve here momentarily, is a plan that will allow one way travel into Africa for volunteers and resources like food, technology, and medicine.  No one will be allowed to return until the health crisis is contained.  This means not even pilots or ship’s captains.  Planes and ships will be considered donated to the African nations where they make port or land.  Almost anyone and anything will be allowed entry to the continent but nothing will be allowed to leave.  All commercial transportation from the continent is still prohibited and there are increasing coastal patrols by the U.N. in both the air and water to make certain private travel is also stopped.  The U.N. has not suggested it will use military might to enforce the ruling but the patrols we have been monitoring all appear to be heavily armed.”

Elliot Ander’s watched the final vote and then went back to his computer to send an email to his editor in New York to inform him that the endless book tour was coming to an abrupt end.  He turned off his cell to avoid the inevitable call from the publisher and then he purchased an airline ticket online that put him on a first class flight from L.A. to London at 10:20 the next morning.

________________________________________________

The motocross cyclists were on a trail they had never ridden and were unaware they were anywhere near a highway.  The lead biker saw a short, sharp mound of sand and rock in front of him and rolled back his throttle to go airborne as he peaked the trail.  He was twenty feet into the air before he saw the upended car.

“Oh no.”  He actually screamed to himself inside of his helmet.  As he placed his body weight on the foot pegs and dropped the back wheel for a landing, he realized it was possible he was going to hit the wrecked car.  He leaned to the left, which took his body off the centerline of travel and meant he was going to crash but landing on desert rock and sand was much preferred to dropping his rear wheel into the chassis of a crashed automobile.

The back wheel of his Husquvarna motorcycle skidded in gravel and the handlebars cranked hard to the side when the front tire touched the ground.  He let go of the grips and rolled through the prickly pear and rocks, watching his bike tumble and bend as it pulled away from him with its greater inertial energy.

“Maybe I was going 50 as I went airborne.”  The thought passed in an instant as he waited for his arms and legs to stop flailing.  “I’ve got to stop spinning.”

When he finally did, he saw through his dark helmet visor that his riding partner was stopped at the top of the hill he had just used for a launching pad.  His friend looked down and then slipped his clutch and rolled down to the spot where rider and motorcycle lay in the desert.

“What the hell happened, Rod?”  He dropped his helmet, put his bike on the kickstand, and ran toward his friend.

“I made a blind jump.  I was headed toward that wreck.  I had to lean out of it or I was dead.”

“Jesus, man.  You never learn.”

“Now, I have.”

“You okay?”

“I’ve got some needles in my ass.”

“Yeah, well, you deserve ‘em.”

“‘Spose.”

Rod stood slowly and began to pull long prickly pear needles out of his leather suit.

“What do you think happened there?”  He nodded in the direction of a late model hybrid with its wheels in the air.

“Nothing good, obviously.  But why do you suppose it’s still here?”

“Dunno, ‘Mando.  Let’s go check it out.”

“What about your bike?”

Rod looked at the bent front wheel.  “It ain’t goin’ anywhere; that’s for sure.”

The Toyota was not more than twenty feet from where Rod had stopped rolling and as they approached they saw where his tire had gouged the desert floor on impact.  Only a few feet separated his landing spot from the car’s passenger side door.

“You could be dead, dude,” Mando said.

“But I ain’t.”

Standing on the passenger side they looked at the caved door frame and scratch marks indicating the car had skidded or rolled on this side.  Rod reached up and spun a wheel.

“This is weird man.  Where the hell is the road?” ‘Mando stepped around the back to examine the rear of the hybrid and heard what sounded like a truck flying in the sky.

“There’s the damn road.”  He pointed up and about 50 feet over their heads they saw the unpaved shoulder of a roadbed and watched the rooftop of another passing car.

“Shit, this thing must have come off of there?”  ‘Mando stepped around to the driver’s side as Rod knelt to examine the front end.  “Holy crap, Rod, somebody’s in here.  An arm.  There’s an arm sticking out.”

‘Mando was staring and pointing at the driver’s window as Rod slid around the front of the hybrid.  Rod dropped to his knees, took off his riding gloves, and reached inside the car.

“It’s a woman.  Quit standing there and help me get her out of here.”

“Aren’t you supposed to leave people in place in case they’re backs are hurt?” ‘Mando asked.  “How do you know she’s alive, anyway?  This thing could’ve been sitting here for weeks.”

“Yeah, you’re right.  Let me see if she’s warm or has any kind of pulse.”

Rod put his hand on the woman’s neck and felt for her carotid.  Her skin was cool and dry and he was unable to determine if she was dead.  After finding what he thought was the carotid, he laid his first two fingers against the slight bump in her skin and thought he felt a hint of a pulse.

“I think she’s alive,” he said.  “I think she’s got a pulse.  Let me check her wrist.  Yeah, yeah, it’s there, definitely.  But she’s alive.  We’ve gotta get her help, man.  Get your cell.”

“Probably not any service,” ‘Mando answered as he was running to his motorcycle.  Flipping open the phone, he punched the power button and looked to see if a signal registered.  There was nothing.

“No service, Rod.”

“Then get your ass on your bike and get into Bisbee before this woman dies.  I’ll stay here.”

‘Mando did not speak but his exhaust pipes quickly coughed and in a few seconds Rod saw the bright yellow dirt bike climbing a steep incline toward the road.

___________________________

Injuries sustained by Becky Acuna were not life-threatening.  Her L-4 and 5 vertebrae had hairline cracks, her left shoulder was dislocated, and three of her ribs were fractured.  However, trauma to her head had sent her into a coma and she had lain upside down in her car for almost five days.  The dessert heat and cold had left her dangerously dehydrated and in the hours that it took for her husband Gene, her children and her mother to reach her side at the Bisbee Hospital, she was still unconscious and doctors were uncertain whether swelling and the lack of water had done damage to her brain.  Dehydration was also a great risk to her organ function.

When she awoke eleven days later Gene had almost stopped believing she would ever recover.  He was reading a magazine at the foot of Becky’s bed when he heard the ruffling of bed covers.

“Beck?  Beck?  You there?”  Gene dropped the magazine on the floor and leaned over his wife.  Her eyes were closed but she was mumbling and rolling her head slowly from side to side.  He stroked her forehead and matted hair.  “It’s okay, baby.  You’re coming back and then you’re coming home.  I’ll wait.  Don’t worry.  We’re gonna make it.”

Becky’s face was turned away from her husband when her eyelids fluttered and opened and she looked out the window at the startling sunlight on the hills beyond Bisbee.  She smiled and did not see Gene.

“Beck.  Beck.  It’s me, honey.  Gene, god you’re back.  Can you see me?  I’m right here.”

She turned her head in the direction of his voice.

“Gene?”  Her voice was soft and coarse.

“Yeah, me.  Your husband.  God, I can’t believe you’re back.  You woke up?”

“What happened?”

“There was a wreck.  You were coming to meet me and the kids at your mother’s.  The car was in a gully and nobody spotted it from the road.  You were out there several days.  But you’re okay, honey.  You’re okay.”

“Where kids?” she whispered and wiggled her fingers as a signal for Gene to take her hand.

“At the hotel with your mom.”

“What hotel?”

“We’re in a hospital in Bisbee, Beck.  It’s where they brought you.”

“K.”

“Beck, let me press your call button so I can get the charge nurse in here and tell them you’re awake.”

“Wait.”

“Wait?  Why, honey?”

“Not a wreck, Gene.  I remember.  Bumped my car.  Pushed me into canyon.  Tried to kill me.”

“What.  Who would do that?  Why?  Don’t be ridiculous, Beck.”

“Not.”

“Look, you need to rest.  Let me go see where the nurse is and I have to call your mother and the kids and tell them the great news.  I can’t use my cell in here.  I’ll be back in a minute.  I love you.”

“Love you, Gene,” she whispered, and then closed her eyes and returned to the safety of sleep.

Becky Acuna knew, of course, who would have an interest in seeing her dead.  She just did not want to think about whether they were trying to scare her off of the Slims Disease story or if they actually intended to kill her.  There were certainly more efficient means of making certain she was dead, though she assumed running her off of the road was intended to look like an accident.  Barton Crawford’s death was the obvious indication that she was dealing with determined and deadly characters.

Becky Acuna was in the hospital almost three more weeks as doctors waited for her vertebrae to begin healing.  Her strength came back to her rapidly and friends from KSUN-TV drove down from Phoenix for brief visits, though they always seemed to avoid her questions related to the television station and Becky was not her usual persistent self.  Upon discharge, she was given an electric wheelchair to avoid straining her back or the healing dislocated shoulder by pushing against hand wheels.  She was not supposed to walk for a several more weeks.

Initially, during her recuperation, Becky Acuna showed no interest in the endeavors outside her own house.  Friends called to wish her a speedy recovery and tell her they were looking forward to seeing her on the news again and she offered polite responses and ended the conversations as soon as she could without being rude.  Her laptop, which had been in an open side pouch of her leather briefcase, had flown loose as her car tumbled in the crash and the Mac had been destroyed.  Not even the data was salvageable and Becky had neither the interest nor the enthusiasm for going through her backup files and rebuilding lost databases.  She even stayed away from the flat screen desktop in the utility room.  The Powerbook was used to keep household records and run the kids’ games but Becky worried that if she logged on she would confront information she did not care to learn.

But she already knew what was happening without reading news stories online or picking up a newspaper or turning on KSUN to watch the 6 p.m. broadcast.  Everyone on the other side of her front door out in the real world was probably still in a state of denial.  Becky was certain people were still dying and the government was continuing to deny anything unusual was happening.  She did find herself wondering what was happening at Luke with Barton Crawford dead.  Occasionally, she took the electric wheelchair out to the deck and watched the planes as they approached the base.  They were all jumbo jets now, 747s and C5A Starlifters and DC10s.  She doubted there was capacity in all of the hangars for the hundreds of people arriving and she began to contemplate the possibility that something more sinister was underway behind those walls.  Were people being exterminated before their disease could spread?  Surely not.  What would they do with all of those bodies?

Although she asked herself these questions, Becky did not want to know the answers.  The entire situation was beyond her ability to affect or control and her attempt to inform the public had put her and her family in jeopardy.  She knew she needed to exercise restraint.  If she went back to working on the story, she was likely to be visited again by whoever forced her car into a canyon or the man who had tried to break into their house.  Becky left it all alone.  She was at a point, psychologically and physically, where her obliviousness to facts and unfolding events was sweetly reassuring.

Her experience, training, and what were generously described as reporter’s instincts, almost seem to have been injured in the crash of her Toyota.  Becky knew, however, almost from the moment she returned from consciousness that Gene and her friends were failing to tell her things that she might find disturbing.  Normally, she would have taken offense at such condescension but just then she considered it an act of love and she was not worried about matters over which she had no control.  Becky had every confidence she would eventually be able to return to her job as a TV news correspondent and handle any assignment with her full range of skills.

She thought little of work, however, until the afternoon she was taking her first cautious steps across her living room and her cell phone buzzed.  On the caller ID, Becky saw the name of the only person she might have wanted to speak to about the TV station and their jobs.  She anxiously flipped open the phone.

“Uncle Pierre,” she said.

“Acooooner……How the heck are you?”

“I’m getting better.  Slowly.  Starting to think about work again.  But not that much.”

“Smart woman, as always.  Nothing’s changed, ya know.  Stupid cop shop news conferences and business announcements, a murder here and there, and the ever present weather story.  Did you know there’s a drought in Arizona?  Did no one tell these people we live in a desert?”

Becky laughed.  “It’s still that bad, eh?  No travel or adventure or anything?  You usually are good at scamming some kind of trip.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been up in beautiful Detroit on some of this Eddington stuff.  Doing follows and all that.”

“Eddington stuff?”

“Yeah, you know, the baseball guy.  He got your disease, ya know.”

“I was there at the news conference, Uncle Pierre.  I remember.  So we are still actually pursuing the story?”

“Sort of, I guess, Beck.  But it was mostly stuff for his obit and reaction stories.”

“Obit.  Jesus, he died?”

“You didn’t know?  Seriously, Beck?”

“No.  I have avoided the news.  I had no idea.”

“Well, he did.  He didn’t make it a month after that news conference.  We did an hour long live special on his life from Detroit.  It was pretty damned depressing, not to mention scary.”

“Is anyone writing about Slims?”

“A little bit.  But it’s weird, Beck.  Even at Eddington’s funeral, it hardly got mentioned.  There’s this constant reference to an undiagnosed illness, weight loss, organ failure, but nobody ever gives it a name.”

“Oh god.  It’s so awful what’s happening and nobody seems to be doing a thing.”  Becky paused.  “Phil, I almost don’t want to ask you this next question.”

“Must be a serious one since that’s the only time you ever call me Phil.”

“The morning Burke and I got out of jail I spoke with Ed Smith before you and I went to Eddington’s news conference.  He said something about calling Walter Robbins up in Colorado to inform him of our mess.  He said Robbins had gotten sick or something and wasn’t coming back until he felt better.  He doesn’t have…………”

“Jesus, Becky.  Has Gene told you nothing?  Look, I’m sorry to be the one telling you this stuff.  Are you sure you’re okay to be hearing this now all at once?”

“What is it, Phil?  What about Robbins?”

“He’s gone, Beck.  He’s in the ground, too.  He died up in Colorado and they buried him right there at his sister-in-law’s apple orchard.  People are getting weird.  Rumors are going around about the government confiscating bodies of people they suspect have died of this thing so burials are happening fast.  Robbins’ wife, what’s her name, Ann, story is she called a funeral home and when they asked her cause of death and she started to explain and ask for how to contact a coroner, the guy just hung up.  They decided to bury Robbins right there.  Beck?  You still there?”

“Uh, yes, yes.  Sorry.  It’s just a lot to process, you know.”

“Sure, I’m sorry.  Are you really okay to hear this stuff, Beck?  I don’t want to upset you or get Gene mad at me.”

“I had to hear it, eventually, Phil.  I can’t hide from it forever.”

“Yeah, I guess so.  Well, your story’s still out there and nobody’s really doing it any justice.  Just vague little references to it or paragraphs in the bottom of obits; stuff like that.”

“Well, how is everybody else at the station?  Is Smith still a shit?”

“Like I said nothing much new.  Michelle’s gone now, though, I guess you must have known that.”

“Phil, please.  ‘Gone?’  What’s that mean?  She didn’t get………”

“No, Beck. No.  She exercised some option in her big shot contract and she’s gone to New York.  They gave her some lifestyle segment on the Today Show.  She left about a week after the Robbins’ memorial here in Phoenix.”

“I can imagine she wanted to get away from all of the rumors.”

“Well, she certainly didn’t do anything to diminish them, Beck.  She came to the memorial and sat in the back pew wearing sunglasses and a scarf, constantly fidgeting and left without speaking to anyone.  I imagine if half the stuff going around about her and Eddington and Robbins is true, she’s scared as hell that she’s next to get sick.”

“Yeah, probably.  She looks okay, though, right?”

“Oh yeah, of course.  She’s still her perfect physical self.  Only woman I’ve ever known who could make mourning look glamorous and mysterious.”

Becky exhaled slowly.  “I better go, Phil.  I need to rest before Gene and the kids get home.  But thanks for calling.”

“Sure, Beck.  Any idea when you are coming back?”

“No, not yet.  But I am coming back.  Hey, one last thing: any word on Barton Crawford?  How’s that investigation going?”

“It isn’t, that I know of.  Cop shop says it’s a federal investigation and the feds won’t tell us anything.  There hasn’t been any arrest or anything, though, if that’s what you are asking.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was wondering about.  Talk to you soon, Uncle Pierre.”

“Ha.  See ya, Beck.”

Feeling like she needed some air, Becky took the cautious steps to reach the sliding glass door leading to the deck in the rear of her house.  She thought her back felt fine and was mostly healed.  Generally, Becky felt weak but she knew that was something that could be conquered.

Outside, the sky was summer blue and cloudless and she saw in the distance another jumbo jet parked on the Luke tarmac.  Unloading must have already been completed because there was no activity around the slate gray aircraft.  Becky looked off to the far line of jagged mountains ringing the valley and leaned on the deck’s railing.  Just being alive felt good and she realized she was unafraid.  Everything was at risk and cautiousness on her part was not going to alter the state of the world.

The pitch of the big jet’s spinning turbines interrupted her introspection and she watched as the pilot turned the nose westward into the hot July breeze.  Another indistinguishable aircraft was rolling out to some unknown destination.  As the pilot lined up for takeoff, however, Becky thought she noticed something unusual.  Every other jet she ever saw at Luke was unmarked but this one appeared to have a number on the tailfin.  It was too far away to read so she reached inside the glass door and grabbed the binoculars off of the shelf and a pencil and post-it notes pad they kept by the phone.  Becky stared intently through the glass of the binoculars and focused on plane’s tail.  There were numbers.  She read them to herself out loud three times and then wrote them on the yellow pad.  She looked again to be certain she had them right as the jumbo began its takeoff roll and the engines rumbled and shook the air.  She had written the ID of the aircraft correctly.

Becky watched as the nose of the great machine tilted toward the sky and the landing gear curled up into its belly as it leaned gently toward the south and away from the sun.  She went back into the house and started scrolling through phone numbers she had salvaged from the SIM card of her old cell, which had been destroyed in her crash. She was certain she could find out about the airplane’s identity and she sat on the couch and started making phone calls.

Becky Acuna, grateful and determined, still had work to do.

]]> http://www.moorethink.com/2009/08/16/in-the-time-of-man-a-novel-ch-19-final-chapter/feed/ 0 http://www.moorethink.com/2009/08/09/in-the-time-of-man-a-novel-ch-18/ http://www.moorethink.com/2009/08/09/in-the-time-of-man-a-novel-ch-18/#comments Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:04:05 +0000 Jim http://www.moorethink.com/?p=474

Southern Tier of Colorado Rockies

Around the end of August, Clint Peeler always got his first sense of the coming winter.  The south wind of summer across the high plains abruptly shifted and cool air cascaded down off the Front Range of the Rockies and weakened the strength of the sun.  A visitor might never notice the difference but it was a subtle variation in the intensity of the heat and it reassured Clint Peeler of the comforting cycles of the seasons on his ranch.

The J-Bar 4 was not as pretty as some of the operations nearby but it was productive and Peeler loved its topographical breaks and wet weather draws and the proud stands of cottonwoods rising up out of the prairie.  When the air was clear, the mighty Rockies shimmered purple and snow-capped to the west.  After he had inherited the spread from his father, Peeler had set his house next to an arroyo and positioned the foundation so that an expanse of glass in the living room framed the morning side of the mountains.

Another good year was concluding on the J-Bar 4.  Rains had been consistent and pasture grasses grew long and green all the way from calving season up through the approaching autumn.  Very little money had been spent on supplemental feed and beef prices on the hoof were close to record highs.  Peeler had culled his herd of a couple hundred steers and still had more than enough bulls and heifers to insure a bountiful calving season the next spring.  He was thinking of buying a new pickup and maybe even building an outdoor fireplace and barbecue pit down near the creek passing behind the house.

The solitary problem Clint Peeler had encountered all year was the two dead animals with the strange cuts.  Fortunately, the scientist he had invited out to examine the carcasses had kept his word and no one in the Rocky Ford or La Junta area had heard of the mutilation incident on the J-Bar 4.  As expected, predators stayed away from the carcasses and they had rotted and then dried in the sun before Peeler had tossed a can of gasoline on their remains and burned away the evidence of the oddity, if not his memory of the scene.

On this Saturday morning, though, he had no specific plans beyond riding a few fence lines and doing cursory checks on his herd.  Clint Peeler loved the weekends because he was able to spend almost every minute with his twelve year-old son Toby, who already had acquired the same love of nature and the rolling plains as his father.  Toby understood horses with an insight that was beyond anything the boy could have learned and his dad marveled at how when he sat his favorite Appaloosa they almost became a hybrid creature functioning with one mind.

By the time Peeler had finished dressing he noticed his wife Mary Lou was setting out breakfast and the warm light on the east side of the house was already causing Toby to stir.  The boy had turned his back to the annoying sunshine in an attempt to fall back to sleep but his father entered the room and nudged him on the shoulder.

“Hey, buddy boy,” Clint Peeler said.  “We goin’ ridin’ this mornin’?”

“Unh.”  Toby rolled over and faced his dad.  “Yeah.  What time is it?”

“Time to go.  Sun’s up.  I want to run into Pueblo and look at some trucks after lunch, too, if you wanna go with me.”

“No kiddin’, dad?  You really thinking about gettin’ a new truck?”

“Told ya I was.”

“Cool, dad.  I want that big, black Chevy dualie, the one with the MP3 player.”

“Just get dressed.  We’ll see.”

“Okay.”

The fence line along the easternmost border of the J-Bar 4 got hammered every winter by drifting snow and Clint and Toby Peeler rode straight in that direction when they left the horses’ stall behind the house.  Peeler wanted to check the tension in the wires and see if any fence poles had been loosened by rain or cattle rubbing up against them.  Toby had been asking his father repeatedly about getting a four-wheeler for doing this kind of work around the ranch but Peeler had told his son that nothing was better than horses and it was good to keep doing some things the old way.

The animals nickered softly but Peeler’s mare kept turning its head against the reins and trying to point back to the stalls and the feed trough instead of stepping up the rising plain.  Toby’s horse, though, had its head back and was snorting almost as if it were claiming command over the surrounding terrain.

“You talk to him, buddy boy?” Peeler asked his son.  “You get him that way?”

“No, dad.  Cooper just knows stuff, ya know?  He’s a good horse, ain’t he?  He’d rather be out here than back in that old stall.”

“I reckon he is.  Good thing, too, ’cause I don’t know if you are big enough to control him if he ever got to be cantankerous.”

“Sure, I could.”

“Whatever you say, son.”

Peeler made a point of guiding them away from the spots where the mutilated animals had been discovered and kept to the southern edge of the ranch along a rocky creek bed that ran off of their property and emptied into the Arkansas River.  Toby had been told by his father that the dead bull and heifer were weak and had been pulled down by coyotes or wolves.  His dad had managed to keep him away from the bodies by telling his son it may have also been disease that brought down the cattle and that they needed to avoid getting close to prevent any potential infection.

Toby reined Cooper down off the rise and into the shallow water in the creek, laughing as his big horse high-stepped over rocks and splashed up mud beneath his hooves.  Clint Peeler was about to tell his son to get back up on the flat top and be careful but he saw Toby smiling and talking to Cooper and he did not interrupt their fun.

“Hey, dad.”  Toby reined Cooper to a halt.

“What is it, son?”  Peeler heard the worry in his child’s tone of voice.

“You see that?”

“What, Toby?  What are you talking about?”

The boy pointed straight ahead of him in the draw but Clint Peeler’s vantage point on the ridge above obscured his view of whatever had attracted his son’s attention.

“I think we got a dead cow, dad.”

Peeler spurred his horse and raced ahead of Toby and down the embankment toward the little stream of water and saw a heifer lying motionless.  He slid off his saddle and went to the body while Toby sat Cooper and did not move from the location he had been when he spotted the carcass.

“Dad, shouldn’t you be careful?” Toby called out.  “You said the other ones that died might have had a sickness.”

“It’s okay, son.  I’m not worried.”

“Can I come look?”

“I’d rather you didn’t, buddy boy.  It’s not a very pleasant thing.”

“You think it got sick, dad?”

“No.  I don’t.”

“How’d it die then?”

“I reckon somebody killed her, son.”

“Who’d do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Toby slipped off of Cooper and walked cautiously up to where his father knelt examining the cow.  He tried to lead his Appaloosa in that direction with the reins but the animal resisted and Toby left him standing in the creek.  His father’s mare had turned and climbed back up beyond the ridgeline and was grazing a hundred yards distant.

“What happened, dad?”

“I don’t know, buddy boy.”

Toby appraised the animal and the cuts that had been made on its body.

“They took her udder, dad?  Why’d somebody cut off our cow’s udder?”

“I have no idea, son.  No idea at all.”

Toby walked slowly around the carcass and took in the horrific sight.

“Her ear’s gone and an eyeball and her tail?  Dad, what happened?”

“I don’t know, Toby.  I told ya.  I just don’t know.”

“We better call the police on your cell phone, huh, dad?”

“No, son.  We aren’t callin’ the police.”

“How come?  Somebody killed one of our cows.  That’s against the law, ain’t it?”

“Yes, it is.  But the police aren’t gonna have any luck finding out who did it.  You think anybody who can do this to a thousand pound heifer is worried about the Rocky Ford police?”

“What are we gonna do then, dad?”

“Nothin’.”  Clint Peeler started up the incline leading down to the creek.  “Let’s go get our horses.  We got work to do.”

“Why we doin’ nothin’, dad?”

“Because that’s all we can do.  Let it go, Tobs.”

The boy was quiet as their horses carried them to the east fence but he was clearly confused and Clint Peeler was not surprised when his son started talking again about what he had just experienced.  Peeler was trying to act like the animal’s death was part of the natural order of things on a big ranch but he knew his son sensed his father’s unease.

“Dad?”

“What is it, buddy boy?”

“I read somethin’ on the Internet about this happenin’ to cattle.”

“You don’t have any business lookin’ at stuff like that, son.  You know better.”

“Yeah but it was a link on a page I was researchin’ on farmin’ and ranchin’ for my homework.  I just clicked on it.  They had pictures that looked exactly like our cow just did.”

“Well, I’m sure you got good enough sense to not believe that kind of stuff when you see it on the Internet.”

“Yeah, but there was a buncha people saying about what it is that’s causin’ that to happen to some cattle.  It was some weird stuff about diseases and suckin’ out the cow’s blood.  It was kinda scary.”

“Well, they don’t know what they’re talkin’ about, Tobs.  You need to just leave it alone.”

“But why, dad?  What if it happens again?  What we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna do what we just did, son, which is nothin’.  I told you.”

“I don’t understand, dad.  Why are we lettin’ somebody kill our cattle?”

“We ain’t lettin’ anybody do anything, Tobs.  It’s just happenin’, that’s all.  Might be somethin’ that just happens in the world and in nature and we aren’t smart enough as people to ever understand.”

Peeler hoped his son was weary of the discussion and they rode on to only the sound of the horses falling hooves until the eastern fence line came into view.  Turning his horse to the north and parallel with the string of wire, Peeler went from fence post to fence post, leaning over in his saddle and checking them for sturdiness.

“Dad?”

“Toby.  You have let it go.  Please, son.”

“But why?  I’m kinda scared.”

“Well, don’t be.  Look, son, there’s some things you can do somethin’ about in life and some other things you just can’t change.  We don’t control everything.  We’re supposed to let nature be sometimes.”

“So you think a bobcat killed her, dad, or a coyote or somethin’?”

“Here’s what I think, Tobs.” Peeler sat up in his saddle and looked at his boy.  “I don’t think nature or god or whatever intended for man to ever know everything.  We’re supposed to live with some mysteries and this is probably one of them, like I said.”

“We can’t ever know what did it then?”

“No.  I don’t think so.”

Peeler trotted off down the wire again looking at the uprights with the intention of stopping only if he saw one that appeared to have lost its footing.  Toby followed on Cooper and paced his father’s horse.  The boy appeared to have decided it was best not to ask more questions but Peeler saw the worry on his son’s face.

“I’m sorry, buddy boy.  It’s just that sometimes you gotta let happen whatever it is nature wants to happen.  Those things in the world we can’t do a damned thing about, Tobs, it don’t do us any good to worry about ‘em.”

“Okay, dad.  I understand.”

“Nature knows best, son, and she keeps her own secrets.  Besides, a little mystery makes life more interesting, I think.”

“Sure, dad.  It’s okay.”

“Hey, we can mess with this stupid fence later.  Let’s see how fast that big ol’ plow horse of yours is.  I’ll race you back to the house.”

“He ain’t no plow horse.  I’ll show you.”

They reined their horses hard to the left and Toby spurred Cooper and the Appaloosa quickly leapt ahead of his dad’s mare.  The men and animals almost flew across the undulating prairie with their excited eyes and thundering hearts, filled with the sheer joy of just living.

The Great Bend of the Niger River, Mali, Africa

The day after talking to Dr. Anders, Phil checked the news sites for Phoenix and several of the national daily publications to see if anyone had written a story about the Dogon research.  He found nothing and then did a Google and Lexis-Nexis search, which also failed to turn up any reports involving Dr. Anders.  Links to standard Dogon research sites popped up on his browser along with those of paranormal researchers and religious evangelicals who believed the tribe was at the vanguard of an approaching apocalypse.  As tortured as the thinking was, Phil enjoyed reading much of the material as a rare form of entertainment while living in the bush.

A few days later, surfing Web sites in the morning, he came across a short piece about the death of Barton Crawford on USA Today’s homepage.  According to the article, Crawford had been murdered in his private lab in the Superstition Mountains outside of Phoenix.  Investigators had no suspects but they had held overnight a reporter and editor from a local television station.  The couple had discovered the scientist while traveling to his cabin to conduct an interview.  There were only three paragraphs and the last one was about Crawford’s career and his Nobel for research on the Ebola virus.

Phil Traynor was not surprised when the supply charter from Bomako did not arrive as scheduled.  The next week, however, he became worried.  There was no gas left for the Honda generator and when the batteries ran down on his laptop and the sat phone, all contact with the U.S. or anywhere else in the outside world was lost.  Phil was almost more disturbed at the loss of his bags of cheese popcorn, which came in with the bush pilot.  They were his only indulgence connecting him to civilization.  The Dogon often stopped and watched him eating the yellowish popcorn from a clear plastic bag as he leaned against the wall of the Bini Shrine.

After dispatching a final e-mail to Dr. Anders to inform him of the situation along the Cliffs of Bandiagara, Phil Traynor gave extensive thought to his responsibilities.  He assumed a charter would eventually deliver supplies because Dr. Anders had paid in advance a year’s fees for staples and aircraft time.  Until the next one touched town on the plateau, however, he was disinclined to pursue his research protocols.  He would keep watching the Yougo Rock for any changes and tracking the behavior of tribal leaders to see if he might discern any developments regarding their belief in Nommo’s imminent return.

What in the hell was going on in America and, even more critically, in Africa?  Phil’s loss of connection to the Internet meant he had no ability to see the English language Web sites of African papers.  If more people were dying and a disease was spreading with even greater virulence across Africa, Phil had no way to know.  He would not be surprised, however, if a grim scenario was being played out in the continent’s population; nor would he be shocked to learn the killer was a product of mankind’s failure to take seriously its stewardship of the planet’s health.  Phil Traynor’s generation had grown up expecting devastating consequences from global warming and new forms of viruses and bacteria that had mutated to resist anti-biotics.

He spent a lot of time trying to convince himself that Dr. Anders would not leave him abandoned among the Dogon.  Often, he sat along the escarpment and listened for a distant drone of an airplane.  Every few days, he used to see contrails of jumbo jets moving up and down the continent from London to South Africa but he had seen no trace of any aircraft for almost a month.  In fact, the Dogon existence had probably become much like it was thousands of years in the past because not even the Jihadis were passing through the villages and it had been weeks since an automobile had come down the dirt trails to the cliffs.  Fortunately, Phil had seen no evidence of any type of illness in the tribe and his appetite was voracious, even though the Dogon diet was confined to less than enticing foods that did not stimulate his hunger.

Everything, as usual, was beyond Phil Traynor’s ability to control; this was a lesson Dr. Ander’s had taught almost daily.  His mentor had argued that nature was the ultimate force in human existence and man was obligated to learn about it and fight its alterations and mutations to the extent of his powers but not to disrupt its basic rhythms and processes.  Science gave them the tools and god and nature demanded humanity struggle with all of its might.  Ultimately, however, nature’s course was final and man had little choice but adapt to survive.

At the moment, all of this ponderous nonsense was too much for Phil.  He was just thirsty and wanted a cold beer.  After nursing his case of Tecate for a few weeks, he was down to his last five cans.  There was no way to keep beer cold beyond storing it in the tepid river below the cliffs and Phil had sunk a six pack in a hole next to a small eddy.  He jammed the cans, which were still held together by their plastic rim, into a tight spot between two large rocks that had probably fallen off the face of the cliffs centuries in the past.  Even at the bottom of a warm languid river moving slowly through a tropical climate there were a few cool spots to be found and Phil had discovered one as a location to anchor his beers and avoid the indignity of warm Tecate.

Today, Phil Traynor intended to get as drunk as possible on his last five beers.  He had become accustomed to enjoying the end of each day by sitting along the Niger and waiting for nightfall and he made his way down a steep trail to the water’s edge.  As always, children were playing in the slower currents near the sand banks as their mothers struggled to wash them along with the few articles of clothing they had acquired in trades with traveling merchants.  A group of Dogon men squatted beneath a palm and nodded in Phil’s direction as he approached the water.

There seemed to be a picnic and holiday atmosphere along the river this evening.  Phil wished that he had somehow mastered at least a portion of one of the Dogon dialects and had been able to develop deeper friendships with people in the tribe.  Frequently, he was acutely conscious of his white skin and how it permanently marked him as an outsider.

He reached his arm deep into the river hollow and pulled up the remaining beers.  When he noticed he was being watched by the Dogon men, Phil held up the cans and swung them around wildly to indicate he was about to celebrate.  His dance was greeted with laughter and smiles.  Sitting down on the red sand, he saw the broad shadow of the Cliffs of Bandiagara as its leading edge creeped out and cast a purple hue over the slowly moving river.

Nursing his Tecates, Phil watched the families and found himself envying the simplicity of their lives.  No one in the twenty mile stretch of Dogon villages along the Niger was worried about mutant diseases or the failings of mankind.  They were just living, perhaps, as nature’s god had intended for humans to exist.

Finishing his fourth beer on an empty stomach, Phil Traynor was feeling the emerging false comfort of alcohol.  Families had begun walking up or down the riverbank or climbing the trails up to the plateau to return to their homes.  As a few of the children passed where he was sitting Phil put out his hand and slapped five with the ones whom he had taught the gesture.  They giggled and chased after their mothers.

A few minutes later, he thought he heard a low decibel hum from somewhere above him on the plateau.  He immediately thought of an airplane.  Dogon families on the trail also picked up the sound because they stopped on the precarious switchbacks in the near darkness.  Those who had been sitting in the soft sand at the edge of the river’s bend also rose and looked back toward the great cliffs.  While he was scanning the sky for the source of the sound, Phil thought he saw lightening from a storm out across the Bongo Plains.

In an instant, an orb of light crackling like balled lightening streaked from behind the escarpment out over the plains and shrank to the size and brightness of a common star in a matter of seconds and then it winked out.  The Dogon were calling out and pointing.  The humming noise returned and the pitch increased in volume.  Phil saw Dogon scrambling up the face of the cliff, pulling their children across the loose gravel of the trail.  “Nommo,” he heard a few of them say and then more of them joined in calling out to the phenomenon over their heads.  “Nommo.  Nommo.”  A soft chant was rising from the face of the cliffs and down along the Niger.  “Nommo.  Nommo.  Nommo.”

Light glowed from beyond the plateau’s edge and more Dogon were hurrying upward to see whatever loomed above them at the top of the cliffs.  The men were calm as they stepped cautiously past the slower women and children.  People were pointing up at the intensifying light and giving it the only name they knew.  “Nommo.  Nommo.  Nommo.”

Phil Traynor dropped his beer and began scrambling hand over foot up a break in the rock face.  He banged his knuckles on a sharp outcropping and felt the warm blood run down his reaching arm.  Less than 50 feet above him the plateau shone with a brightness approaching midday.  A few Dogon had reached the trail head and had stepped into the light beyond Phil’s range of vision.

He jumped from a narrow ledge onto the trail’s final switchback and stumbled awkwardly up the last stretch to reach the surface of the plateau to stand before the phenomenon.

“This is interesting,” was all Phil Traynor thought.

And then he turned and surrendered to the redemptive allure of the dimensionless and eternal light.

Bisbee, Arizona

Invariably, she stopped in Sierra Vista to buy coffee before getting back onto Highway 90, a state maintained two-lane running roughly east and west through the rugged hills of Southeastern Arizona.  Even in the summer months, it was usually nightfall by the time she reached Sierra Vista and they had noticed that she had never arrived at her mother’s while there was any remaining daylight.

The two men sat in their car and waited.  Traffic along 90 at that time of night was almost non-existent and they had seen the spacing on the headlights of her hybrid car so many times that they were confident they would recognize it at a distance.  They were parked on a ranch road switchback that commanded a broad view of where the highway bent around a hill.  The spot was elevated enough above the roadbed that they would not be noticed and yet it allowed them access to the pavement in less than a few hundred yards.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” one of the men said.

“You don’t have to be.”

“I think it’s too much.  It’s going too far.”

“We don’t get to make those decisions, do we?  I don’t recall when we’ve ever been asked.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s time.”

“Ain’t gonna happen and you know it.  They think of us as soldiers and they give us orders.  We can’t just stop following them now.”

“Yeah, we can.”

“But we won’t, and you damn well know it.  Otherwise, we’ll end up like her and everybody else who gets in the way.”

“I’m just not sure I can do this.”

“You don’t have to.  Just sit there.  I’m driving.”

“It’s wrong, and we both know it.  The government’s out of control.  This whole thing is out of control.  They can’t stop what’s happening now.”

“Maybe not.  But they’re going to keep trying.  And we’ve got our job to do.”

“You think shutting her up is going to change anything?”

“I have no idea. That information isn’t available at my pay grade, or yours, either.  Hang on.  Car’s coming.”

Headlights glowed behind a hill and then a pickup truck came around a curve and into view.

“Not her.”

“She’ll be along.”

They both thought of themselves as normal American husbands and fathers.  Their families lived in suburbs outside of Washington and Baltimore.  One of them had three boys and had been married 22 years while the other was the father of two boys and two girls and had 17 years with his college sweetheart.  Both were comfortably making mortgage payments on nice homes in middle-class neighborhoods and generally worked during normal business hours.  When they told neighbors and friends they were employed by the Department of Homeland Security, people politely refrained from asking questions.  Everyone understood that it was intrusive and indelicate to ask about the secret measures being taken to protect the country from terrorists and other threats.

“You can’t start killing reporters to shut them up.”

“Nobody said anything about killing anyone.”

“They didn’t have to, did they?  We know what they expect.”

The two did not face each other in the darkness as they spoke.  These types of discussions had never happened before when they were dispatched to execute a task and both of them were growing uncomfortable.  Neither liked confronting the personal consequences of their job responsibilities and the oaths they had sworn.  They had arrived at their intellectual rationalizations to provide a small quotient of personal comfort for themselves and to explain their individual acts as part of a larger need for their country.

“I don’t like it any more than you do, pal.”

“It’s not about liking it.  It’s about whether we choose to do this.”

“We made that choice when we took these jobs, didn’t we?  It’s kind of hard to turn around and run back and say we’ve changed our minds.”

“You ought to just pay another visit to her house and give her more of a scare.  She’ll figure it out.”

“That didn’t exactly work the first time, did it?  And where the hell were you?  I passed the police on their way in there out on the damned highway.”

“You know where I was.”

“Doesn’t matter.  You saw all the damage she ended up doing after I tried to knock down her damned door.  They want her more than scared.”

Another set of lights arched up over the rocky incline and they stopped talking.  A car slowed and cautiously rolled around the bend, which was guarded by a low railing.

“That’s her.”

“You don’t know that.  She doesn’t have the only hybrid in Arizona.”

“We’re rolling.  We’ll get close enough to check the license before we do anything.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Shut up.  We’re going to do what our country has asked us to do.”

“Our country, my ass.”

Their car slipped onto the road less than a half mile behind the hybrid.  Accelerating, they closed the distance rapidly and eased up near the rear bumper to read the license plate.  The driver in front of them must have thought she was about to be passed but the headlights in her rearview mirror fell away as the car behind her slowed.

The license plate was a correct match and the two men paced the hybrid’s 60 mile per hour speed.

“We’re coming up on two deep arroyos in this next S curve section.  There aren’t any guard rails.  Highway department probably didn’t think the curves were sharp enough.  I’ve driven this stretch a hundred times.”

“What are you telling me?”

“We’re making a move.  Watch your door.”

He gained speed and closed the distance to the hybrid.  In less than a minute, he had approached to within ten feet of its rear bumper.  When the vehicle in the front did not attempt to pull away from tailgater, the driver inched closer and bumped the hybrid.  Tires screeched slightly as the smaller car swerved, recovered a corrected course, and then accelerated dramatically, as if trying to escape.

In their Crown Victoria with its V-8 engine, the two men trailing the hybrid easily ran it down and slipped back into a stalking position.  A yellow sign with a curved arrow to the left flashed in the darkness and a few seconds later the waxed and shining black Ford drifted over to the oncoming traffic lane as if the driver were attempting to pass.  Instead, he eased to within a few feet of the hybrid’s door, gained speed, and turned sharply rightward, forcing the driver of the smaller car to take dramatic corrective action.

Becky Acuna wheeled hard to her right and her Toyota went airborne, appearing to almost leap off of its right two wheels as the Ford raced away into the darkness.  Her car lurched and then began a series of rolls in a flash of sparks, exploding glass, and the screech of crumbling metal and shattering composite materials.  Becky made no sounds of fear or pain as her twisted vehicle took a final tumble off the shoulder of Highway 90 and about 50 feet down into a dry arroyo.  She might have already been unconscious before the plummet.

The two men in the Ford stopped a few hundred yards beyond where they had forced Becky Acuna’s car off the road.

“We going back?” the man in the passenger seat asked.

“What the hell.  Let’s take a look.”

The driver saw no oncoming traffic in either direction and swung his car around to the west.  He killed his lights and parked, waiting for any approaching cars or trucks before getting out of his vehicle.

“Grab that flash light out of the glove box there.”

“Yeah.  Got it.”

“But don’t turn it on until I tell you it’s clear.”

“Right.”

Crossing the highway, neither of them heard any pleas for help or any other sound beyond a dry wind moving through the brittle living things inhabiting the desert night.

“Go ahead.  Shine the light down there.”

“Okay.”

He played the beam across the chassis, which was pointing up in the air with the two front wheels still turning.  The Toyota had spun around and was facing back to the west, as if it had left the pavement while it was traveling in that direction.

“Driver’s on our side there.  See if you can make her out.”

The second man aimed the narrow swath of light at the inverted window.  An arm hung limp against the dust and gravel on the desert floor.  The light did not brighten the passenger’s compartment but it appeared the driver had been wearing her seat belts.  Nothing inside of the upended vehicle appeared to be moving.

“Goddamned hybrids don’t carry enough gas to even catch fire.  Guess it’s just as well.  Won’t attract any attention this way.”

“You want me to go down and take a look and see if she’s alive?”

“Not necessary.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“The matter’s resolved either way.  Let’s go.”

He turned around and trotted across the silver bank of the highway turn.  His partner, who thought he may have seen the driver’s arm twitch just then, chased after him with the flash light extinguished.  To the west, they saw two sets of high beams tracking through the desert and moving in their direction.

“I don’t get it.”

He climbed in on the passenger side and the door swung shut behind him as the Crown Vic pulled out fast into the westbound lane.

“There’s not a damned thing to get.  It’s not relevant if she’s dead or alive.  If she’s dead, she damned sure isn’t causing the government any more problems.  And if she’s alive, well, she’s clearly a smart woman.  My guess is she got a clue because she’s got kids.”

“Yeah, well, so do I, pal.  And I don’t want to raise them to think this is the way the world works.”

“Maybe it does work this way.  Maybe it always has.  And you know what else, pal?  If we don’t do our job well, you may not get to raise your kids to be a damned thing.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy.  You know that?”

“I may be.  But I might also know exactly what I’m talking about.”

A six-wheeled diesel pickup rattled past them eastbound and did not slow as it eased around the curve where they had forced the car into a series of flips before falling into the canyon.  Fifty feet below the surface of the road, the compact lay crumbled and broken; a torn radiator hose was hissing softly in the dark.  No one was likely to notice the wreckage for a very long time.

“If you’ll give me just a moment please,” Anders said as he opened a hard-sided briefcase on top of the podium.  “I’ll explain everything.”

In the back of the ballroom, a CNN reporter stared into her live camera and began to relate the Eddington news conference in hushed tones using the contrived and somber tenor television correspondents adopt to convey great drama.  Other reporters were pushing aside their folding chairs and a few crews had begun taking down light stands along the edge of the room.  Conversations were increasing in volume and with each minute it was becoming more difficult for Elliot Anders to recapture attention.

“Here it is.”  Anders practically shouted from the dais and most of the reporters and photographers turned to see him holding up a silver DVD disc.  “Believe me.  You want to see this.”

Anders, Becky had decided when she saw him on KSUN-TV, was an odd-looking man but he did not lack presence and confidence.  She had seen a portion of his interview with Michelle May and had been disappointed when she had been distracted by Mike Burke’s constant complaining.

“Tell us again who you are, sir.”  An ABC News correspondent with unfortunate skin wanted everyone to understand she had considerably more important tasks on her agenda, regardless of who was commandeering the room.

“I’m sorry.  I beg your pardon.  My name is Elliot Anders.  I am sort of an anthropologist and sociologist and maybe a bit of an archaeologist.”

“Sort of?” the ABC woman asked.  “How do you become a ’sort of’ anthropologist or anything else?”

“Just bear with me a few seconds longer.”  Elliot had worked his way over to the DVD player and had ejected the highlight disc of Johnny Eddington’s greatest moments on a baseball field.  He slipped his own recorded disc into the tray and touched the button to load and launch the video and then hurried back to the podium.

Initially, Becky was unable to determine what was being displayed on the wall screen.  Uncle Pierre shrugged his shoulders and asked her if he should record the scene and she nodded affirmatively.  There appeared to be a small canyon and a surrounding rock formation that had been treated with special effects to make it glow or pulsate red.

“What you are looking at is a natural formation in Mali, Africa,” Elliot Anders explained.  “It is located along the Cliff’s of Bandiagara near the Dogon tribal village of Yougo Dogouru.”

“What’s happening there?  Up on the screen?  And why in the hell are you showing us this?” A wire service correspondent, slouching against the far wall, shouted at Anders.

“It’s a phenomenon we do not completely understand,” Elliot answered.  “That rock is glowing and shimmering red on its own.  The Dogon tribe refers to this formation as the Yougo Rock.”

Becky stepped out from behind Uncle Pierre and his camera.  “Dr. Anders, you might want to tell us who the Dogon are and what is the relevance of this Yougo Rock.  We’re all on a pretty serious deadline with this other story.”

The Cliffs of Bandiagara Near the Great Bend of the Niger River, Mali, Africa

“Certainly.  Certainly.  The Dogon are a tribe along the Niger River in Mali who have claimed for centuries to have knowledge given to them by visitors from the Sirius Star System.  Their oral histories, a portion of which have been confirmed by modern science, say this intelligence was given to them by their god Nommo, who arrived in their villages from Sirius, thousands of years ago.  What Nommo told them about an invisible dark star in the Sirius System, and its 50 year orbit, was finally proved to be accurate by modern science a few decades ago; except the Dogon have been telling this story to the outside world since they first encountered English missionaries around 1800.  The glowing of the Yougo Rock is supposed to signify the impending return of Nommo.”

“Oh Christ.”  A correspondent from FOX News standing next to Becky and Uncle Pierre began to complain.  “What in the hell does this have to do with anything?  I am not a fan of science fiction.”

Elliot Anders had heard the complaint.  “I’m not certain but I think it could be connected to what you’ve heard here today and other important matters you may not have heard about.  Bear with me.  When Nommo first appeared before the Dogon, they celebrated with what is called a Sigui Ceremony, which is a mask ritual.  It only happens every 60 years and has never been seen by the outside world.  These masks and totems were modeled by the tribe on the face of Nommo.  If you’ll watch the DVD up there, you’ll see one of them appear, momentarily and then a video of the Sigui ceremony.”

Almost at the instant Anders stopped speaking and turned to face the wall screen, a giant visage covered its entire twelve by fifteen foot surface.  A large, ponderous forehead was separated from the narrow, lower portion of the head by black, almond-shaped eyes wrapping almost around to the side of the skull like a pair of skiing goggles.  The chin was sharply pointed; the mouth appeared as a slit and the nose two tiny holes.  Laughter appeared to be the universal response to the image.

“So, that’s, Nommo, eh?  That’s the face of the Dogon’s god?”  A radio anchorman Becky always thought was in love with the sound of his own voice was standing and looking around the room to make sure people were listening.  “I think I’ve seen that guy in a few movies.  He’s on the cover of some books, too.”

Half of the reporters and photographers in the room were laughing.  A few hotel staffers, waiting by the door for the event to end so they could start cleaning, also smiled.

“That’s precisely my point,” Elliot Anders said as he pointed at the broadcaster.  “That face has become a part of world culture over the course of the past 25 years but it has been a part of the Dogon culture for thousands of years.  That guy up there on the screen is the first carved Dogon totem.  I found him in a cave where they store centuries worth of totems and masks of Nommo.  I’m guessing the one you all are looking at is close to 3000 years old.”

“So what,” one of the cameramen yelled from the risers.  “I still don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

A few other reporters grunted concurrence with the cameraman and Anders put his hand out to signify he wanted them to stop.  “Just give me a few more minutes and I’ll try to put all of this together for you.”

“Make it fast,” the radio newscaster said.  “I don’t think the beliefs of a tribe in darkest Africa is really something my listeners care about.”

They were his listeners, Becky thought, not the radio station’s.  Why, she wondered, was broadcasting full of such needy types?

“All right. All right,” Elliot Anders said.  “First, I think between the glowing Yougo Rock and that mask you see up on the wall we have final, definitive proof of a second intelligence in our world.”

“Or not,” Uncle Pierre whispered to Becky.  “Where is he going with this?”

“I don’t know.  Listen,” Becky said.

Two rows from the front, Becky watched a local TV anchor, wearing his studio makeup, as he rose and indignantly stalked from the room.  Anders said nothing as the man passed.

“This is no longer theory,” Elliot Anders resumed.  “This is fact.  And it was corroborated on television in this city not that many days ago by a Nobel Laureate, Dr. Barton Crawford.”

Becky realized her peers were looking at her concerning her story, though not one of them had yet asked her a question, personally.

“Dr. Crawford said unequivocally that he has encountered evidence and accumulated data that proves to him that there is advanced technology functioning in our world, which goes beyond, he pointed out, anything that humans have ever created.”

“Okay, say we buy what you are saying, professor.”  The Republic’s sports writer was using a civil tone.  “I still don’t get how this takes us to Johnny Eddington.”

“I understand,” Anders answered.  “Here’s how.  Barton Crawford reached his conclusion based upon what he saw in doing research on mutilated cattle.  He was doing pathology studies to discover the origin of a new disease, which may very well be the sickness that is plaguing Mr. Eddington.  I think the news story I saw the other night gave it a name but I don’t remember it.”

Becky knew what Anders had already concluded.  She was not, however, willing to ask the question central to his logic.  Fortunately, no one needed to pose any questions because Anders was determined to leave no doubt about his thinking.

“Based upon Dr. Crawford’s research with cattle, I believe that whoever has this advanced technology may very well be responsible for either accidentally causing, or more likely creating this disease with intent.  My own research would suggest that this technology does not originate on this planet.”

Anders’ notions were met with silence.  A few people shook their heads, almost in disgust.

The Associated Press reporter focused immediately on a part of Anders’ claims.  “You suggested this was possibly created, sir.  Who creates diseases and why?”

“Anyone who wants to develop deadly weapons is one possibility,” Elliot said.  “Maybe this was intended as a biological weapon and it got out of the lab.  That’s not impossible.  Maybe it was intended to get out by interests within the government or elsewhere who might have decided there are too many people in the world and some of us have to go before environmental collapse.”

“Wait a minute, Dr. Anders,” Becky interjected.  “Is it this ‘other intelligence’ you have cited that’s responsible or is the government involved?”

Becky Acuna was fairly well-convinced that the government had assassinated Barton Crawford, although neither Anders nor anyone else in the Phoenix media was yet aware that the scientist had been killed, as far as she knew.

“I don’t know either way,” Anders said.  “I tend to shy away from conspiracy theories, especially when they involve the government.  I just don’t think there has ever been the level of competence needed in the government’s bureaucracies to get things done and keep methods a secret.”

“So, that guy up there on the wall, professor,” the radio newscaster interrupted. “He’s flying around in his advanced model aircraft and giving people shots to make them sick and die?”

The question prompted a few hoots, louder laughs, and a jeer or two.  The news conference was slipping out of control.  Becky felt sympathy for the scientist, who she thought had his share of media savvy after she had seen him on Desert View.

“As I said, I don’t know.  I know from my own research and what Dr. Crawford has acknowledged is that there is another, second intelligence.  Crawford also said he was working on a secret project related to a deadly disease.  How much evidence do you need?”

“More than a carved artifact from a primitive tribe, professor.”  The commenter was the bureau chief from People Magazine. Becky never liked the guy because he was a frumpy slob who still managed to condescend to everyone except the celebrities he pursued.

“I mean, I’m not trying to be impertinent,” he continued.  “But you can’t come in here and throw a slide show on the wall and try to get us to take you seriously as a researcher who has confirmed the existence of other intelligent life, much less believe you when you say we are getting exposed to some powerful, killing disease.  You can understand that, can’t you?  Isn’t other intelligent life supposed to be the second greatest story ever told?  I’m not sure you’re the guy who is supposed to deliver that news.”

“Maybe not,” Elliot sighed.  “But what I can’t understand is why none of you ever look at data and evidence or other possibilities beyond the conventional.  You want it simple.  You don’t want to confront your own belief systems or those of your viewers.  I think the time has arrived for that to happen and the evidence is in front of you to give you a basis to begin your own investigations.”

The challenge went unanswered.  Becky noticed people were getting up from their seats and moving toward the door.  She heard camera plates clicking again as photojournalists released them from their tripods.  The noise level rose exponentially as the video of the Sigui drinking bouts and the Dogon wearing fish head masks appeared on screen.

“Hey, look,” someone said.  “That must be their religion.  Putting on Halloween masks, getting drunk, and line dancing.”

Elliot Anders ignored the insult and leaned over to the microphone.  “I’ll be available up front if anyone has any further questions and my business card is on the table there in case you want to contact me for any type of follow up.”

Uncle Pierre, who was painfully slow and meticulous with taking down and storing his gear, was among the last to clear the riser.  Becky had watched the dais to see if anyone picked up a card from Elliot Anders or stopped to talk.  Everyone walked past as though he were a part of the cleaning crew entering the ballroom.

Becky was waiting along the wall when Uncle Pierre stepped off of the camera platform.  They were the last two journalists in the ballroom.  Uncle Pierre, his camera strap over his shoulder, nodded to Becky indicating he was going to have a few words with Elliot Anders, who had turned his back as he picked up his business cards and put them in his briefcase.

“Don’t worry about it, professor.” Uncle Pierre patted the scientist on the shoulder.  “It happens to every prophet.”

The radio newscaster with the hung over cowboy voice stuck his head back into the ballroom.

“Uh, professor, I did have one more question,” he said.  “This was a sanctioned event by the hotel, right?”

“Yes, I suppose so.  Certainly the previous news conference was.”

“Oh great.  Can you validate parking?”

*          *          *

He wished he had never turned on his television.  Elliot Anders walked back into his casita and dropped his briefcase on the table with a loud whack.  If he had just left the TV off he would have never seen the bulletin about a news conference in the Biltmore with the famous baseball player.  Elliot knew it was a national story and reporters from all across the country would be there and they would not likely gather with equal interest if he were to call his own news conference to announce his Dogon findings.

“I blew it,” he thought.  “I should have been well-prepared.”

Elliot went to the mini-bar and grabbed two small bottles of gin and a tonic water and mixed a drink.  The unavoidable truth facing him was that he ought to return to Africa and wrap up the Dogon project and write another book and forget about being hailed as the man whose findings redefined human history.  He sat at his desk, flipped open his laptop, and sipped the bitter gin.  After logging onto the Internet, he found his airline’s homepage and looked for a flight from Phoenix to London and then onto Dakar, Senegal.  The ticket was pre-paid and open-ended so all he needed to do was pick a seat.

There was a 4 p.m. non-stop from Phoenix to London the next day and he entered his confirmation number.  Dragging his cursor over the seating map, he found an aisle spot and clicked to confirm.  Text appeared and asked, “Confirm seats for next flight?”  Elliot clicked okay and a seat map for the 757 down to Senegal popped up.  Below the outline of the aircraft’s fuselage, 20 point text in red blared the advisory, “See agent.”

“What in the hell is this about?” He wondered.  Maybe that flight was cancelled for reasons of low passenger load; it happened sometimes when traveling to Africa.  He considered staying a day or two in London and resuming his trip later in the week but when he checked all of the departures for Dakar, Elliot confronted the same urgent message on screen.  In fact, after logging onto the Web sites of other carriers, he discovered that all of their flights to Africa bore the same announcement.

He picked up the phone and dialed the toll free number for British Airways, which was his airline for both legs of his trip.  After almost ten minutes on hold, he was finally connected to an agent.

“Yes,” Elliot said.  “Can you clear up a problem I have with my reservation?”

“I’ll try, sir.” The agent’s voice was pleasing and without an accent.  “May I have your confirmation code, please?”

Elliot read off the sequence of numbers and letters and heard the agent keying them into his computer.

“Oh, you’re booked for Africa, sir?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I’m sorry.  At this time, I can only confirm your flight as far as London.”

“Why is that?  Is there a problem of some sort with my ticket?”

“No, sir.  Your ticket is fine.”

“Well, what’s the problem then?”

“I’m afraid I am limited in what I can say,” the agent said.

“Well, say what you can say, then.  This is getting a bit frustrating.  I’m just trying to get back to my work.”

“I understand, sir.  BA was given a week by the UK government to remove all of its equipment from Africa.  Two days ago we got an official statement from Downing Street that any airline flying out of the UK to Africa, as of 48 hours ago, would not be cleared to land upon the aircraft’s return.  As a result, BA has cancelled all outbound flights to Africa.”

“What?  What is that about?”

“I’ve told you all that I know, sir.”

“Do you know if other airlines are offering any flights into Africa?”

“I don’t know of any.  If there are any, they are operating as one way flights because there was something in the paper this morning that said no flights from Africa will be allowed to land in the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future.”

“And you don’t know what’s causing this embargo?” Elliot asked.  “You’re not keeping anything from me?”

“No, sir.”

“Uh, thank you.”

“Thank you for calling British Airways, sir.”

Even before he had hung up the phone, Elliot was worrying about Phil Traynor.  He had no clue how to get his assistant out of Africa or even if he needed to leave.  What could be happening that would cause airlines to shut down lucrative African routes?  Elliot opened a suitcase to grab the satellite phone and went out on the veranda to dial Phil Traynor.  The hollow ring rolled over and clicked as it made the sat switch and he waited for Phil to answer, hoping the graduate student had left the phone on and charged to accommodate their time difference.

“Hello?” Elliot heard a slow, rolling echo of Traynor’s voice.

“Phil.  It’s Elliot.  Are you awake?”

“Not really.”

“Well, get awake.  I have to tell you something.”

Traynor’s voice picked up a hint of energy.  “Did you roll out the DVD, Dr. Anders?”

“I did.”

“How’d it go?”

“I blew it, Phil.  I should have waited.  I should have written a paper, gone to symposia, lectured, whatever.  But I didn’t.”

“What was the reaction?”

“What you’d expect.  Not good.  But listen, Phil, that’s not why I called.  Have you heard anything about flights to Africa being grounded?”

“You know where I am, Dr. Anders.  I only hear about millet beer and big fish in the river and Nommo, who I am starting to think is a pretty slow god.  What’s going on?”

“I just tried to confirm my flight into Dakar and British Airways said it was not flying to Africa till further notice and the government in the UK was not allowing any flights from Africa to land on British soil.  What the hell is that all about?”

Traynor was quiet on the other end of the conversation and Elliot heard the connection as it crackled and faded slightly.  “I don’t know, Dr. Anders.  But I check the newspaper Web sites in South Africa and Cairo and a few of the bigger places and lately there have been stories about the famine and how it might not be just famine.”

“What do you mean, Phil?”

“Like we had talked about before that people might be getting some sickness that can’t be controlled and everyone is mistaking for starvation.  The papers are saying there are just too many people falling over dead for it to be famine.  They think it might be a disease but nobody knows.”

“You mentioned that when the Muslims came through.  But nothing had been reported.  There’s certainly nothing about it in the papers here, Phil,” Elliot said.  “I did see something on the news here in Phoenix the other night about government research on some virus in the states but I don’t see how that could be connected.  At least, I hope not.”

“Dr. Anders,” Phil sounded somber to Elliot.  “Do you think it’s possible the airline thing is some kind of a quarantine?”

“I don’t see how that’s possible, Phil.  I’m sure they’ll start flying again soon.  You certainly can’t quarantine an entire continent.”

“Maybe not,” Phil Traynor answered.  “But maybe they’ve decided to try.”

“Let’s hope not, Phil.  Good god, let’s hope not.”

Elliot hung up promising to find out the facts and help his assistant return to the states but he had no idea where to get accurate information.  Across from his casita, golfers were rolling down a deep green fairway in their electric cart and tilting back beers, laughing and smiling.  A breeze lifted the scent of bougainvillea in his direction and Elliot breathed in its sweetness.  The sky was classic Arizona summer blue and he heard the laughter of children splashing in the hotel pool.   Elliot Anders thought the world just then was a very beautiful place and he found it quite easy to convince himself nothing at all was wrong.

The Colorado River Near Grand Junction on the Western Slope

Ann’s brother-in-law, Ted, a news junkie, was channel surfing the satellite in the living room when he called out to Walter, who was in the kitchen helping Ann finish the dishes.

“Hey, Walt.  You gotta come see this.  It’s Johnny Eddington, the Giant’s guy.  He’s having a news conference down in Phoenix.  It sounds like he’s retiring or something?”

“He’s only 25 Ted,” Walt said as he entered the living room drying his hands on a dish towel.  “I’m sure it’s something else.”

“Sure sounds like retirement.  Listen.”

Walter watched as Johnny Eddington described a health problem that was inhibiting his ability to play baseball.  Off mic, he heard the voice of one of his station’s own reporters, Becky Acuna, asking the athlete about his sex life.

“Man, I guess nothing’s off limits for reporters these days,” Ted said as he turned up the volume to hear the answer.

“He hasn’t exactly been shy about his personal life, Ted.”

“Oh yeah, you mentioned that.  You said he was on one of your programs talking about all the women he’d been with?”

“He didn’t leave out many details, either,” Walter added.  “I got a lot of phone calls from pissed off viewers.”

He returned to the kitchen thinking yet another young person had been given almost every gift possible then had taken them for granted.  Walter’s love of baseball had led him to admire Eddington’s on field grace but he wondered from the outset if the Giant’s star would be able to handle the abundant wealth and public admiration.  He was rich, handsome, and intelligent with a blend of African-American and Scottish ancestry that revealed itself in a skin tone and facial features that gave him a broad, almost iconic appeal across all types of demographics.

“He’s sick.”  Ted was standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Sick?” Walter asked.  “He looks like he could run through walls.  How can he be sick?”

“I dunno.  Says doctors can’t figure it out.  They think it might have something to do with all of that sex he’s been getting.  Anyway, he’s going up to Mayo Clinic to get checked out.”

“How does he know he’s sick?” Walter asked.

“No energy.  Dizzy.  Can’t see to hit the ball or catch it.  Can’t keep weight on.  No appetite.  All that stuff.”

Walter stared intensely at Ted and then turned his head away to look at the kids playing outside beneath a peach tree next to the driveway.

“Huh,” was his brief, guttural response.

Ann Robbins gave her husband a worried look and left the kitchen without a word.  Walter assumed she had gone into the extra bedroom where they were staying so she could change and get ready for their afternoon together.  He went outside to play with the kids and try to divert his worrisome mind from wandering over troubling ideas.

He had been thinking about the morning in Southern Utah that he had awakened in the back seat of his car; Walter had no memory of falling asleep.  Exhaustion from his stressful job and intense exercise had left him this way often in the past and he assumed he had returned to the car from his walk around the national park and had simply passed out.  He did recall odd lights in the night sky, satellites, he figured, or jet training flights from over in Nevada.

Sleep that night had not left him rejuvenated, however.  Climbing out of the back seat of his car that morning, Walter had looked out across the ancient ocean floor to where the rock spires were laying jagged shadows over the orange-red canyons and buttes. The air had been pleasant and quite comfortable, still carrying a hint of the desert’s night coolness.  Realizing he was overtired from the previous day’s long drive, Walter decided to skip his day of hiking in the Canyonlands.  More physical exertion was the last thing he needed and it promised to be tortuously hot on the rocks that day.  His eyes swept the wide sky and found it totally blue and cloudless.  Moisture of any kind never lasted in that country.  When he stretched, the bones in his back stiffened and popped.  He got into the car and followed the park road back to the main highway.  In a few hours, he could be in Moab for breakfast.

Out on the highway, Walter lowered a power window and allowed the morning air to wake him up.  Ahead, he saw the steady rise of the roadbed as it narrowed into the horizon and climbed toward the Colorado high country.  In spite of the mysteriousness of the landscape and its haunting appeal, Walter recognized that he had broken yet another promise to himself to explore the region as part of his private commitment to slowing down and stopping his constant worrying about work.  If he did not relent, he was certain to push himself into a physical collapse and now he had added an extra-marital affair to his complications.

Hunger was not enough of a distraction to make him stop in Moab that day.  Grand Junction was too close for further delays.  Walter had spent the remainder of his drive trying to envision how he was going to readjust to being with his family after sleeping every night since they had been gone with Michelle May.

Topping a rise on 191 north of Moab, he had marveled at how his mind still raced and cantered with his dreams.  They had always been about his goals for his family and financial ambitions but now the visage of Michelle May kept intruding.  His sedan rolled into the midst of a v-shaped expanse of country, bordered on one side by the Green River and on the other by the Colorado.  The rivers gave little to the run of rock and desert whose beauty was made more insistent by its absolute denial of the waters at its perimeter.

When Walter had finally turned eastward onto the wide familiarity of Interstate 70 that morning, he had begun to confront his denial of reality.  In a span of days, he had almost undone his entire life.  Yet Walter refused to accept responsibility for his feelings by rationalizing that these were emotions he had not chosen to have about Michelle May.  People did not control how they felt.  We do not select who we love.

“Aren’t we accountable for how we react to those feelings, though?” he asked himself.  He needed rest and time to think.

“You ready?”  Ann was behind the screen door snapping a sports watch onto her wrist.

“Yeah.  Let’s go.”  Walter knelt and hugged his daughters as if he were going to be gone for weeks on a business trip.  “You girls stay here and play with Cindy and Joshua.  Your mommy and I are going downtown for a little bit so Aunt Liz and Uncle Ted are going to take care of you.”

“Okay, Daddy.”  Alexandra and Faith ran off unconcerned.

Before the car had come down off the switchbacks leading to the river, Ann was asking questions.

“How are you feeling, Walt?”

“I’m okay.  I just need to sleep better.  I never adjust very well to being away from my own bed.  You know that.”

“You’re losing weight, too.”

“What do you mean, ‘too?’”

“I heard the television, Walt.”  Ann turned away from her husband and watched the Colorado River leading them into Grand Junction on its seaward plunge.  “I heard what Ted was telling you.”

“Ann, it’s nothing.  You saw my blood tests.  They didn’t show anything.”

“Well, apparently that baseball player’s don’t either.”

“Okay.  Let me ask you this, if people get whatever he’s got through unprotected sex of some kind, how do I have it?  You look great.”

“I don’t know.  I’m just worried about you, Walt.”

“I understand.  But I’m fine.”  Ann did not speak after this and her silence made Walter uncomfortable.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”  Ann did not look at him as she said this.

Nothing had been resolved by Walter Robbins during his time staying outside of Grand Junction with his sister-in-law’s family.  His intentions had been to emotionally deal with his affair and reconnect with his wife and children but he was unable to imagine his existence just then without the younger woman.  He thought, however, that living with his betrayal and that one great lie was destroying his health.

In the evening after an enjoyable afternoon together downtown, Walter and Ann split a bottle of Pinot Griggio with dinner before retiring to the back porch with Ted and Liz.  Walter sat across from his brother-in-law and exchanged the clipped, conspiratorial phrases of two men who have married sisters and are convinced they can reveal secrets to each other about the behavior of their wives.  As the four adults drank their coffee, the children were dark figures dancing before them in the twilight, running without fear across the grassy space between the house and the apple orchard.  In the moments when their squealing and laughter stopped, Walter listened for the hiss of the mighty Colorado more than a half mile away below the mesa that marked the edge of the orchard.

When his cell phone buzzed on the table, Ann heard it and frowned at her husband.  Walter flipped it open and saw the caller ID was Michelle May.

“I’ve got to take this, Annie,” he said.  “It’s work.  I’ve been gone for a month now.  I’ve got to stay on top of things a little bit.”

“It’s fine, honey.”

The screen door slapped behind Walter as he walked outside to talk.

“Hello?”

“Walt, it’s me, Michelle.”

He was instantly torn between the excitement he felt at hearing her voice after a few weeks and his insistence that she not try to contact him while he was with his family in Colorado.

“Jesus, Michelle,” he whispered.  “I can’t believe you called me up here.  This is dangerous as hell.”

“I miss you, Walt.  I’m sorry.  I needed to hear your voice.  Is it okay?  Can you talk a sec?  If you can’t, just say so and I’ll hang up and call you sometime tomorrow when it’s okay.”

“Yeah, it’s okay.  I’m outside.  I, uh, miss you, too.  I just don’t know what to do, Michelle.  Have no idea, whatsoever.”

“I know; me neither.  I’m sorry I’m putting you through this.”

“You aren’t putting me through anything.  I made my own choices.”

“Walt.  I’m afraid I have to tell you something.  I’ve been with him.”

“What?  With who, Michelle?  What are you talking about?”

“I thought you would have seen the news.  Johnny Eddington.  The baseball player.  I’ve been with him.”

Walter did not respond but he immediately understood some of the pain Ann would feel if she ever learned of his infidelity.

“Walt?  I’m sorry,” Michelle was already pleading for forgiveness.

“When, Michelle?  When were you with him?  After I left town?  You just couldn’t stand to sleep alone?”

“No.  It’s not like that.  I wish it was.  But I was seeing Johnny at the same time I was seeing you.”

“Seeing?  You mean fucking, don’t you?” Walter hissed.

“Walt, it was wrong.  I know that.  I didn’t realize how much I actually cared for you.”

“God, what a damned fool I’ve been.” Walter was talking to himself.  The children ran past him toward the porch.

“Don’t say that, Walt.  Please.  Ed Smith told me you were staying up there a while longer to recover from mono or something and I got worried.”

“Yeah, well, sounds like I may have something other than mono.”

“Don’t say that, Walt.  They don’t know anything for sure.  I saw Becky’s story on the news.”

“What’s your health, Michelle?”

“I’m fine.  I ran the breast cancer awareness 10k this morning in Mesa and felt great.”

“Lucky you.”

“Please don’t say that, Walt.”

“What in the hell am I supposed to say, Michelle?  Thanks for screwing around on the guy who was screwing around with you?  I ought to have had more sense.  I always have until you came along.”

“It’s because we care about each other, Walt.  We have something special.  I didn’t completely realize that until you were gone. I also needed to tell you something else.  It’s something I’ve been avoiding.  But I just can’t any longer.  I have fallen in love with you.  I think it happened without me truly being aware of it.  And when it finally hit me, I had to deal with the fact that you are married.  It’s my fault I let things go this far.  Please tell me we can still be together.”

“You have to be out of your mind, Michelle, and the most oblivious, selfish person I have ever known.”

“Walt.  Please.”

“Good-bye.  I’m sure I will see you at work around the station.”

“Walt.”

Walter Robbins snapped his phone shut and stood, silently shaking in the lowering darkness.  Before he walked inside he remembered an e-mail that Ed Smith had sent him that morning, which contained the kind of information that would have normally prompted Walter’s direct and immediate involvement.

“What was that all about?” Ann quickly asked, interrupting herself mid-sentence in a conversation with her older sister.  “You were out there 15 minutes.”

“You aren’t gonna believe this,” Walter told the three of them.  “One of my reporters, Becky, and old Mike Burke spent the night in jail on suspicion of murder.”

“What?  What’s going on, Walt?”

“Don’t worry.  They’re out.  They didn’t do anything, of course.  But they found that scientist, Barton Crawford, who Becky had interviewed for a story the other night; they found him dead in his lab.”

“Becky and Mike did, Walt?  How awful.”

“Yes, that’s how they became suspects, I guess.  But no charges were filed and they’re out.”

“Well, that’s good,” Ann got up from her chair.  “I’m going to get the girls ready for bed.  You can fill me in on the details later, honey.”

“Okay.  I’ll be there in a bit.”

Deep, restful sleep continued to escape Walter that night as it had since becoming entangled with Michelle May.  Ann, as always, was engaged in dreams minutes after lying down.  He spent two hours jerking around blankets, rolling over and punching his pillow, looking for some inescapable shape of comfort to make him drowsy.  Finally, he gave up and slipped quietly from bed to go out and sit on the porch.  Eventually, Walter nodded off while listening to the high country wind in the apple trees.

In the morning before Ann was awake, he went back into the bedroom and put on his running shoes, shorts, and a tee shirt.  A little more exercise and discipline was all he needed.  When he looked at himself in the mirror, Walter saw that his chest was a bit sunken and his arms were more spindly than he recalled.  His little middle-aged guy belly roll had also disappeared and Walter thought that the last time he had been this slight of build had been when he was running track and cross country as a teenager back in Texas.

That’s what he intended to do: go for a run.  Even a slow jog had a therapeutic effect on Walter and had always made him feel young.  Ann stirred as he was changing and smiled when she saw him in his running clothes.

“Going for a run, eh?” she mumbled.

“Yeah, I just don’t think I’ve been exercising enough.  I’m too stressed out; that’s all.”

“That’s good, Walt.  I’m going back to sleep.  Don’t push yourself.”

“I won’t.  See ya at breakfast.”

The morning sun was barely above the Great Divide far to the east and the still air was chilly as he stretched his legs with toe pulls.  Walter had not run in several months and assumed he would have to jog and then walk to briefly recover in order to survive even a moderate distance.  He took the footpath that led around the perimeter of the peach orchard behind the house and planned to loop back toward the apple groves out front before heading to the bluffs overlooking the river.

Within fifty yards, Walter was breathing heavily.  As out of condition as he considered himself to be, this ought never to have happened.  He slowed to a walk and realized his balance was slipping.  Each step he took pulled him to the left as though he had an inner ear infection.  He modified his expectations and turned around in an attempt to cover the half mile or so through the apple groves to the river overlook.

At the front of the house, he stepped onto the irrigation trail in the middle of the apple grove and the spongy soil felt good beneath his shoes.  Walter started another easy jog and this time pushed himself to sixty yards, maybe seventy.  He stopped when the wheezing of his lungs became too loud and the burn in his chest unendurable.  For someone who had always bragged that he could finish a marathon on a good night’s sleep and a handful of vitamins, Walter was struggling to stay upright.  Bent over, hands on his knees, his body was wracked as though he had just run a steeplechase.

Recovering slightly, Walter elected to get to the overlook with a brisk walk, which would allow his pulse and breathing to return to manageable rates.  Nonetheless, he stopped three or four times and steadied himself by placing a hand on one of the trees.  The lightheaded feeling did not end.

When he eventually came out of the orchard the sun was above the national forests just up the river to the east and he felt an early morning warmth.  Walter stepped over to the edge of the cliff and looked down the steep rock incline a few hundred feet to the eternal roll of the Colorado River.  Whitecaps and standing waves marked a short stretch of rapids and on the far side he saw an elk picking its way down a talus slide to reach the water for a drink.  The sun brightened the outcroppings of rock and illuminated the strata of the higher mesas to the west.

He looked up and down the river several times and marveled at the light’s variations and the timeless roar of the river.  Everything he was observing became amazement to Walter and he had never felt closer to the grandeur of existence.  The beauty of the moment, though, turned into an aching pain and he closed his eyes in an attempt to make it all go away.  And then softly, Walter Robbins began to cry.

Maricopa County Jail, Phoenix, AZ

Her night in the jail was sleepless after Becky made a call to Gene and had to explain to him that she was incarcerated on suspicion of murder.  As patient and understanding of a man as her husband had proved to be through the years, Gene Acuna had now listened to his wife tell him about a man trying to break into their home and now she was suspected of murder.  No charges had been filed, she told him, and she expected to be released in the morning when she and Mike Burke were able to clear up the confusion in conversations with detectives.  Gene, she insisted, had to stay home with the kids and not disrupt their sleep by getting them up in the middle of the night.

Mike Burke, who was marginally hung over and mostly angry at Becky in particular and the world in general, had no interest in calling the news director to ask for the station’s lawyer to come bail them out.  He did not give a damn if he slept all day in the jail, if they would let him smoke.  Burke had his bare feet up on his cot, glowering at Becky when she went past with a deputy escorting her toward the phones.  Burke’s attitude was not helped by the 24 hours he had just spent without a cigarette.

Ed Smith, KSUN’s news director, was in no better mood than Burke when Becky explained their predicament.

“Okay,” Smith exhaled deeply.  “Let me just say this out loud so that maybe, just maybe, I can start to think of it as real.  I’ve got a reporter and a managing editor of my news department being held in the Maricopa County Jail as murder suspects?”

“That’s accurate but oversimplified, Ed,” Becky said.  “We need a station lawyer to come down and get us out of here.  The county’s not behind this.  It’s the federal government.  But I don’t think they have enough to charge us.”

“Oh that’s better.  State law enforcement isn’t interested in you it’s the feds.  Very good.  CIA?  NSA?  You gonna be prosecuted under the Patriot Act, Acuna?”

“Come on, Ed.  I told you what happened up there.  Somebody killed Crawford and I think it was connected to his talking to us and revealing the whole Slims Disease project.”

“Sure, Acuna.  That really had a major impact on the country, didn’t it?  Why in the hell would you have to kill somebody the whole damned world is already ignoring?”

“Very funny.  Look, Ed, the sooner you get us out of here the better chance there is this doesn’t get around to other reporters.  Nobody checks cop shop blotters any more.”

“Like that matters.  Christ, Acuna.  You think those deputies haven’t already started talking?  Maybe those plainclothes feds guys have been busy leaking it over night to discredit you even more.”

“Even more?  Even more?  What the hell’s that supposed to mean, Ed?”

“You know what I mean, Acuna.  That Slim’s Disease special report didn’t exactly enhance your reputation or the station’s either, for that matter.”

“It’s not my fault that people are ignorant, Ed.  If they want to pretend everything is safe and warm and wonderful, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I’m going to have to call Robbins and tell him about this, Acuna.  And he’s damn sure not gonna be happy.  My ass is already in a jam with him over your special report. And he’s got enough on his mind already.”

“Call him?  He’s not back in town?  I thought he went on vacation a month ago.”

“He did.  But he isn’t feeling well.  Thinks he picked up mono or something at his sister-in-law’s place up in Grand Junction.  He’s waiting on some blood tests before he drives home.  Don’t know why in the hell he didn’t fly up there.”

“Well, don’t bother him with this, then, Ed.  Just get us a lawyer over here.  I need to get home and clean up and see my family.”

“Sorry, Acuna.  I’m short people.  You’re going to have to cover a news conference with this Johnny Eddington guy.”

“He’s that pretty boy baseball player, isn’t he?  I don’t do sports, Ed.  You know that.”

“Today, you do, though.  I’ll have a news unit waiting for you as soon as you are cut loose.  You’ll have time for coffee and lunch before it starts.”

“Whatever, Ed.”

Mike Burke was having nothing to do with KSUN-TV News after his night in jail.  As soon as the station’s lawyer had secured their release, Burke left Becky at the curb waiting for a promised photographer to pick her up and take her to the Eddington news conference.

“I’m going home and sleeping all day and KSUN and Ed Smith and the rest of you can go to hell today,” Burke explained.

He was jumping into a taxi when Uncle Pierre pulled up in front of Becky and lowered his driver’s side window.

“Burke need a ride?” he asked.  “We’ve got time.  We can run him to his condo.”

“I don’t think you want to do that today, Uncle Pierre.”  Becky skipped off the curb and around the front of the SUV with the station’s logo brightly painted on its side in orange and blue.

“Okay,” he said as Becky got in the passenger seat.  “Burke seems like he spends a fortune on taxis.”

“He’s saving it on furniture, though,” Becky said.  “Trust me.”

“Wonder why he doesn’t own a car, Beck?”

“Don’t know.  I wonder why he doesn’t talk to his kids, why he lives alone, why his marriage failed and he never met anyone else.  Burke doesn’t want anyone to know anything about him.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty good at keeping secrets,” Uncle Pierre said.  “But I doubt your evening as guests of the county will be very secret.”

“You hear anything?”

“No.  I’m pretty sure it’ll be out, though.  So, Crawford’s dead?”

“Very.”

Becky did not feel like talking about the scientist or her reporting on his work, even with Uncle Pierre, who was her favorite photographer.  Phil Pugh had picked up his nickname as a result of his penchant for wearing a black beret on assignments, which caused his colleagues to accuse him of trying to affect the profile of an artiste instead of a simple button pusher.  He certainly looked the part with an untrimmed brown beard and hair curling out and upward from beneath his beret.  His eyes were narrow and intense and made him appear to be constantly scrutinizing all of existence for missing details.  Unlike most photojournalists, Uncle Pierre, in spite of his artistic inclinations, wore a tie and slacks to work every day, even during the searing desert summer.

As eccentric as Uncle Pierre acted and appeared, Becky considered him brilliant.  He had taken a masters degree in English literature from the University of Colorado and he was always talking about great books.  On one assignment, he had seen a paperback copy of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea hanging out of Becky’s computer bag and asked her if she had not read it previously.  When she explained she was just going back through it to study the simplicity of Hemingway’s style in order to improve her own writing, Uncle Pierre had suggested she look also at Fitzgerald and Wolfe so that she might have an appreciation for more ornate prose.  The next day he brought her a copy of Editor of Genius, the biography of Max Perkins, the great Scribner’s editor who had guided the literary careers of all three men.

“What’s this news conference about, Uncle Pierre?”  Becky was fishing in her purse for a brush and makeup in an attempt to make herself slightly more presentable for a public venue.

“Not sure.  Rumor is the guy is going to retire or quit for a while or something?”

“What?  That doesn’t make sense.  He just signed like the most idiotically outsized contract in the history of professional sports, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, but he’s got some kind of problem and isn’t playing well and the story is he’s either quitting for good or is getting out until he gets a grip on whatever it is that’s kicking his butt.”

“Well, okay.  Where is this gonna be?”

“Out at the Biltmore.”

In the ball room where the news conference was to be held, cables wound and curled around the perimeter and out various doors.  It was all secured to the floor with silver duct tape.  A technician was checking connections for the mult-box being used for the audio from the podium, which had been positioned in front of a dark, blue wall.  Thirty rows of chairs, spanning the width of the ballroom, filled the space between the podium in front and a camera platform at the back of the room.  The camera risers had been constructed with four tiers and dozens of production crews were taping off their space and putting up tripods.

Outside of the hotel, satellite and microwave trucks representing stations from across the southwest and all of the networks had blocked off the streets.  Engineers were tuning in various audio and video frequencies assigned to them on specific satellites.  Police had arrived to control the anticipated crowds and direct traffic.  Technicians were unrolling additional cables and checking circuits, testing microwave relays and the relative strength of audio and video signals being sent into the sky.

Becky helped Uncle Pierre grab a spot near the middle of the second tier of the camera riser.  He adjusted his tripod, plugged his wireless into the mult-box, and measured the audio signal.  Becky extended the boom, fixed the shotgun mike to the end, and followed Uncle Pierre out to the hotel’s main entrance where camera crews and still photographers had gathered to record the arrival of Johnny “The Jet” Eddington.

Over an hour later a shimmering black limo stopped beneath the port cochere of the Biltmore and Eddington stepped out and smiled and waved to the cameras.  His agent, Mort Bender, ran around from the other side and ushered his number one client through the scrum of photographers and the reporters shouting questions.  CNN was doing a live broadcast of the superstar athlete’s arrival and his comments from the podium.

Eddington, trim and fashionable in a beige suit with a pale blue tie and white shirt, hustled through the hotel lobby toward the open double doors and the dais where he was to speak.  Cameras were clicking incessantly.  A room full of gossipy, speculating journalists fell silent as Eddington approached the podium.  Motor drives on still cameras whirred and cranked out photos as if they were trying to record the effort of a diving catch.  On an adjacent wall, a video played showing a montage of The Jet’s greatest plays.

Pausing to assess the room, Becky Acuna watched the Giant’s All Star take a deep breath the way hitters often did before stepping into a batter’s box.  He raised his hand to shield his eyes and then stared into to the blazing bank of television lights blasting the room with heat and glare.

“Man,” Eddington said.  “I always wondered what it might be like to get into the Hall of Fame.  Probably not this much interest, though.”

Everyone in the room laughed and waited for him to explain why they were there.  The Giants had sent around an e-mail notification that he was going to be making a “major career announcement.”

“Thank you all for coming.”  Johnny Eddington paused, words caught in his throat.  Uncle Pierre looked at Becky from behind his camera.  They were both wondering why he was emotional at the outset of a news conference.

“Some of you, I recognize from the papers or TV stations.  But I guess this is the kind of thing that will bring around strangers, huh?”

No one laughed and Johnny Eddington looked down, away from the expectant faces hovering before him.

“I brought a prepared statement up here with me but I think I’ll skip it.  I know there’s a lot of speculation about why I am here today and I want to clear everything up that I can.  But I still don’t have a lot of answers.  There is something wrong with me and I don’t know what it is.  I don’t feel well and I am not playing baseball the way I am capable.  So I’m here today to let everyone know that I am leaving baseball until I recover my health and can play the way I am paid to play and the way the fans expect me to play.  I want to play at the big league level again.”

Reporters looked at each other and began chattering.  A few of them raised their hands, stood up, and began asking questions.

“Hang on,” Eddington said as he put out the palm of his hand to calm down the crowd.  “I’ll get to your questions in a minute.  I need to explain this a little bit more.  First, I want to point out my physician, Dr. Gerry Antonetti, he’s right there near the back door and he’ll be around to answer whatever questions he can when this is over.  But there isn’t much to tell.”

Another reporter jumped up hoping to get in the first question.  “Johnny, did you…..”

Johnny motioned for the man to sit back down.  “Just a minute.  I said I’d get to all of your questions.  The reason I came back down to Phoenix from San Francisco to make this announcement is that I didn’t want to distract too much from the Giants’ pennant chase.  And besides, I plan to live here until I get back to playing, assuming I can get back to playing.  Phoenix has been great to me since I was a rookie in spring camp here.  All I can tell you about what’s happening with me is that I am listless, have almost no energy, feel dizzy sometimes and have double vision, and I’m losing a bit of weight, which is always good if you’re an athlete but I think it’s hurting me somehow.  I’ve been to several specialists and they’ve done all kinds of blood tests and they can’t find anything.  My blood counts appear normal.  No cancers, in case that’s what you are thinking.”

It was not what Becky Acuna was thinking and she wondered why Johnny Eddington was dancing around the real issue.  Was he oblivious?  Was everyone in the Giants organization ignorant of what was going on?  Of course, there was no test in public health care facilities to look for the Slims virus.

“Anyway, in case I don’t get to play baseball any more, I won’t get a chance to  stand in front of a bunch of you all ever again so I am going to take a moment here and thank my parents for my career, even if it turns out to be brief.  My dad worked an assembly line in Flint, Michigan for 33 years and my mother was a waitress at a short order restaurant and they devoted themselves to my two sisters and me to make sure we had better lives.  And we all did.  And I want to thank the Giants.  They have been a class organization from the top down and they would have had every justification in the world for backing away from me in a situation like this.  Instead, they have stood beside me and offered support and encouragement.  And I am grateful.  I guess I’ll take a few of your questions now.”

A chaos of shouts and waving hands erupted when Eddington finished his last sentence.  He pointed at a middle-aged male reporter with silver hair who wanted to know what the ballplayer’s physical condition had been like in recent weeks.

“Well, obviously, not the best, as I mentioned, or I would still be playing baseball.  I run out of energy and breath a lot more easily than I used to and I can’t seem to ever get enough sleep.  If I’ve contracted something, the docs just can’t identify it.  And that’s what has me a little scared.”

Another reporter, this one a female, broke in with a question.  “Why don’t you just go on the 21 day disabled list, Johnny, until you figure this out?”

“Yeah, well, I thought about that but I know my own body pretty well and it’s telling me this is something a bit more serious.  It’s going to take more than three weeks and I didn’t want endless distraction and speculation to detract from the team’s efforts to win the pennant so I came down here to talk to you all.”

Another sports writer wanted to know about Eddington’s endorsements.  “You’ve got your name on a lot of products.  Do you think corporate America is going to be disappointed in losing their All-American pitch man?”

“Oh, I can’t answer that and, to be honest, I can’t say it’s all that important to me.  I have more than enough money.  I don’t think anything that’s happening to me can be a source of embarrassment for any company, though.  But I’ve got a question for you all, if you don’t mind.  My agent, Mort, said there was something on TV here in Phoenix the other night about some mysterious ailment that the government’s working on.  Anyone here tell me about that?”

There was whispering among the journalists sitting on the folded chairs in front of the bank of cameras and several of them appeared to be looking around the room to see if Becky Acuna was in attendance.  Becky did not respond and remained standing quietly on the camera riser next to Uncle Pierre.

“No?  Okay.  Well, I’ve got to find out about that and see if it has any clues for what’s bothering me.”

“Mr. Eddington.  Mr. Eddington.”  Becky raised her voice to be heard behind the glaring lights and picket line of cameras.  Other reporters recognizing her voice sat down and were quiet.

“Becky Acuna with KSUN News.  There are, as you know, a number of viruses and other diseases that are contracted sexually.  They are commonly referred to as STDs, sexually transmitted diseases.  Most of them have been identified, cured, or controlled.  Do you think it’s possible you’ve contracted one of these STDs that are just being discovered and there’s no clinical cure yet?  I mean, you’ve stated publicly many times, including on our television station that you are, well, let’s call it sexually prolific.”

The audience moaned and laughed but Becky decided to persist.  “Do you think your sexual activities have anything to do with your present health problems?”

“I don’t have the answer to that, Miss Acuna, was it?  Hell, I don’t even know what I have or if I have anything.  I just know I don’t feel right.  If there’s a disease out there that somebody knows about, especially the government, and isn’t telling us, well, that’s wrong and we need to know.”

“Hey Johnny.”  The pompous sportscaster from Channel 10, who had made a point of sitting on the front row, stood and turned around to look at the cameras before he asked his question.  “What are you doing next?  Are you going back to San Francisco for more tests or just going into hiding for some rest and relaxation?”

Eddington looked pensive and then smiled, quickly.  “I was just thinking about what it would be like if I had ever gotten to play in the World Series and we won and then I got to do one of those Disney commercials.  It would be great if I could tell you I had just won the World Series and what I was doing next was going to Disney World, or is it Disneyland?  I can never remember which one.  Anyway, I’m not going to either.  I’m going up to the Mayo Clinic for a round of tests.  Don’t know what I’ll do after that.  I do know I hope to play baseball again.  That’s all I want to do.  I love baseball.”

The questions kept coming in an endless stream from reporters Johnny Eddington had never before encountered.  He stayed and answered them until there were none left to ask, facing down a roomful of grim faces who had discovered their life’s worth by creating workman-like prose out of someone else’s tragedies and this was a narrative with great drama for even the most unimaginative of writers.  A superstar athlete at the peak of his health and power, possessed of money and beauty, was being laid low by an illness unnamed and unidentified.  If it was caused by his promiscuous behavior, the tale would be more poignant because the fall from grace would be the old human story of hubris.  Eddington, though, dealt with his apparent athletic demise using candor and humility and he laboriously answered each question, lingering over their individual implications while gracefully extricating himself from a life of glory, unexpectedly interrupted.

“I want to thank you all again for coming,” he said.  “And I trust now you will grant me some privacy to deal with this and be with my family.”

Johnny Eddington eased away from the podium and stepped down to where his agent was able to escort him through the less clamorous crowd.  Becky watched him leave as reporters rose from their chairs and resumed trading in gossip and speculation, having all of the interesting discussions they never shared with their viewers or their readers. A few of them looked in Becky’s direction but no one approached her to discuss Slims Disease and her reportage on the subject.

“Wait a moment, please everyone.”

A shrill voice was passing the front of the ballroom as photojournalists were snapping the release plates on their camera tripods.

“Please.  Please, don’t leave.  I am begging you.”

Becky looked up and saw the ever disheveled figure of Elliot Anders.  He had reached the podium and was projecting his voice several decibels higher to be heard over the clatter of reporters gathering their gear.

“Please.  Please.  My name is Elliot Anders.  I am a scientist and I have something that all of you need to see before you leave here.”

Protestors had appeared at a few of his interviews and book signing events.  There were not large numbers but they were vocal and reporters tended to interview one or two from each group.  Usually, the angry folks thought Elliot was being sacrilegious and was discounting god’s invisible hand in everything involving humans.  Elliot was able to avoid these people and their comments, in his opinion, added intrigue to his book and helped sales.

His return ticket to London and then onto Dakar was open-ended.  The publisher had purchased the London segment as a round trip to and from Phoenix because that was where the book tour launched.  At the conclusion of his promotional schedule, this meant Elliot had to return to Arizona to begin his trip back to Africa.  In Dakar, he would get a charter out to the Cliffs of Bandiagara in rural Mali.

Phoenix, he thought, was quite alluring and Elliot considered lingering at the Arizona Biltmore and attempting to get his publisher to pick up the bill.  Besides, he had yet to decide on how he wanted to unveil the video of the Dogon’s Sigui masks and the glowing Yougo Rock.  Phoenix was probably a good location; especially given the great national response there had been to his book after the KSUN interview.  The city also appealed to his penchant for the extravagant and luxurious with its spas, lush golf courses, and countless resorts.  He loved its orderliness, neat, straight boulevards and clean paint on stucco, an attribute missing from most of the developing countries where he labored.  Traffic jams and smog were unsettling by-products of Phoenix’s economic expansion but he dealt with that by avoiding local travel in any other manner than a taxi.

On his second night back in the city, Elliot treated himself and an old colleague from the University of Arizona to an exquisite celebratory meal at a Scottsdale restaurant.  His book about the Great Pyramid at Giza, Monumental Proof, had debuted at number eleven in non-fiction publications on the New York Times Bestseller List and had been moving up steadily during the weeks of his tour.  Although he had spent his career at the margins of academia and science, pulled away from the mainstream by his eclectic curiosities, Elliot Anders knew his life was quite good compared to most anthropologists, sociologists, and archaeologists laboring at universities and government institutions around the U.S.  There were sufficient reasons for him to feel professionally fulfilled, regardless of the rejection by most of the intellectual leaders in his field.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Designed Arizona Biltmore

After the evening concluded, Elliot went to his casita along the Biltmore golf course to relax, order room service coffee, and read the two day old Sunday New York Times. He clicked on the television with the intention of switching to CNN but instead pulled his laptop out of its travel case and booted up to check e-mail.  Phil Traynor had not written in a few days and Elliot was anxious to learn of his assistant’s latest endeavors.  Phil had been fulfilling the more conservative project outlines that Elliot had included to get funding for the Dogon research.  As a result, Traynor spent much of his time studying familial structures and relationships in the village of Yougo Dogouru.

As his computer beeped, Elliot heard the words “fatal” and “deadly disease” coming from the television.  On the screen, he saw the graphic logo of the local news station and mentally dismissed the story almost immediately as attention-grabbing hyperbole until he heard the distinctive voice of Barton Crawford.  A man with a Nobel was on local news talking about an out of control virus?  Elliot had always admired Crawford, not just for his scientific achievements, but his polish and sophistication and Cambridge education had led him to corridors of influence denied to Elliot with his degrees from land grant institutions in the Midwest.

Crawford’s explanation of a designer virus was shocking enough but Elliot was profoundly struck by the scientist’s association with the cattle mutilation phenomenon.  This was Elliot Ander’s domain, the inexplicable and sublimely absurd and now the esteemed Barton Crawford had ventured out to the perimeter where the lesser credentialed were laboring.  A confession Crawford made on air was even more surprising to Elliot.  Crawford acknowledged that he had encountered evidence that there was technology operating in the world that went beyond the bounds of conventional science.  All of a sudden, Elliot thought, the credibility gap between himself and Barton Crawford had closed.  If Crawford was running around the intermountain west gathering data from dead cows and it showed there was advanced technology in existence, Elliot figured that meant the great man’s work could no longer be differentiated from his own efforts on projects like the Dogon and their Sirius mystery and the Great Pyramid.

After he had connected to the hotel’s wireless Internet and opened his browser, Elliot succumbed to the habit of visiting his Facebook page to see if any of his followers were making comments on his book.  Instantly, the chat screen popped up on his display and he saw that Phil Traynor was online with the satellite hookup in Mali.  Given the time difference, he was probably checking e-mail and news sites prior to beginning his day.  Elliot decided to ping him for an update.

“U there?”

“Hey perfesser.  What’s up?  Been wondering about u.  Too busy to email?”

“Nope. Lazy.  What’s latest?”

“Same.  Place mostly crazy over Sigui and Nommo.  Ceremony’s moved about 20 kilometers distant.  I followed thru 5 villages.  Got lots of good stuff.”

“Good job.  Anything come up with me ‘n masks?”

“No.  But Hogon’s kinda cold.  Don’t think you’ll get much out of him when u get back.”

“Shud I come back?”

“Think so.  Yougo Rock still glowing.  Weirdest thing ever in world, don’t u think?”

“Yeah.  Wonder if it proves anything, tho.  Guess we have to see if Nommo shows up.”

“Yeh.  Ds seem to think he’s coming.  Course, lotsa folks in states think Rapture will happen soon, too.”

“Ha. What’s new with u?”

“Got my case of Tecate from my buddy in TX.  Came in on latest supply charter.  Wish I could keep it cold.”

“Warm Mex beer better than no Mex beer, tho?”

“Yep.  Agree.”

“Weird thing on TV here just now.  Barton Crawford talking.”

“Nobel guy?”

Yeh.  Been doing research on cattle mutilations.  Ever heard of ‘em?”

“Sure.  Several of ‘em in counties around Flanagan.  Hometown of dad.  Don’t believe cult stuff, tho.”

“Don’t think Crawford does, either.  Says they prove advanced technology exists.”

“What? Why looking at cut cows by such big shot?”

“Virology.  Says incurable deadly virus being covered up by govt.  Always fatal.  Says he’s been working in secret project to find cure.  Involves cattle.  Said it all on TV.”

“Whoah.  Crawford?”

“Yep.  Why?”

“Just seems weird.  What disease do to ppl?”

“Eats ‘em up.  Waste away.  Like cattle disease.  Look starved to death.  Saw one interviewed on TV.  Scary.”

“Really?

There was a pause in their exchange and Elliot watched his screen waiting for the window to show that Phil Traynor was once again entering text.  In a few minutes, he’d heard nothing.

“Phil.  Where u go?  Lose connection?”

“Nowhere.  Just thinking.”

“????”

“Had Muslims through here from Bomako.  A few Jihadis.  Many spoke English.  Said starvation spreading faster than ever.  Many don’t believe food is prob.  Think it’s disease.  Said govts won’t look at.  Easy to ignore cuz looks like starvation.  War bigger worry to govs and politicians they say.”

“Any of them have it?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Keep eye out for it in Ds.  Be careful.  Need to learn more.  Think I will stay here longer and try to talk to Crawford.”

“Prolly good plan.  How book doing?”

“NYT bestseller first week.  You might get a raise.”

“Nowhere to spend it.  Lol.

“Don’t worry.  Won’t be much.”

“Knew that.”

“Smartass.”

“What u doing with DVD?  Make plan yet?”

“No. Still worried about.  Need to make smart move.  Big moment.  Might do symposium.  Crawford’s work might be opening door.  Not sure.  Thot about giving to L.A. Times guy during interview.  But dint.”

“Yeh.  Talk to Crawford first.  Might have good advice.”

“K.”

“Lemme know your sked.  I’m carrying sat phone case you need me.  Email only in a.m.”

“K. Keep me posted.  Especially if you see any Ds getting weak and skinny.”

“Will do.  Gotta go turn off gen.  Running low on gas.”

“L8r.”

“U r so kewl, perfesser.  Lmao. Cya.”

Elliot closed out his chat screen and browser and shut down his laptop.  A knock came at the door for the delivery of his coffee service.  He picked up the sumptuous Sunday New York Times with its elaborate details of life’s richness and tragedies and spread it across the table.  He was going to relax a week or so before seeking out Barton Crawford and he needed some time to figure out how to share with journalists the DVD on the Sigui masks and the Yougo Rock.  In the interim, however, the Biltmore and surrounding environs had much to offer and Elliot Anders intended to enjoy himself a bit more before surrendering again to the hardships of Africa.

*          *          *

No morning commute had ever been filled with more anticipation.  Becky Acuna was trying not to think about the professional possibilities engendered by her exclusive report on Slims Disease but she could not stop from envisioning a happy second day filled with personal acclaim.  Although she would never admit such a thing to anyone, she expected New York to call and ask for a re-cut of her story for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. At a minimum, she assumed, excerpts of the piece would end up on NBC and CNN. Of course, it was a virtual certainty that the wire services and the big city daily papers already wanted to talk to her and ask for contact information and background on her sources.

Entering the building through the news department door off of the parking lot, she spotted Mike Burke sitting at the assignments desk.  As she walked across the room a reporter and photographer team leaving for a story passed her and said nothing more than a polite hello.  She could have used an attagirl from colleagues.  They might not have seen the late news, Becky guessed.

“Hey Mike, what’s up?” Becky asked.

Burke looked up from his computer screen.  “Nothin’ that I know of, Acuna.  What’s up with you?  You got a story for today?”

“Uh, no.  Not yet.  I was hoping to follow up on last night.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, think fast.  We are short of content.”

“You hear anything from New York?”  Becky did not understand why Mike Burke was playing games.

“Regarding?”

“Oh come off of it, Mike.  You know regarding what.”

“I got nothin’ for ya,” he said.

“Did the wires pick anything up?  I didn’t check before I left the house.”

“Nope.  I’ve seen nothin’ and I’ve checked ‘em all.  Probably on some of the alternative news Web sites, I’ll bet.”

“Yeah, well that’s not what we need.”

“Nope.”

“Did you send the piece out on the feed, Mike?”

Burke was growing exasperated.  Becky saw that he was pretending to be detached from whatever situation was developing regarding their work and he was covering it with his usual gruffness.

“Look, Beck, there’s no good news there, either.  We e-mailed the lead, CGs, full script with track narration, hit times, and everything else.  We got an e-mail from the exec producer saying that they weren’t interested.  Period.  I called up and asked him if he was out of his goddamned mind, and before he hung up on me he just said he thought it was irresponsible reporting.”

“Irresponsible reporting?  Good god.  That story is as journalistically sound as anything I’ve ever done.”

“Yeah well, they’re in New York and they’ve got their degrees from the network’s asshole school, so they’re smarter than us little folks down here burning our brains out in the desert.”

“Shit.”  Becky shrugged.  “Shit.  Shit.  Shit.”

She turned and went to her desk to see if anyone had left voicemails since she had not forwarded her office phone last night to her cell.

“Get me a story, Acuna,” Mike Burke called after her.  “I need something today and I need it pretty bad.”

“You need better grammar, too, pal.”

The three hour time difference from the East Coast provided a lot of time for interested writers and producers to contact her this morning with questions for their own stories but no calls were recorded on her voice mail.  She dropped the phone back into its cradle just as Burke’s head appeared over the wall of her cubicle.

“Need you to go do this, Acuna.”  Burke handed Becky a blue assignments sheet and as she read it furrows appeared in her forehead.

“A news conference on another Indian casino?  Shit.  Shit.  Shit.  And shit.”

“Economic impact,” Burke sniffed.  “Redman’s revenge.  Frame it up however you want.  I gotta have it.  Uncle Pierre’s waiting outside in his news unit.”

She walked away from the managing editor without saying a word.  9:14 a.m. Mountain Standard Time the morning after doing the biggest story of her career and Becky Acuna’s life was already back to being perversely normal.

*          *          *

The next week and a half was conspicuously weird for the KSUN veteran correspondent.  At news conferences, Becky’s colleagues avoided speaking with her, almost as if there had been a death in her family and no one knew what to say.  A few of them offered condescending smiles or clipped hellos but not even her photographers engaged her on the subject of Slims Disease, in spite of the time spent together in news trucks driving back and forth across the valley.

The only follow up on her story had been a news brief by the AP and it had run in the City-State section of the Republic on page B-3, below the fold.  Two short paragraphs had been written with information acquired from watching the KSUN news as it was broadcast.  The article had given the station attribution but the small type headline was dismissive: “Nobel Winner Claims Research on Unknown Virus at Valley Facility.”

At the end of another long day, Becky filed a story about a news conference with the Phoenix mayor, a man who had managed to find yet another technique for giving new businesses even bigger tax incentives for locating in the Valley of the Sun.  She sat at her desk to watch the news on her monitor and wait for the rush hour traffic to thin out.  Before the newscast started, Becky noticed the red message light flashing on her desk phone.  There was a long, rambling recording from Elliot Anders explaining who he was and that he had been trying to contact Barton Crawford.  He had seen Crawford on the news a short time ago with Becky and he had a professional interest in having a conversation with his fellow scientist.  Anders recited the cell phone number he had for Crawford and Becky recognized it as being correct.  He claimed to have left numerous messages there and at his home and he was certain that Crawford would have responded.  Anders wondered if Becky might help him reach Crawford.

She saved Ander’s message and then quickly dialed Barton Crawford’s cell.  Although he had asked her not to contact him at Bleak House, Becky assumed he would understand this intrusion on his cell number because of Ander’s call.  Besides, their interview had been conducted over three weeks ago and this was hardly pestering.  She left a message for Crawford to call at his earliest possible convenience and, as much as she despised the idea, she had to speak again with Mike Burke about their Slims Disease story.

“Mike?”

“Yep.”  He did not stop staring at the 10 p.m. show rundown on his display.  “What is it now, Acuna?”

“You remember Elliot Anders?”

“Yeah, the pyramid guy.  He was on Michelle’s show.  What about him?”

“He’s still in town working on some project before he goes back to Africa.”

“So?  That’s news?”

“Stop being an asshole, Mike.”

“Sorry.  I’m stressed out by Smith.  He’s always up my ass and it’s even worse today.”

“Don’t take it out on me.”

“Yeah, I said I was sorry.  What’s the deal with Anders?”  Burke turned around to face Becky.

“He says he’s been trying to reach Barton Crawford on his cell for over a week and he’s not returning his messages.  He’s got his home number, too, and there’s no answer.”

“Maybe Crawford doesn’t like him, Beck.  Simple as that.”

“And maybe Crawford’s in trouble for talking to us.  Maybe something’s happened to him.  That’s just as likely, isn’t it?”

“I doubt it.  I bet winning the Nobel is kind of like wearing Superman’s cape.  Nobody’s stupid enough to mess with you.  Did you try reaching him?”

“Only just now.  Remember, he said I could get in touch with him about the cattle mutilation story but not to try to reach him through Bleak House.  I was actually hoping I’d hear from him after that story was broadcast.  Anyway, I just got voice mail.”

“Doesn’t mean anything, Acuna.”

“Yeah, but I’m worried now, Mike.  Worried and curious.  And I need you to………”

Burke cut her off.  “Oh come on, Acuna.  I’ve had a long day.  Let it slide, will ya?  The last thing I need is another long drive that ends in a friggin’ dark canyon.  I’m going down to the Elephant Room for a scotch.  And then I am taking a taxi home.”

“Guess I’ll have to go alone.”  Becky knew he would not let that happen.  “I want to know what’s going on.”

“Oh Christ on roller skates, Acuna.”  Burke shook his head.  “I’m gettin’ beers and dinner out of you before we go up there.”

“Good, follow me out to………”

“Yeah, yeah.  I know the damned drill.”

In the car, Becky had trouble restraining her imagination and the various worse case scenarios conjured up by her overactive mind.  Over dinner at a roadside hamburger house, she kept reminding Burke that Barton Crawford had violated a top secret clearance.  If the feds were determined to try to keep secret a disease that might threaten the entire country and even the world, they certainly would not be circumspect when it came to Crawford’s betrayal.  Burke, who sloshed back five cans of beer with his burger, told her she had seen too damned many movies and read even more crappy airport novels.

After dinner, there was still orange light in the sky but the roadway through the Superstitions was already dark and the yellow dots in the middle of the lanes reflected brightly in the news unit’s low beams.

“You remember how to find this place, Acuna?”  Burke was paying little attention to landmarks and Becky worried that she should not have let him drive, though she knew he would never surrender the keys and she had already agitated him enough.

“Yeah, it’s two white boulders on the left side about two miles after the rest area.”

“It’s friggin’ mountains, Beck.  There’s lotsa boulders.”

“Just keep it between the lines, Mike.  I’ll spot the turnoff.”

“Okay.  Okay.  But after we find out he’s okay I don’t want to sit and listen to the guy’s life story again or how you’re some great and brave reporter.  I just want to get my ass home.  I’m tired.”

“You’re damned near drunk, too.  So be careful.”

They were silent for the next few miles and Becky kept checking the rear view on her side of the truck for any following traffic.  If the man who had tried to bust down the door to her home knew she had been to Crawford’s mountain lab, it was just as possible someone was aware of their present course of action.

“There it is.  That’s the cutoff.”  Becky pointed at a gravel path between two looming white boulders on their left.”

“Got it.  I recognize it.”

Burke wheeled the truck to the left and beneath the canopy of cottonwoods.  Beyond the range of their headlights, the darkness was almost overwhelming to Becky.  She was pleased that within a few minutes Burke had flashed on the high beams and turned the truck again to make the lights sweep the small wooden porch.  Becky saw no sign anyone was inside the cabin.  Burke switched off the ignition and Becky opened her door.  The engine’s ticking was the loudest noise in the canyon.

“He’s obviously not here, Acuna.  Let’s call it a night.”  Burke had reached over and touched her forearm.

“Probably not.  But I need to go check to be sure.”  She opened the glove box and took out a flashlight.  “Don’t worry.  You can stay here.  I won’t tell anyone.”

“God, you are a smartass.” Burke swung open his door.

Outside of the car, Becky looked up and saw a row of stars in the narrow sky framed by the canyon walls.  She grabbed the rough plank handrail along the steps and heard Mike Burke stumble on the rocks and curse under his breath.

“I’m an idiot,” he said.  “I ought to know better than to be doing this kinda crap.”

Becky ignored Burke and made her way carefully up the steps and found a buzzer along the right side of the door frame.  She pressed and heard a mechanical buzz muffled by the walls.  By her third try, Burke had reached her side.

“I told you he’s not here, Acuna.  Let’s go.  I need some sleep.”

“You’re not a little bit timid, are you, Mike?”  Becky made a fist and rapped on the door.  When she knocked a second time, it was obvious the door had moved.  “Hey, it’s open, Mike.  The door’s open.”

“You sure?”

“Look.  Come on.  Let’s go in.  Crawford doesn’t strike me as the absent-minded type but maybe he’s back in the lab and didn’t even know he had left the door open.”

They stepped into the darkness and Becky played the flashlight along the front wall until she found a rheostat switch and turned it up to make the room brightly lit.  Nothing appeared to have changed since she had been there the first time to tape the story with Burke.

“Hello?  Dr. Crawford?  Are you back there?”

There was no light in the rear hallway leading to the lab, either.  Becky walked over and picked up a magazine on the coffee table and recognized it as a news weekly, which had been sitting there during their first visit.  Burke stayed by the door, watching her.  She sniffed.

“This air smell a little stale to you, Mike?”

“It’s a laboratory, Beck.  How’s it supposed to smell?”

“I don’t know; chemicals, maybe?  But it smells kind of rancid in here, like he left garbage in the sink or something.”

“Well, go look in the damned sink, Acuna, and then let’s get the hell outta here.”

Becky dropped the magazine back to the table.  “Relax, will you, Mike?  Let’s go see if he’s in back.  Might just have the lab door closed.”

“Sure, as soon as you find another light switch.  Guys my age get to be guys my age by staying out of dark passageways.”

“Oh Mike, for God’s sake.”

If there was a control for the hall light, Becky was unable to find its location.  The long hallway leading to the lab was cool, Becky assumed, because it was constructed so close to the rock wall of the canyon.

Burke was behind her as she approached the door to the lab and found it opened and the work space containing the deadly viral tissues completely unsecured.  Crawford, she recalled, was extremely security conscious because of the nature of his research and while he may have been in a hurry and left the front door unlocked, he would never have left the lab door unbolted while he was inside working.  She stepped slowly across the threshold with Burke trailing her in the darkness.

“Hey, back here, Beck.”

Burke had quickly moved off on his own search without a flashlight, probably trying to show some bravura, Becky thought. She swung the flashlight toward his voice so that he was able to see a step leading up to a slightly raised work platform.

“I gotta admit,” Burke said.  “This place is beginning to make me a bit uneasy.”

“I picked up on that,” Becky whispered.  “Me too, Mike.  Let’s just shine the flashlight around, see if we can find a switch for the overheads and then get out of here.”

As Burke came back toward the flash light beam, Becky inched forward, trying to avoid knocking into any of the stainless steel tables she remembered being spread around the facility.  A stand of glass vials flashed as she moved the light across them looking for any type of electrical switch.  After a few minutes of searching in the most likely spots, she gave up and continued forward into the room.

“Something smells pretty bad over here,” Burke had gone behind one of the work benches.

“Yeah, I know, but he cultures all kinds of growths in this place.  God only knows what Crawford is growing in here at the moment and what we are exposing ourselves to.”

“Well, it smells to me like he is growing shit, Acuna.”

“Shut up, Mike.”

Everything she saw within the blade of light appeared as she remembered.  No one had broken in and tossed the place.  She stepped forward again, slowly; her stomach fluttering.  No reason to feel that way, she reminded herself, but she did.

“Hey, Acuna, over here.”

“Mike, where the hell are you now?  I thought you were gonna stay behind me.”

“I was.  But that got boring.  Hey, shine the light over here.  I’ve stepped in something.  I don’t know what in the hell it is.  Might be that shit I smelled.”

“Just a minute.  I’ve got to spot you.  Oh, there you are.  I’m coming.”

Burke put his hand on her shoulder when she reached where he was standing.  He acted as if he were trying to gain some equilibrium.

“What’s wrong, Mike?  What is it?”

“Point that thing at the floor, will ya?  My feet feel like they’re stuck to the concrete.”

A black gooey substance was spread in about a three foot area near where Burke was standing.  As he lifted a shoe, Becky heard a sticky sucking sound when the sole separated from the floor, tarry black tendrils hung from his feet.

“What in the heck did you get into, Mike?”  Becky began to kneel and reach her finger to touch the goo.

“Hey, don’t, Beck.”  Burke almost yelled.  “I am pretty sure I know what it is.”

She stopped.  “What?”

“It’s blood.  Old blood.  I remember this from my days covering the cop shop.  This is what it gets like.”

“Blood?  Whose blood?  Jesus.  Is someone in here?  Hello, can anyone hear us?”

“If there is anyone in here, I doubt they are in any condition to hear us, Acuna.”

Becky was almost in a state of panic now and whipped the light beam around to scan the room.  Only when she had lowered it to her side, did she notice the feet pointing straight up at her.  Burke saw the motionless body at exactly the same instant.

“I guess we better see if that’s your scientist friend.”

“Oh God.  This can’t be.”

Burke reached over and took the flashlight from Becky’s hand and pointed it at the dead man’s face.  Becky was reluctant to look.

“It’s him.  Dead,” Burke rasped through a dry throat.  “Been dead a while, too.  No need for you to see this, Acuna, but I suppose you are gonna wanna look just to be sure.  But there is something else you ought to see.”

Burke gently took her arm and Becky turned in the direction that he was pointing the flashlight.  Barton Crawford’s eyes were open and even in rigor and decomposition his face was fixed in an expression revealing that his death had been a complete surprise.  A small dark round hole was located just left of center in his forehead.  Blackened blood spread in a velvet sheet from the back of his skull to near where Mike Burke had initially stopped.  Across the scientist’s chest, someone had left a poster board sign with one word smeared in the dead man’s blood.

The rough script read, “Traitor.”

Becky grabbed the railing around the work bench and tried to stop hyper-ventilating.  In all her years as a journalist, she had managed to avoid seeing a murder victim.

“What do we do now, Mike?” she panted.  “What do we do?”

“First thing we do is get the hell outta here.  The next thing we’ll do is go somewhere and figure out what to do.  Come on.  Take my hand.”

Along the highway, the mountains did not appear to be moving behind them and Becky was anxious for a sign of progress that they were actually coming down out of the Superstitions.  Even though Burke was driving twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, the roll of the truck’s tires was imperceptible and Becky felt chained to a false motionless.

“I’ve got blood all over my shoes,” Burke moaned.  “It’s kind of hard to control the accelerator.  It’s gonna be on everything in this damned truck.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mike.  We didn’t do anything wrong.  We’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s what Crawford was thinking when the bullet entered his brain.”

A pair of headlights slipped past them going in the other direction and Becky found herself checking each car to see if it had that non-descript government appearance or if it was a law enforcement vehicle.  She tried to convince herself she was being foolish.

“Do you think we panicked, Mike?  I mean, we didn’t do anything too stupid, did we?”

“Hell, I don’t know.  But given the fact that someone had been there and killed one of the world’s most well-known scientists, my gut was telling me it wasn’t wise to wait around for them to come back and ask us for an assessment of their handiwork, regardless of the fact that he had been dead a while.”

They found the burger joint where Burke had earlier in the evening insisted they stop for dinner and Becky was comforted by the warm yellow sign leaning out over the road.  Inside, Burke went to the counter and ordered two 20 ounce drafts and brought them back to the wooden table where Becky was waiting.

“Gimme your cell,” he said.  “We’re calling the cops.”

“What?  I thought we were going to talk this through.  Are you sure?  Aren’t they going to suspect us?”

“And what do you suggest we do, Acuna.  Pretend like we haven’t seen what we just saw?  That’s hardly responsible, especially for a couple of journalists.”

“Isn’t someone else going to find him, eventually?”  She took several deep swallows of her beer, gulping it like water on a hot afternoon.  “I don’t see why it has to be us.”

“It didn’t have to be, Beck.  But it was.  You were the one who wanted to come up here, remember?”

“Yep.”  She slid her cell phone across the table.  “But what if the cops had something to do with it?”

“I doubt that.  Probably somebody higher up the food chain.  I’ll call the sheriff’s office.  Isn’t anybody in the Maricopa County office smart enough to find that place, much less kill Crawford.”

“Okay, then.”

Burke had two more twenty ounce drafts while they waited for the sheriff’s department officers.  By the time they walked in the door, he was suitably drunk and disinclined to listen to anything accusatory.  Two deputies were followed by a couple of plainclothes types in suit pants and white shirts with red ties.

“You two the reporters?”

The deputy asking the question stood at the end of the table with his hand resting on night stick hanging from his belt.  He reminded Becky of a blonde and blocky pro football player who had come to the station for an interview.

“Yep, we are,” Burke answered.

“You wanna take us up there?”

“That’s why we called.”  Burke stood and pointed at the plainclothes stiffs standing near the door.  “They with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who are they?”

“Feds.  They’ve been working out of our office.  Said Crawford was a government employee on a special project and they have jurisdiction.  We’ll work that out later but I understand you already know about his secret work.”

“Yeah, well, so does everyone who watches the news on our station,” Becky said.

Suddenly, Mike Burke raised his voice and began speaking to everyone in the restaurant.

“Hey everyone, I’m Mike Burke, managing editor of KSUN news and this is Becky Acuna.  You all probably know her from TV.  These nice gentlemen in the ties over by the door are from the federal government and they’re taking Becky and me up to a canyon not far from here to look at a murder victim.  Just wanted to let you all know in case you don’t see Becky on the news any more after tonight.”

“He’s drunk, huh?” the big deputy asked Becky.

“Yeah, but pretty smart even when he is.”

“Well, let’s get this over with.”

Becky took Mike Burke by the arm and led him out to the police cruiser.  They rode up the mountain in the back seat with the steel grill between them and the two deputies.  The federal agents followed in a dark blue Town Car.  They had not spoken a word prior to leaving the restaurant.

At Crawford’s cabin, the deputies found the light controls easily after a brief search.  They did a cursory examination of the crime scene and then went out to their cruiser to radio for forensic assistance.  The two government agents struck Becky as completely incurious as they stood with their arms folded on the other side of the room.  Burke waited on a couch in the living area at the front of the cabin, smoking.

“It’s late,” the blonde deputy said.  “When forensics gets here, I’ll run the two of you back down the mountain to your car.  But you’ll need to come in for extensive questioning first thing tomorrow.”

“That’s not how this goes.”  The fed with the oily face and dark glasses had spoken.  Becky watched him take one step toward the sheriff’s deputy.

“How’s that?” the deputy asked.

“You arrest them and cuff them and haul them downtown on suspicion of murder.”

“These people aren’t suspects.”

“That’s not how the federal government sees it.”

“What do you mean ‘how you see it?’  You haven’t even looked at the crime scene or asked them a single question.”

“We’ve seen enough.”

“Well, I’m not arresting a news reporter and her boss,” the deputy said.

“Either you do it or we do it but it’s going to happen, deputy.  The federal government will exercise jurisdictional authority here.  This is U.S. government property.”

“You sonsabitches are somethin’ else.”  The deputy shook his head, angrily.  “I’ll take them downtown for processing after forensics gets here.”

“Very good.  We’ll follow you so we can issue a full report to Washington tomorrow.”

In a few hours, Becky Acuna, suburban professional and mother of two, married 22 years, Emmy award-winning TV news correspondent, and Mike Burke, Vietnam veteran who had a Peabody and Murrow in a box in his condo closet, were both sitting on cots behind steel bars at the Maricopa County Jail.  They had been booked on suspicion of murder.

Convincing the police of what had actually happened was difficult since the alarm had not sounded and all the obvious evidence had showed that a woman at home alone had simply thrown a lamp through her own living room window.  If one of the officers had not informed the chief investigator Becky was a well-known television news reporter, she might have been arrested.  Becky was fairly certain they did not believe her story even though the police had no real idea why an otherwise sane professional woman might bust out the biggest window in her house.  Drugs were always a possibility in these kinds of domestic calls.

Sitting at a table close to the outdoor fountain, Becky saw that Mike Burke had found a spot where their conversation was not likely to be overheard above the sound of splashing water.  When she looked at his wrinkled chinos and white shirt rolled up at the sleeves, Becky thought her managing editor could have hardly looked more out of place than he was in the stylish Arizona Center restaurant.  The men surrounding him wore open-collared cotton dress shirts, golf polos or signature sports pullovers with loose slacks and expensive loafers.  The women shone like baked porcelain in sun skirts and sleeveless blouses with shorts.

In their midst, Mike Burke sat with his short, stiff, gray hair and his skin dull with a yellow pallor from excess smoke and drink combined with a strict regimen of no exercise.  Discipline for any endeavor outside of work was missing from Mike Burke’s daily existence.  A few people from the newsroom had been by his condominium and reported there was nowhere to sit, only books spread across a few tables and the floor.  Whatever sleep he acquired apparently was on a ragged old mattress.  For a man who fueled himself with cigarettes, caffeine and scotch, Burke needed little rest.  Any time there was a breaking news story in the middle of the night, he was always the first person into the newsroom, looking wide-awake and providing the same explanation every time, “I was up anyway.”

Burke saw Becky coming down a sidewalk leading to the patio restaurant where he was waiting and she realized he could read the angst on her face from a distance.  As he stood up to greet her, she smiled because she knew that any display of manners from him was an indication that the regular order of things had been upset.

“Hey, Acuna, what in the hell’s going on?”  Burke pulled out a chair.

“I’m sorry, Mike, I didn’t mean to frighten you into niceness.”

“Cute.  You want a drink?”

“I think, actually, I could use one.”

A waiter brought her a gin and tonic double and a fresh scotch for Burke.  Becky looked at all the healthy and prosperous people gathered at the tables around them and did not speak until she felt the alcohol slowing the race of her pulse.  Burke did not hurry her.

“Something’s happened,” Burke said.  “And why in the hell haven’t you told me what it is yet?”

“I’m sorry, Mike.  I’m just trying to figure out what the hell it was and what it means.”  Becky sipped her drink and saw that her hand was trembling slightly as she lifted her glass.

“Let’s hear it before I get too damned drunk to remember it,” Burke said.

Through the white snake of smoke around his head, Becky saw the bitter twitch on Burke’s face.  She often wondered how every aspect of his personal life had become a disaster and he had still managed to retain his curiosity in human nature.

“I don’t know, exactly, Mike.  When I got home there was this guy walking on my street and he just stopped on the sidewalk and stared at my house and then brazenly walked up and tried to knock down the back door.”

“What the hell?”

“I know.  And the alarm was off and I had no way to protect myself so I just threw a damned lamp through the window hoping I’d scare him off.”

“I guess you did.”

“I did but what was so creepy about it, Mike, is that he just slowly walked back to the street and turned around and looked at the house like he was trying to tell me he’d be back.”

“And the cops, what did they say?”

“Nothing.  I think they thought they were just dealing with a coked-up bored suburban housewife who was coming down too hard.  They didn’t show any signs they believed me and none of the neighbors were around to see anything.”

“Christ.”  Burke shook the ice in his glass and looked up at Becky.  “Who the hell was it?  Any idea?  Not some guy just breaking in because you sound like he was looking specifically for you.”

“I’m pretty sure he was.  Mike, do you think someone knew we were talking to Crawford?  Could we have been followed?”

“You mean someone got tipped we were going out there and followed you after I dropped you off at your car?  How in the hell could that have happened?”

“It’s not impossible, you know.  Maybe they are just monitoring Crawford all the time.  If the government’s working so hard to keep this Slims Disease thing a secret, they probably keep a pretty close eye on him, don’t you think?”

“They sure as hell wouldn’t want him talking on television but wouldn’t it have just been simpler to walk in there and bust up the interview and chase us off?”

“Yeah, but they don’t even acknowledge the disease exists so why would they risk confronting a guy in front of reporters when what they’ve got him doing isn’t even real?”  Becky laughed, a little relieved.  “We’re getting down the rabbit hole, I guess.”

“Except for the fact that somebody just tried to break into your house after you had been up there interviewing Barton Crawford about a big, scary-assed U.S. by god government secret.”

Becky looked up and smiled at a young couple who pointed at her as they passed the table.  “His lab in the Superstitions is a bit odd, too, don’t you think?  I doubt the government would authorize him working outside of the Bleak House on his own time and property if this was such a dangerous virus, would they?  That’s probably his own research he showed us tonight.”

“Probably.  I’m sure they know what he’s doing.  They might just want to see what he figures out on his own and then find a way to use it.  They’re just letting him think he’s getting away with something.”  Burke tapped ash off of the tip of his fourth or fifth cigarette.  When he drank, which was often, he always had a cigarette burning.  He looked at Becky without saying anything but she thought she knew what was on his mind.

“I’m not afraid, Mike, and I’m not backing off of this story.  Barton Crawford is not a kook.”

“Yeah, well, don’t talk so tough, Acuna.  You’ve got a great husband and two little kids and as I always told my buddies who were so crazy about shooting combat video, there just ain’t any story worth dying for.”

“Oh for god’s sakes, Mike.  Nobody is going to die.”  Becky motioned for their waiter to bring the check.

“I know.  I’m just saying keep an eye out and be careful.  This ain’t like covering city council.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Whatever.  But I’m not going home tonight.”

“No, you aren’t.  You’ve got to drive me home.  I’m too damned drunk to even call a cab.”

“That’s fine.  But I’ve got to find a place to stay tonight,” Becky said.

“You’re staying at my condo, Acuna.  I’ve got to keep an eye on you.”

Burke rose unsteadily as Becky signed the credit card receipt.  She looked at him, quizzically.

“Oh stop it,” he said.  “They’re all wrong.  I do have a couch.  And you can sleep on it.  Now get me to Paradise Valley, will ya?”

*          *          *

Privately she was afraid, and her efforts on the Slims Disease story moved forward tentatively.  There was considerably more taping to do before she filed her report, though, and she was unwilling to allow any other photographer to work with her on the story.  They were curious about why their managing editor was doing the shooting for the piece.  Mike Burke went with Becky out to Buckeye after she had contacted Vicente Cantu about taping an interview.  Becky had explained that she also wanted to talk to Vicente’s sister Angel Mata and see how she was doing.

“Not well,” he had said on the phone.  “She will be gone soon but at least she won’t be in the Bleak House and all alone.  I’ll be with her and Roberto is here now.”

“Her husband is home?” Becky asked.

“Yes.  He’s not working on construction right now.”

“Is he ill?”

“No.  Just tired.  And he’s lost weight because of how hard he has been working.  You know, outside in the sun all day.”

“Sure, Vicente.  Sure.”

“What did Dr. Crawford tell you?  I didn’t think he would talk to you,” Vicente asked.

“He told us everything he knows, which wasn’t that much.  But he said it was important that the news get out.  Are you and Angel comfortable talking on camera about this?”

Vicente’s voice was weak and emotionless.  “Yes, it’s okay now.  We aren’t afraid.  There’s nothing they can do to Angel and I’m not worried any more.  Everybody will know soon, verdad?”

“Yes.  I think you are right,” Becky answered with glum resignation.  “We’re on our way Vicente.  See you at your sister’s in a while.”

When he met Angel Mata, Mike Burke was horrified.  In the early 90s, Becky remembered, her managing editor had gone to Somalia with U.S. troops and he had witnessed extreme starvation but it had not prepared him for the appearance of Angel Mata.

“Jesus,” he whispered to Becky after they had returned to the truck to carry in the gear.  “How can anything do that to you?  How is she still alive?”

“I don’t know, Mike.”

Angel was in the living room, sitting in a soft lounge chair with the air-conditioner turned off.  She was wearing cotton pajamas with a small flower print.  Becky thought she looked worse than some of the pictures in history books she had seen of World War II concentration camp survivors.  There was no saving Angel Mata and death would be an act of grace in her condition.  Her voice was a tissue-thin whisper and her sentences were short responses to Becky’s questions.  Roberto, her husband, stood across the room.

“Do you remember me, Mrs. Mata?  I came out with Vicente several months ago to meet you.”

“Yes.  The TV lady.”

“What do you think has happened to you, Mrs. Mata?” Becky saw blood pulsing in the woman’s neck veins and down on her hands.  She would not have been surprised if Angel had died on camera.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have any idea?”

She waited, momentarily, as if marshalling her remaining energies for another simple sentence.  “My brother says it’s Bleak House.  Where he works.  They can’t cure it.”

“What is it?”

“Slims Disease?  I think he calls it.”

“How’d you get it?”  Becky was already feeling guilty of robbing this poor woman of some of her final moments with her husband and brother.

“Don’t know.  They say sex.  Maybe some other way.  Only have sex with my husband.”

HIV1 Virus

“He looks healthy.”

“Yes.  Healthy.  Good.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mata.”

Angel did not respond.  Her eyes closed and she tucked her chin against her chest.  Becky and Mike asked Vicente to come outside so they could record the interview with him away from Angel.  In fifteen minutes, he described in great detail all of the dying he had seen inside of Bleak House and the frantic desperation of the physicians and researchers.  He also told Becky and Burke that when his own wife and children had finally come to visit his sister, they had refused to ever be around her again until she was healthy and his wife had urged him to stay away from Angel for the sake of his own children.

“You get a good look at ol’ Roberto skulking back in the shadows of the living room, Beck?” Burke asked Becky as he turned the truck off of the sand and back onto the Buckeye Road.

“Yeah, he sure was quiet.”

“I wonder why.”

“What do you mean, Mike?”

“You know, Mr. dark and swarthy.  Handsome Latino, always traveling to construction jobs, you said, right?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if this thing is transmitted sexually I’m pretty sure Angel Mata probably picked it up from Roberto Mata, who is very likely out there on the road having his fun.”

“Maybe,” Becky said.  “It’s another thing we don’t know.  There’s no proof it is transmitted sexually, you know, Mike.  You heard Crawford.”

“Yeah, yeah.  I’m just sayin’.”

The next four evenings they spent on the deck at Becky Acuna’s house recording the arrival of sick people at Luke Air Force Base.  Burke had rented infrared gear and a 1 to 1200 lens to capture as much detail as possible over the night distances.

“You could watch Neil Armstrong scratch his ass on the moon with this lens,” Burke had said.

Becky’s husband Gene kept Burke supplied with scotch and soda and the nights passed quickly and surprisingly productively.  On Tuesday, there was only one plane landing to record but the next three nights there were two each evening.  Becky noted that there were now groups of people being brought to Bleak House compared to the one or two she used to see arrive when she initially started monitoring the base’s activity more than a year earlier.  Burke shot a lot of daytime b-roll of the base and drove around it looking for an angle to frame up what they had been informed was Building 3C but he was never able to show more than a corner of the structure because it was situated in the midst of a complex of hangars.

The process of creating this one story was agonizing for Becky Acuna.  In almost every way possible, this was going to be the most important report she had ever written and filed.  As skeptical as she knew she needed to be, Becky realized she also had to give great credibility to the words of Dr. Crawford and Vicente because they were eyewitnesses.  She had also taped a satellite interview with a National Institutes of Health virologist to ask him if he had heard of Slims Disease and she intended to edit that into the packaged report to have an expert doubting the words of the Nobel Laureate.

After struggling with the script for three days, Becky finally took it to Mike Burke for approval and then she sat down with her news director.  Ed Smith, who was in his early 50s, had been on the TV news merry-go-round for almost 30 years and had dragged his family through more than a dozen cities and jobs.  He thought he was smart and successful but Becky had concluded his only skill was disguising his incompetence with talk.

“Well, it’s long,” Smith said as he passed the printout back to Becky.

“That’s all?”  She laughed.  “I write a story that has a Nobel Laureate on camera saying the end of the human race might be approaching and you say it’s long?”

“Look, are you sure about this one, Acuna?  Because I’m not.  I’m backing you up because you say you’ve got it nailed.  And it looks like you’ve got everything in here.  But Christ, we are gonna just get the shit kicked out of us when this airs.”

“What do you mean, Ed?”

“You know what in the hell I mean.  We are either going to be a local station doing one hell of a big story, maybe the biggest story ever, or we are going to be the goddamned laughingstock of journalism.  There’s no middle on this one, is there, Beck?”

“I guess not but I’ve got no idea what I am supposed to do but report what I have,” she said.  “I don’t have the background to question this any more than I have.  We are talking about a Nobel Laureate, remember?”

“Yeah, I know.”  Ed Smith leaned backwards in his executive chair and straightened his tie over the great rolling mound of his stomach.  “I’ve never before been in the position of hoping one of my reporters has something wrong, Acuna.  You know what?  I hope to glory hell you are all wrong on this and so is Crawford.”

Becky got up to leave.  “Thanks for your support, Mr. Smith.”

While her report was being edited and prepared for broadcast, Becky agonized over its endless implications and dire science fiction scenarios.  People were going to be frightened and some might even commit suicide to avoid being among the final survivors in a world becoming barren of humans.  Conspiracy theories would proliferate about who created Slims Disease and why.  They would be endlessly frightening and many of them would be based upon a germ of logic, which would make them even more disturbing.

Becky remembered a couple of studies she had read more than a decade ago about the stress of overpopulation on the planet.  Conducted by Stanford and Vanderbilt Universities, researchers had tried to establish an optimal carrying capacity for Earth based upon a need to sustain resources indefinitely.  She recalled the figure being about 3.5 billion humans as a maximum population before permanent depletion began to set up eventual eco-system collapse.  Already, there were twice that many people in the world as the report considered sustainable and there was not enough food or water or even oil and the result was war, starvation, and endless suffering.

The questions that occurred to Becky about all of this were endless.  Was Slims Disease a natural by-product of the overpopulation or was it a clandestine effort to deal with the overcrowded world?  If someone was trying to thin out the crowd, who was it?  Did they think they were doing something moral?  Perhaps the creators of the virus had thought they had control over the spread of Slims Disease and then it had jumped the fence that they had designed for keeping it confined.  Were they trying to get rid of certain types of people?  Was the artificial disease targeted at specific demographics?

Something had to be done about the problems of overpopulation.  They were certainly dramatic and Americans were mostly oblivious to their long term ramifications.  Just recently, Becky had read an article about the rampant population growth in Egypt.  The country had what was considered the most progressive and effective birth control program in the world and yet every nine months there were a million new babies born in Egypt.

Even in places like the U.S. the complications of too many human beings were no longer subtle.  Becky had done many stories about the Salt River Project and the difficulties of getting enough water into Phoenix to meet the demands of growth.  A series of concrete aqueducts and canals steered water away from the Colorado River and into Phoenix and Southern California and there was a limited amount of time in which even the powerful Colorado could fulfill the needs of both regions.  Yet, when Becky drove to work each day she saw the sprinklers running on green golf courses, making grass grow where it was never meant to be.  She had even traveled down to the Gulf of California to do a report on effects of the reduced flow of water from the Colorado.  Fishermen of all types in Mexico had been robbed of their source of income because the gulf had been turned into little more than a muddy sandbar and the lack of freshwater flow had destroyed the habitats needed for the breeding of new shrimp.

These were all matters that were the subtext of the report she was about to broadcast.  The editor worked three days cutting together the story and the promotions department was equally busy preparing ads to run for 48 hours in advance of the broadcast.  Becky watched the finished story the day before its air date and fretted that it was too long.  Nobody got much more than 90 seconds to impart their information in television news and this piece ran just over four minutes.  It did not matter that she was writing about the potential end of human evolution and existence; four minutes was cutting into advertising revenue.

The next morning as she was making breakfast for the kids, Becky heard the first promo when it was broadcast during a local commercial break in The Today Show. On the counter in the breakfast nook, the television showed the nearly perfect face of Heidi Jennifer Jones trying to achieve an evasive degree of gravitas.

“A one hundred percent fatal and incurable disease has entered the valley.  We’ll have full details tonight in a special report on KSUN news at ten.  Join us.”

“Yep.  Fear sells.  Scare the hell out of ‘em, Heidi,” Becky said sarcastically.

She had watched as Heidi smiled with her bright eyes cheery and her lips full and shining their peach color against her straight, white teeth.

“She’s gonna look good right to the bitter end, kids,” Becky grumbled while handing her children their cereal.

“What momma?”

“Oh nothing, son.  Just eat your breakfast.”

Anchors who had worked at KSUN through the years, Becky was certain, had never listened to the words they were reading on the teleprompter.  They read them as they were written and then smiled at the end of their stories for the express purposes of appearing attractive and making sure anyone watching the news did not get so depressed they did not tune in again.  A strange and deadly disease was loosed in America and nobody had any idea of how or why or what to do to stop it and Heidi was turning on her sexy smile to make men want to watch KSUN.  Jesus, television news is crazier than the world it attempts to report on, Becky thought.

At the station, no one said a word to her about the big story.  Normally, when she did work that was exemplary or was a part of a project the photographers and editors admired they often summoned each other back to an editing bay to preview the piece prior to broadcast.  Instead, the Slims Disease story had simply been cued up in the producer’s show rundown and she got no impression there was either concern about the facts or pride in her accomplishment of capturing such a profoundly important piece of information.

At home that evening, she had a quiet dinner with Gene and the kids and kept her cell phone close in the event the station’s general manager called from his vacation in Colorado to say he was going to embargo the story.  The phone never buzzed, though, and after she put the kids to bed she sat on the deck with Gene and watched the sky darken and then speckle with stars.

“How do you think this is going to go, Beck?” her husband asked.

“I don’t know, honey.  It’s possible it’ll just be overwhelming.”

“Are you ready for that?”

“I wasn’t ready for Barton Crawford to call me,” she said.  “So there’s no reason I should be ready for whatever comes from that call, I suppose.”

A distant wail of jet engines caught their attention and they turned in time to see the landing lights roll up on the wings of an aircraft approaching from the east.  The plane looked bigger than anything that had touched down at Luke in the past year and a half.

“I think that’s a KC135 or a 747, Beck.  Maybe they’re just bringing in all sorts of medical equipment.”

“God, Gene.  I hope that’s it.”

Gene reached inside the back door and picked up the binoculars they had been habitually leaving in a handy spot near the deck.  The great wheels of the jumbo jet looked like talons of a giant bird and they squawked on the old runway before the plane rumbled toward the other end of the 10,000 foot stretch of tarmac.  Even in the darkness, Becky saw that the aircraft was unmarked and painted a battleship gray.  While the pilot was turning around his big jet, a line of vehicles curled out from behind the corner of the building that Vicente Cantu had told Becky was the Bleak House, or Building 3C.  They stopped parallel to the runway and each driver turned off his lights.  Becky counted at least twenty trucks or EMT wagons.

“I can’t believe this, Gene.  Are they bringing in that many people?”

“I don’t know, honey.  I have no idea.”

He handed Becky the binoculars.  She stood and watched as the jumbo jet stopped and the engines wound down.  Someone jumped from one of the panel vans and placed chocks beneath the aircraft’s wheels.  The giant turbines stopped spinning and a ramp was lowered at the back of the fuselage.  In less than a minute, people began to slowly move down the incline toward the trucks.  Becky did not think to count but there were dozens and the unloading took almost an hour with the intravenous hookups and gurneys.  There may have been as many as 200 people climbing into the parade of vehicles and a few of trucks made more than one trip between Bleak House and the cargo bay of the jet.

“My god, what are they going to do with all of those people?  Kill ‘em?”

Becky turned to her husband who was leaning against the rail of the deck beside her.

“They don’t have to, Beck.  Remember?”

Gene looked at his watch in the dim light through the kitchen window.  “It’s a few minutes to ten.  Let’s go inside and watch your story.”

“Okay.  And then we turn off all phones and go to bed.  Whatever it causes, I am putting off until tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

The newscast opened and the KSUN anchors did their best to adopt a serious mien.  The beach blonde male began the introduction.

“Good evening.  Some startling information to report to you tonight.  KSUN news has learned of the presence of a deadly virus here in the Valley of the Sun.  It causes a fatal illness known as Slims Disease.”

“Biff Rock,” as almost everyone in the newsroom was now calling the male anchor, turned to stylish Heidi to pick up the introduction.

“And Slims Disease, our Becky Acuna has learned, is being treated at a special facility on the former Luke Air Force Base.  In her exclusive report tonight, she talks with a Nobel Laureate scientist who has been leading the U.S. government’s attempts to find a cure.”

The opening pictures were video of ghostly figures shuffling through the desert haze floating between airplanes and emergency vehicles parked on a runway.  Beneath the pictures, Becky’s narration was delivered with an emotionless tempo.

“No one knows who these people are.  Their names are a secret.  None of them is believed to still be alive.  But for the past few years, these sick and anonymous souls have been arriving via unmarked aircraft at the old Luke Air Force Base facilities.”

The camera began a long, slow zoom into the portion of the Bleak House visible from Becky’s deck.

“According to KSUN’s sources, many of them directly involved in the work, the individuals being secretly brought to Luke are treated for a fatal disease in this old hangar.  Formerly known as 3C, government employees on the inside say it is now referred to as the Bleak House, a place where physicians and researchers are desperately trying to save people dying from a mysterious disease.  But they have apparently had no success.”

Vicente appeared on camera to clarify.  “I got a job in Bleak House when it started.”  He paused and looked away like he was trying to remember details.  “I’ve helped to care for hundreds of people with Slims Disease.  Not one of them survived.  Not one.  They just die and their bodies are cremated somewhere so that their sickness will be burned up with them.  I don’t think the government should be keeping this a secret any longer.”

The camera cut to shots of Vicente walking down a desert trail toward his sister’s house.

“Cantu, who says he works in the so-called Bleak House as an orderly, is convinced he has personal experience with Slims Disease,” Becky continued.  “Although he has no clinical proof, Cantu believes his sister has somehow become infected with the deadly virus.”

Becky Acuna’s face appeared on the screen with a backdrop of the desert spreading in sunset light.  “Cantu’s sister agreed to be interviewed about what is happening to her.  However it is communicated, Slims Disease found her at her home in the rural desert outside of Phoenix.  Her appearance, she acknowledges, is startling.  And it will likely be disturbing to some viewers of this report.”

Immediately after Becky’s on camera “standup” had concluded, the editor had cut to her brief interview exchange with Angel Mata.

“What do you think has happened to you, Mrs. Mata?”

“I don’t know.”

The camera gave Angel’s skin an even more chalky white hue and the harsh TV lights highlighted the shadows cast by her protruding bone structure.

“Do you have any idea?”

“My brother says it’s Bleak House.  Where he works.  They can’t cure it.”

“What is it?”

“Slims Disease?  I think he calls it.”

“How’d you get it?”

“Don’t know.  They say sex.  Maybe some other way.  Only have sex with my husband.”

Anyone watching the brief clip with Angel Mata might have made the mistake of thinking they were watching an animated skeleton.  Becky thought the woman’s appearance was more disturbing on the television screen than it had been in person.

“The man leading the research and treatment teams at Bleak House has no scientific proof that Slims Disease is transmitted sexually.”  Barton Crawford was shown looking into a microscope as Becky’s narration continued.  “Dr. Barton Crawford, a Nobel Laureate in virology, says he has, however, proved something about the virus that causes Slims Disease.  And he is frightened by his own findings.”

“Slims Disease is not a natural occurring sickness borne of conditions in nature.  It was artificially created, synthesized.  Someone invented this presently, unstoppable disease.  I am certain of that now after running these procedures dozens of times and exposing it to mice.  The next questions are who did this and why.”

“While he does not have answers to those questions, Dr. Crawford does claim to have the data he needs to prove the Slims Disease virus was designed and created by someone and was not produced by nature.  According to his findings, it is a product of a genetic connection between two animal viruses.  The Bovine Visna Virus in cattle, which is shown here under microscopic amplification, and the Sheep Visna Virus, were either genetically spliced together or were cultured in the same human tissue to create HIV1, the precursor to Slims Disease.  HIV1, shown in this slide from Crawford’s research, is a Human Immunodeficiency Virus and attacks the body’s ability to defend itself from disease.”

“It has mutated beyond that now,” Crawford explained on camera.  “It’s doing things now that we cannot isolate or explain, consuming flesh and energy and causing organ shutdown.  We’ve had very few patients die from illnesses they contracted from weakened immune systems, though we take great precaution to make sure no one brings a bug into any of their rooms.”

Still photos of dead cattle, bloated and cut, appeared on screen.  Becky had taken most of them from the Internet because Crawford was worried about any of his pictures revealing identities or locations of ranchers he had promised anonymity.

“God, Beck.” Gene whispered.  “That’s awful.  No wonder they ran this at ten instead of the dinner hour newscast.”

“We aren’t that considerate, honey.  10 p.m. is just the biggest audience.  That’s all.  Listen.”

“Crawford took an unconventional approach to some of his research.  He began by examining mutilated cattle found on ranches throughout the U.S.  The animals are often found with surgically precise cuts that have removed their sexual organs.  All blood is also drained from their bodies.  The phenomenon did not lead Crawford to a cure for Slims Disease but he thinks it is connected.

“It seems likely,” Crawford told Becky on camera.  “That cattle were used to either host the original forms of Slims or test it for virility or they are being used in a desperate effort to create a vaccine or some sort of cure.  In any case, whoever or whatever is conducting the experiments on cattle has a level of technology with which I am not familiar.”

“According to Crawford,” Becky’s narration resumed, “Slims Disease readily mutates to resist all experimental treatments, which tend to make the virus even stronger.  He believes it represents a grave risk to everyone.  Crawford says the disease appears to be moving out of control in parts of Africa while the U.S. government continues refusing to even formally acknowledge its existence.

“We have no knowledge of any type of virus you are describing or anything referred to as the Slims Disease.”  A white-haired public information officer from the National Institutes of Health, wearing a dark suit and pale blue tie, stared round-eyed and unblinking into the camera.  “While we have great respect for the work of Dr. Barton Crawford, the NIH is concerned that he is being alarmist about what may simply be animal borne viruses, which are, in most cases, not fatal.”

Becky’s face was the final one that viewers saw as she concluded her story with a shot framed up against the entrance to Luke Air Force Base.

“If Dr. Crawford’s science is as accurate as it has been throughout his career,” she said, “then we are all at great risk of eventual infection by the Slims Disease virus.  The government’s refusal to confirm the existence of the Bleak House Project, Slims Disease, or even the scientific data offered by Crawford, raises serious questions about how this emerging health crisis is being managed by Washington.  Becky Acuna, KSUN News.”

Becky picked up the remote and clicked off the television before she was forced to listen to inane comments from Heidi and Biff Rock.  She saw her husband staring at the black screen.

“Beck?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Gene,” she said.  “Not tonight, please.  I just want to go to bed and have you hold me.  Please.”

“Beck, we live right next to this.  Our kids.”

“I know, Gene.  I know.  Let’s go to bed.  We can talk about this tomorrow.”

In the morning, while getting dressed for work, Becky turned on her cell phone expecting several voice mail messages.  There was only one call and it was from Vicente Cantu.  Gene caught her crying when he walked in and saw her listening to the recording.

“Miss Acuna.  This is Vicente Cantu.  I wanted to tell you my sister died last night before she saw herself on TV.  I guess that’s good, verdad?  She used to be so beautiful.  I wish you could have seen her back then.  We aren’t telling anyone.  Roberto and I are going to bury her out in the desert where she can still see her house.  I don’t want them to come get her and burn her like all the others.  We don’t believe in that.  I guess I better go.  I wonder what’s going to happen to me.  Good bye, Miss Acuna.”

Becky drove to work that morning uncertain she had done the right thing.