The Extinction Event (32 page)

“You got here fast,” Caroline said.

“You have to learn to be less self-centered, Caroline,” Keating said. “I wasn't here because of you. There's a seminar I was interested in, one I'm missing, it's true, because of you. I suppose we can chalk this up to a happy coincidence.”

Keating paused.

“At least,” Keating said, “I hope it will turn out to be happy.”

“Why did you hire someone to kill me?” Jack said.

Keating ignored Jack's question and asked one of his own:

“Why did you visit the motel that burned down?”

“You've been tracking us?” Caroline said.

“Based on cell phone data,” Keating said, “peoples' daily roaming habits mimic movements of carnivores looking for prey.”

“That doesn't sound like we should be less self-centered,” Caroline said. “It sounds like we
should
be paranoid.”

“Things are rarely what they seem,” Keating said. “The Duchess of Windsor worked for Allied Intelligence. Her job was to seduce Edward, who was pro-Nazi, so he would have to abdicate and the British government could go forward with an unambiguous anti-Nazi policy. Errol Flynn was spying for the Nazis, while Cary Grant was working for the OSS. Have you been to East Brunswick? To the copper mines? Where they kept Tories during the War of Independence. Like Guantanamo. But successful nations forget their sins.”

“Everyone finds his own conspiracy,” Jack said, thinking of Shapiro.

“There are no conspiracies,” Keating said. “Just like-minded people trying to get something done. And some things are better done in secret.”

“Why, Mr. Flowers,” Caroline asked, “are you a spy?”

“I wouldn't go into the business today,” Keating said. “Now, it's all private contractors who spend most of their time investigating each other.”

“Electrical pollution is a secret,” Jack said. He didn't frame it as a question. “National security.”

“The strength of the people,” Keating said, “is that they survive the stupidity and incompetence of their leaders.”

“Even when they're kept in the dark,” Caroline said.

“The greatest nation in the history of history,” Keating said, “the shining city on the hill turns out to be a shopping mall, its flickering lights running on emergency power. We all know it's a rigged game.”

“And Frank threatened to blow the whistle,” Jack said.

“As people become aware, they feel cheated,” Keating said. “That's why most people prefer not to know.”

“You don't believe they have a right to know?” Caroline asked.

“In Micronesia,” Keating said, “testicular ablation—crushing of a testicle—was once common practice. A practice no one questioned because of the authority of the community.”

“Of the community
leaders
,” Caroline said.

“When people begin to question their leaders,” Keating said, “the community suffers. Unfortunately, we're going through such a period. Today, everything's change and conflict.”

“And it's your job to make sure the American people don't find out that the electrical toys they depend on are poisoning them?” Jack said.

“Because,” Caroline said, “we'd end up marching backward two centuries.”

“The American people,” Keating said. “You make them sound like some monolithic creature. Some great beast like—You've seen the vegetable man.”

“
Stan the Vegetable Man
,” Caroline said.

“That's the one,” Keating said. “Zucchini legs, a tomato head. An American Leviathan. An agrarian colossus appropriate for a society that finds its mythic roots as an agrarian Eden.”

“
You
make the American people sound like something alien,” Jack said.

“As alien to me as any bugeye monster,” Keating said. “My world is dead, Mr. Slidell.”

“Mr. Slidell,” Jack said. “Jack no more?”

“It's been a delightful game,” Keating said, “but any game that goes on too long is a bore.”

“Tell me about your dead world, Mr. Flowers,” Jack said. “I think I missed the funeral.”

“It died half a century ago,” Keating said. “When we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we also destroyed our country as surely as if we'd unleashed thousands of atom bombs in a global holocaust. We destroyed the Old Republic. My world.” He nodded at Caroline. “Her world.”

“Not my world,” Caroline said.

“Oh, yes,” Keating said. “Your world ended so completely before you were born, you don't even know what you're missing.”

“Class warfare, huh?” Jack asked.

“I would think you might understand all about class warfare, Mr. Slidell,” Keating said. “After all, your side won.”

“Too bad I missed out when they distributed the spoils,” Jack said.

Keating shook his head.

“What a terrible century,” he said, “full of horror and fast food. Fast food and reality TV.”

“At least we have some sort of reality,” Caroline said.

“Some sort, yes,” Keating said. Almost to himself. “Caroline, go back to work. Mr. Slidell find something to do. Get your law license back. I'm sure there's a way. You seem to like each other. Get married. Settle down. You don't need to cause problems for yourselves.”

“The guy you sent to kill me is dead,” Jack said.

“You keep making assumptions,” Keating said.

“You're saying he wasn't working for you?” Caroline said.

“It's complicated,” Keating said. “And it doesn't matter anymore.”

“Because—” Jack started.

“Because,” Keating said, “as far as you're concerned, he never existed.”

“I was attacked by a ghost?” Jack said.

“If you want,” Keating said.

“Frank's dead,” Jack said. “Jean's dead.”

“You can't change anything,” Keating said.

“Jean was your daughter,” Caroline said.

“
We
can't change anything,” Keating said.

“Robert's dead,” Jack said.

“Civilization,” Keating said, “happens when we give up revenge.”

“And let the state handle it,” Jack said. “Whatever
it
is.”

Keating nodded.

“Who hired the Cowboy? Caroline asked.

Keating was silent.

Caroline got very still.

“The state
was
handling it,” Caroline said.

3

“I'd rather you left,” Keating said. “But—”

Keating sighed.

“Okay,” Keating said, “Frank realized Jean was suffering from something more than drugs. He thought a class-action suit against Mohawk Electric might make him rich and famous. But he ran into problems.”

“You scared off witnesses,” Jack said. “Like Shapiro.”

“What he really wanted,” Keating said, “was to make it all-inclusive. National. Global. All electric companies.”

“That's why you got rid of him?” Caroline asked.

“He was a diligent researcher,” Keating said. “Too good. He was looking for anything that would help him in his suit. Including anything in my life he might use to prevail upon me to cooperate.”

“Frank wasn't a blackmailer,” Jack said.

“Not only a blackmailer. “Keating said. “A magnificent blackmailer. The Napoleon of blackmailers. Or so he believed. He began to think a shakedown might be more profitable than a lawsuit. Of course, that way he'd get rich but forgo fame.”

“How many people have you killed?” Jack asked. “Had killed?”

“Frank stumbled on something much bigger, much more sensitive than electrical pollution,” Keating said.

Keating held the door open.

Jack and Caroline glanced at each other—
in for a penny, in for a pound
—and went through the door into the hall, waited for Keating to take the lead, and followed him down the hall, down the stairs, down a second set of stairs, below ground.

Keating led Jack and Caroline into a tunnel.

The walls, ceiling, and floors were white. Shoulder height were kids' crayoned pictures from some school visit to the observatory. Amber-Lynn. Amanda-Lynn. Carol-Lynn. Tashi. Cyndi. Porn star names. Raphael. Toshi. Henree.

Above them, the white neon tubes buzzed. Red, blue, and green stripes ran along the floor, as in a hospital.

First the red stripe branched off. Then, the blue.

Keating kept them on the green stripe.

A corner of the molding was water stained.

“It's amazing what science can do,” Keating said. “At the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon, macaque monkeys with electrodes in their brains have learned to control a robotic arm with their thoughts.”

At an elevator door, Keating pressed a button, which lit up.

“When I was a young man and the world was new,” Keating said. “Or when it seemed new to me, we read
Idylls of the King
in school. King Arthur and his Round Table.”

The door opened. They entered the elevator, which was white top, bottom, and sides.

The enclosure smelled like old sweat socks.

“That Christmas,” Keating said, “Becky Foster gave me a toy knight on a charger. I still have it.”

The elevator rose.

Caroline felt her stomach drop.

“The seminar I'm missing,” Keating said, “the seminar you're causing me to miss, is on an interesting topic. FOPEN. A foliage penetration devise developed by Lockheed Martin, which allows unmanned planes to see targets. Or, rather, the child of that project—TRACER.”

“Why are you telling us that?” Jack asked.

“To show I trust you?” Keating said. “No. It's not that big a secret. Neither is this: On Norway's Spitsbergen Island in the Arctic Circle, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is storing seeds from all over the planet. Eventually, two billion two hundred and twenty-five million seeds. At minus-eighteen degrees Celsius. The seeds can last two hundred years even if the power were lost. Some seeds could last longer. Sorghum seeds could last twenty thousand years.”

“Why?” Caroline asked.

Keating didn't answer.

The elevator door opened.

They entered a circular room, filled with banks of electronics. A dozen people, some in white coats, others in street clothes moved purposely to and fro.

The floor of the laboratory was reddish brown, like a desert. The lighting was bright, but not glaring. Above them was a catwalk. Above the catwalk was the dome, criss-crossed with girders. Vast. Like a cathedral.

Cradled in a giant horseshoe was the telescope as large around and as tall as a silo.

“This two hundred inch is one of four telescopes we have on site,” Keating said. “It has a single borosilicate mirror. We also have a sixty inch. A forty-eight inch. And an eighteen inch. I wish I could take requests and show you something in the heavens you've always wanted to see. But we have our nightly schedules. Our rituals.”

Jack felt something. Not exactly a vibration. Not exactly a sound.

“A forty-kilometer-wide object looped past Neptune and is headed back to the Oort Cloud, a source of long-period comets,” Keating said. “A twenty-two thousand five hundred year elongated orbit will take it back to a region two-hundred-forty billion kilometers from sun. It was first spotted in two-thousand six.”

The telescope started moving. Raising its eye higher—as the shutter of the dome began to open, revealing the night sky, spangled with stars.

“One of the largest members of the asteroid family is Baptistina,” Keating said. “Twenty-five miles across. Among two thousand smaller objects from the same family.”

The whole dome began moving, swinging around in a circle as the telescope came to a rest at about a forty-five degree angle.

Like a carnival ride, Caroline thought.

“One hundred and sixty million years ago, give or take twenty million years,” Keating said—like a senator talking about the economy, comfortable with inconceivably large numbers—“an asteroid, maybe a hundred ten miles across, collided with another large planetary body, producing a very large chunk of space rock—Baptistina—and some smaller bodies, one of which may have landed in the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico. Another may have hit the moon and caused a crater we can see named after Tycho Brahe, the sixteenth century Danish astronomer. The object that hit the Yucatán—there's discussion on what exactly it was and where it came from—may have caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event sixty-five million years ago. Which resulted in the death of the dinosaurs and many other species.”

“What's this got to do with Frank?” Jack asked.

“Then, there's Apophis,” Keating said. “We were a little concerned about it. At first, it looked as if there were a two point seven probability it would hit Earth in two thousand twenty-nine. Now, we're not quite so worried. We like to keep track of things like that. We—and some other people. The Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. And other places around the globe.”

Caroline, who had been staring at the night sky, looked at Keating.

“It's beautiful,” she said.

“We think of the orbits of the heavenly objects as if they were God's clockwork,” Keating said. “But it's pretty chaotic up there. As chaotic as weather.”

Keating went to a computer and typed. A video screen came up.

“The last time someone showed me a video on a computer,” Jack said, thinking of Shapiro, “it showed a holocaust.”

“Oh, yes?” Keating said.

Keating hit enter.

On the monitor, Jack and Caroline saw an animation of a giant asteroid approaching the Earth. Casting a shadow across continents. Across seas. Hitting—its impact blasting outward in concentric circles. The firestorm pulsing out in concentric circles. Until the whole planet was on fire. Burning until the Earth was nothing but a cinder. Dead rock.