The Administrator (10 page)

“You’re probably right, but all the information I’ve gathered shows that something crashed there, and it was not a weather balloon.”

“So what?”

“I’m not sure, but something keeps nagging at me. I feel like I should know more than I do.”

“Adam, you’ve been working too hard. That’s all. You’re letting this capitalistic frenzy in Roswell color your judgment. Those people are just promoting such tales for the money it brings in from tourists. You haven’t seen much of the world. You don’t know how devious people can be. They’ll do anything for a buck.”

“I haven’t seen any of the world, Doctor. I’ve spent my whole life seventeen stories beneath this complex ... at least all of my life that I can remember.”

Kate frowned and nodded. “Yes. I suppose you’re right, but believe me, as far as I know, there are no aliens.”

Adam studied the two lumps under his robe that were his knees. “Doctor?”

“Yes, Adam.”

“Where are we?”

“Why, we are at the complex.”

“No. I mean where are we geographically? I’ve studied astronomy, and I’ve calculated the position of the moon and stars from my trips to the surface at night. We are in New Mexico, aren’t we? I’d say about fifty miles northwest of Almagordo. Somewhere in the White Sands vicinity. Am I right?”

“Adam, I....”

“Am I right?”

She studied the still smoldering yucca plant and without raising her eyes, answered, “Yes.”

“Only a hundred or so miles from the crash site. Right?”

“I—” Her answer was cut off by a burly guard’s sudden appearance in the entrance to the complex that they had just come through.

The guard strode over to them, stood at attention and saluted stiffly. “Ma’am. The colonel says to take Adam back to his quarters.”

She stood up, faced the soldier and asked, “Why?”

“I don’t know, Ma’am. My orders are to escort the two of you to Adam’s quarters and then see you safely to yours.” The stone-faced guard rested his right hand lightly on the butt of his rifle as he spoke.

Kate turned to Adam. “We had better go. We will talk more tomorrow.” She led the way inside the door and to the elevator.

Adam followed, keeping his powered chair at its minimum speed and noticed that her hands were trembling almost imperceptibly as she shoved them into her sweater pockets.

The guard strode rigidly behind them.

* * *

Adam heard the soft click of the lock sliding into place on his door as the guard silently closed it. He stared at the locked door that seemed to be a seamless part of the wall for a long time. His thoughts tumbled over each other, falling into a jumbled chaos that he could make no sense of. Eventually his mind grasped one indistinct, fleeting thought and recoiled immediately. It was too repulsive for him to comprehend. He lifted himself from the chair onto the bed and tried to sleep, but one thought kept flaring up in his mind even as he fought to keep it from surfacing. It can’t be true, he told himself. He glanced at the spy-eye gleaming ruby red as it focused on his bed, then swiveled slowly to pan the room. Its beam fell onto the computer, onto his biological equipment-ladened work bench crammed into the opposite corner from his bed, onto the closet-sized cubicle that was his bathroom, and finally swung full circle to rest its gaze again upon Adam lying quietly on his bunk.

He finally fell into a fitful, phantom filled sleep.

When he woke a few hours later, he didn’t—couldn’t—move for a moment. He was frozen with horror at what he had dreamed. While he slept, his brilliant mind had pieced together the puzzle, but it was almost too much for his conscious mind to assimilate.

He kept his eyes deactivated and mentally reviewed the printouts he had downloaded earlier that evening. That undertaker, he thought. He said they asked him for child size coffins. The nurse who talked to the undertaker—she was transferred the next day, then killed in an airplane crash. The people who disappeared shortly after 1947 ... the suicides ... the nurse ... the nurse. The cruel fist of fear punched deep into his stomach, and his heart filled his throat. The nurse—something about the nur—Oh, God! He searched his mind for a picture of her. He found it. A blurred and yellowed black and white photo in one of the files. I know that face!

* * *

That evening, Dr. Kate palmed the door and entered his room. She glanced at the camera and said, “Well, Adam, want to go outside again tonight? It’s a beautiful night.”
 

Before he could answer, she grabbed the back of his wheelchair and pushed him through the door. In the garden, she strolled over to the stone bench farthest away from the entrance to the underground compound. Adam followed silently, and only the soft “whishhh” of his chair’s motor broke the stillness of the dark night.

Kate sat down and spoke quietly. “I have given what you said last night a lot of thought, Adam. I can’t answer many of your questions, and I’m not sure what you were leading up to. Exactly what were you trying to tell me?”

He positioned his chair next to her so he would have a clear view of the double doors to the complex. “Doctor Kate, I remember now.”

“Remember what?”

“Who I was before the accident.”

Her expression hardened almost imperceptibly, and the frown on her forehead deepened. In the dim light, Adam couldn’t tell if her face mirrored surprise or agitation, but her voice was cool and controlled. “When did you remember?” She asked quietly.

“This morning. I pieced it all together.” He laid his hand on hers. It was the first time he could remember voluntarily touching anyone. “I need your help, Doctor. If I tell you what I know, you have to promise that you will go public with it. Not to the authorities. I don’t know how high up on the chain of command the conspiracy goes.”

“Conspiracy?”

I don’t know if I can trust her, he thought. But I’ve got to trust someone. He took a deep breath and said, “Do you promise? It may be dangerous. I believe that the last few people who tried to expose them are all dead. Suicides and accidents. At least they seemed to be suicides and accidents.”

Her face paled visibly even in the dim light. She swallowed hard and nodded.

“Doctor Kate, you said last night that no government official could keep his mouth shut about anything for fifty years.”

“Yes.”

“But military people can. At least the upper echelon. They are trained for secrecy. Like the personnel here in my little prison.”

“Adam, it’s not a pris—”
 

“Yes! It is, and you know it. I’ve been here for fifty years. I have never been outside this compound even once in all that time. I’ve studied fiberoptics, lasers, DNA, cloning and much more. My job is to identify certain traits or characteristics of whatever task I’m given and come up with a workable idea.”

She avoided his eyes and looked at her hands. She didn’t answer.

“What happens to those ideas? I theorized about micro-electronics, and within a few years, laboratories everywhere were experimenting with personal computers. I isolated DNA patterns in lab animals, and a short while later, medical experiments based on my idea began. The list is long, Doctor, very long.”

“Yes but I don’t see what this has to do with a conspiracy. It seems that your work is made public knowledge so experts can take your seed theories and build on them for major, scientific breakthroughs.”

He sighed, then retorted in uncharacteristic anger, “You don’t get it, do you? Is it public knowledge that I was used in biological experiments from the moment of my birth? Is it public knowledge that I and other children were artificially enhanced both physically and mentally? Is it public knowledge that I was not aboard that experimental aircraft with my parents, but that I was the pilot?

Her eyes widened into oval pools almost as large as his. “What? That’s impossible. You were just a child, barely nine years old when your plane went down.”

“Exactly. Physically, I was a child, but an enhanced child—a genius whose natural abilities were refined and improved upon by experiments using drugs, brain washing and God knows what else.”

“But your parents. Surely they—”

“I had no parents. At least not after my birth. I and the others were bred for a specific purpose. Bred, Doctor. To use in experiments. I’m not sure exactly what we were supposed to do, but it was drummed into our brains that we had a specific purpose. At age nine, I could fly as well as any adult pilot. Better than most because of my genetic make-up.”

“I know that you are special both mentally and physically, but you said there were others. I’ve never heard of or seen anyone else like you. Not in my entire career.”

“Three of them died in the crash. I saw their bodies. That undertaker they called in 1947 from the Roswell Army Airfield to ask for child-sized coffins is telling the truth. Only it wasn’t for aliens. They needed coffins for my crew. Do you remember the story about the nurse? The one who was the undertaker’s friend? The one that told him about the strange creature in the hospital operating room?”

“But Adam, there are many stories about that stupid crash. None of them can be substantiated.”

“This one can! That nurse was the one I remember bringing surgical instruments to the doctors while they were working on me.” He held up his hand and traced his smooth featureless face. “If this is what you saw on that operating table, would you recognize it as human? The story says that immediately after the incident, she was transferred and later died in an airplane crash. Convenient. Wouldn’t you say?”

Are you saying that the United States Military was experimenting on children? That they were trying to create some ... some super race? But that’s impossible. It’s ... it’s inhuman. It’s what the Nazis did, not us!”

“Don’t you get it Doctor? What’s the one reason that the government had to keep quiet for so many years? If the truth is so horrible, so detestable that the American public would not stand for it, would rebel, would call for war criminal trials right here in America, then they would have to keep it covered up. They must have been pretty happy when the rumors about aliens started flying. In fact, I’m positive that they fed those rumors while pretending a cover-up. Pretending to hide aliens was a lot safer than letting the public find out the truth. The truth that children were flying in experimental aircraft to test the effects of high speed on the human body. The truth that the Nazis weren’t the only ones experimenting on humans.”

Her face had become a stunned death mask. “But what about the others? You said there were more of you.”

“I don’t know, but I do know that after the allied forces invaded Germany and captured the concentration camps, not all of the records of their atrocious human experiments were destroyed. I believe that some of those experiments were performed on us—the children.”

“My God! If this is true, we must expose them. But how? Do we have proof?”

“We have me. One look at me and everyone will believe us.”

“Yes. Yes of course. But how do we get you out of here?”

“I’m not sure, but with your help, we can do it. I have a plan. Come back tomorrow night, and I will explain it to you.”

“But what....”

The metal door clanged open interrupting her question, and another burly guard marched toward them, his right hand gripping his rifle close to his chest. He didn’t salute. “The colonel says to return you both to your quarters.”

He marched behind them as they entered the elevator and stood silently at attention on the long ride down.

Alone again in his room, Adam allowed himself to hope. The guard had been a little more curt than usual, but that one was always more abrupt and less polite than most, so he decided not to let it stop him from making plans. There is no way they could have heard us in the garden, he thought. I can’t afford to get paranoid now. He could almost taste the sweet flavor of freedom. He even allowed himself to consider getting prosthetic feet and maybe learning to walk with crutches. He hauled his body onto the bed and shut down his eyes. He imagined what it would feel like to walk down a real street, in a real town. He reactivated his eyes, looked down the length of his short body and frowned. Maybe real skin grafts? He thought. Maybe plastic surgery would give me lips and ears. Hell! I could even get a nose job. He chuckled aloud, but caught himself short of actually laughing. The camera and hidden microphones lurked as tangible evidence that it wasn’t over yet. But soon, he thought. Doctor Kate will help. I know I can trust her. He forced his mind into planning ways to get outside, to get to the media, and he spent the night devising a plan. When he finally fell asleep, the dream did not come back. He slept restfully for the first time in fifty years.

When she closed the door to Adam’s room, Kate turned to face the soldier behind her. “I’m not going to quarters right now, she said. I’m going to see the colonel.”

The soldier said, “Yes, Doctor. He is expecting you.” Then he turned and marched stiffly down the iron gray corridor away from her.

She didn’t knock on the colonel’s door. She never did. The door to his private quarters opened only to two people’s palm prints, the colonel’s—and hers.

He was seated behind his desk. A bottle of champagne and two chilled glasses sat in front of him. He smiled and stood up when she entered.