The Orion Plan (11 page)

At first the observations baffled her. The rock had crystallized from Martian lava during an era when the Red Planet was covered with oceans. In the cracks and pores of the meteorite Sarah found tiny globules of carbonate minerals that had most likely formed after water seeped into the rock. And within those globules she found even tinier structures that looked like rice grains and segmented tubes. She showed the microscope images to some of her colleagues and friends, hoping one of them might know what could have created the odd features. The answer came from another NASA researcher, Tom Gilbert, who had expertise in astrobiology and also happened to be Sarah's fiancé. He said he'd seen similar structures inside rocks found on Earth. They were the fossilized remains of ancient bacteria.

The next month was a frenzy of activity. Sarah gathered her evidence and showed it to her bosses. She spent months writing the research paper, carefully choosing her words. She couldn't say whether life still existed on Mars. Even if those tiny tubes were indeed fossils of microorganisms, the primitive creatures had probably gone extinct after the planet became drier and colder. But it was a momentous discovery nonetheless. It showed that Earth wasn't unique. Life could develop on many worlds across the galaxy.

NASA scheduled a press conference to announce the results. Unfortunately, someone leaked the news beforehand, and dozens of reporters flocked to Johnson Space Center. Sarah was delighted by all the attention, but when she came to the podium to answer the journalists' questions she spoke a bit too impetuously. She said the evidence for past life on Mars was clear and convincing. “We now have proof that we're not alone,” she declared. “Extraterrestrial life is probably so abundant that we're bound to see more of it soon.”

The reaction was swift. When a twenty-six-year-old researcher makes such sweeping statements and receives so much attention from the media, it can irritate people who've spent decades investigating the topic. Several scientists argued that the minuscule tubes inside the Martian meteorite weren't all that similar to the microfossils of Earth bacteria. Other researchers noted that ordinary geological heating and cooling could've created the microscopic structures. Within a few days it became clear she hadn't convinced the scientific community. The turnabout embarrassed NASA officials, and one of them asked Sarah to retract her claims about Martian life. At first she refused, but after several weeks of tension she gave in.

But that wasn't the worst blow. It was the end of her engagement that triggered her breakdown. When the criticism of Sarah's research started pouring in from all sides, her fiancé got nervous. Tom Gilbert was angling for a promotion to an administrative position at Johnson Space Center, and he knew he wouldn't get it unless he distanced himself from Sarah. So he reversed his earlier opinion, saying he'd been too hasty when he'd declared that the meteorite structures resembled microfossils. After studying the structures more carefully, he concluded there was little resemblance. He participated in a second NASA press conference at which researchers dismissed Sarah's findings.

She was horrified by his betrayal. Enraged, she sneaked into his office late at night and smashed his computer. She couldn't help it—her impetuosity got the best of her again. Then she broke into Tom's apartment, filled several suitcases with his clothing, and drove to a bridge that spanned the San Jacinto River, a few miles east of Houston. Stopping her car on the bridge, she hurled the suitcases into the river, along with her engagement ring and wedding dress. She almost threw herself into the river too, but instead she got back in her car and headed for New Mexico. The next morning, she checked into the mental-health treatment center in Santa Fe.

She never spoke to Tom again—he continued to move up the ladder at NASA and eventually became a science adviser at the White House—but she kept the Zippo lighter he'd given her. The name engraved on it was the one she would've had if they'd gotten married: Sarah Pooley Gilbert. She held on to the lighter to remind herself that the truth could be slippery. The truth about the meteorite changed when Tom realized it threatened his career at NASA. The truth about their relationship changed when Sarah realized her fiancé was an asshole. During her stay in the mental-health center, the truth changed every hour, every minute: she was sick, she was healthy, she was abnormal, she was normal. The smartest strategy was to get accustomed to the changes, to go with the flow, and this approach helped Sarah recover her sanity. Twenty years later, though, she still believed her research on the meteorite had been correct. She remained the discoverer of life on Mars, even if no other scientists agreed with her.

Now she took one last puff on her cigarette and threw the stub into a trash can. The truth about Object 2016X was also slippery. Unless someone retrieved a piece of the object they might never know where it had come from. Sarah looked again at the western slope of Inwood Hill. Although the Air Force wasn't interested in that section of the park, she'd included it in the broader impact zone she'd calculated for 2016X. She wondered if she could climb the wooded hillside and take a look around.

She eyed the soldiers in front of the restaurant. She knew she was supposed to respect the chain of command and tell General Hanson what she planned to do, but she didn't like the idea of asking for permission. And besides, the soldiers were so busy stopping people from entering the cordoned area that they might not even notice if someone tried to leave. Sarah edged away from the searchlights and sidled toward the baseball fields. She was looking for an unguarded path through the woods.

Then someone shouted at her. “Dr. Pooley?”

Startled, she spun around. It was the soldier who'd allowed her to leave the restaurant. He'd probably been watching her ever since. He frowned as he stepped toward her. “Ma'am, didn't I tell you to stay away from the perimeter?”

Sarah frowned too. “Sorry, I got lost.”

“Then it's a good thing I found you. Come this way, please.”

The soldier escorted her back to the restaurant. As she reentered the place she cursed herself for signing that damn contract with the Air Force. She headed straight for the dining room, intending to have a long talk with General Hanson. But one of his junior officers intercepted her and said the general was in a meeting with his staff. The officer instructed her to sit at a table next to the restaurant's bar until Hanson was free.

Another officer already sat at the table, a white-haired colonel in his late fifties or early sixties, with ruddy cheeks and bloodshot eyes. As Sarah approached he stood up and gave her a big smile. “Good evening, ma'am,” he boomed. “You must be Sarah Pooley? The adviser from NASA that everyone's talking about?” He held out his right hand.

She hesitated, wondering how many Air Force officers knew about her assignment. Then she shook hands with the colonel. “Yes, that's me.”

“My name's Raymond Gunter. I'm General Hanson's liaison officer. That means I do all the scut work the general doesn't have time for.” His smile grew even bigger as he pumped Sarah's hand. “It's a real pleasure to meet you, ma'am. Everyone I've talked to says you're smarter than God.”

She pulled her hand out of his grip. She was too tired to respond to Colonel Gunter's enthusiasm. Her mind was getting foggy, and she didn't like the way he was looking at her. He stared at her chest as she took a seat on the other side of the table.

“So you're waiting on the general too?” The man's voice had a country-and-western twang. “Got some business to discuss?”

She nodded, then reached into her pocket for her iPhone. In her opinion, the phone's best feature was its ability to deflect unwanted conversations. All you had to do was stare at the screen. Most people took the hint.

“Yep, the general's a busy man tonight,” Gunter persisted. “I've been sitting here almost an hour, just waiting for him to get a free moment. And I got all sorts of urgent requests to pass along. From the mayor's office, the police department. Even the damn power company, Consolidated Edison of New York.”

Sarah kept her eyes on the iPhone and tapped the screen a few times. From the corner of her eye she could tell that Gunter was still staring at her chest.

“You wouldn't believe it, ma'am. Here we are, in the middle of a genuine national-security crisis, and I have to deal with complaints from Con Edison. They say our operation is straining the resources of the local electric grid. They're blaming the Air Force for power interruptions all over the neighborhood.” He let out a chuckle. “They claim we're using thirty megawatts. You're a scientist, ma'am, so I'm sure you must know how ridiculous that is.”

This got Sarah's attention. Thirty megawatts was a lot of electricity. Overruling her better instincts, she looked up from her iPhone. “How much power are you actually using?”

Gunter was delighted that she'd answered him. His bloodshot eyes twinkled. “Well, we got five searchlights plugged into the restaurant's line, but each of those is just a one kilowatt job. You'd have to run 'em for ten years to drain as much power as they say we've done.”

“So what's causing the power drain?”

The colonel raised both hands over his head in exasperation. “Ma'am, I have no idea! But if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably all the air conditioners in the neighborhood. It's hot as hell out there tonight, pardon my French.”

She felt a jolt of adrenaline, strong enough to dispel her mental fog. She did a few quick calculations in her head. “You'd need forty thousand air conditioners to use that much power.”

He nodded vigorously, bobbing his head. “You're absolutely right, ma'am. But this is a hell of a big town. I'm from Tupelo, Mississippi, and I bet you can fit a hundred Tupelos in New York City.”

Sarah was fully awake now. She knew there were dozens of perfectly reasonable explanations for a power surge during the summer in New York. But she was getting a funny feeling about this, a mix of fear and hope that roiled her stomach.

She put her iPhone in her pocket and leaned toward Colonel Gunter. “Could you do me a favor, Colonel?”

His eyes widened. He looked as happy as a lottery winner. “As long as you don't ask me to break the law, ma'am, I'd be glad to help.”

“Could you put me in touch with your contacts at Con Edison?”

 

EIGHT

Emilio was playing Battle Blood. Actually, he wasn't playing the game—he was
crushing
it. He'd never had this many kills before. And the number was still rising fast, coming closer and closer to the all-time top-ten list, which was displayed in the upper right corner of the flat-screen TV. It was
un milagro
, a fucking miracle.

He'd started playing at 1:00
A.M.
, more than an hour ago. He and Carlos sat on the couch in the living room of Carlos's apartment, both of them facing the TV and the Xbox, but Carlos had been knocked out of the game after the first fifteen minutes and now he was just watching Emilio kick ass. Emilio's character in Battle Blood was a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant in a camouflage uniform, a real badass who carried half a dozen weapons. So far he'd shot his way through twelve of the game's levels and wasted a hundred and ninety enemy soldiers in the process. He needed just seven more kills to break into the top-ten list.

Level thirteen was a swamp in the jungles of Colombia and the opposing soldiers were Marxist guerillas, but Emilio had no more trouble killing these
pendejos
than he'd had with the Chinese, Russian, and North Korean soldiers on the previous levels. His Marine sergeant bounded across the TV screen, jumping over booby traps and quicksand as Emilio flicked the toggles on the Xbox controller. A couple of guerillas shot at him from a grass-thatched hut up ahead, but he leaped out of the line of fire and slaughtered both of them by strafing the hut with his carbine. When a black helicopter came swooping over the jungle, Emilio took cover behind a palm tree and used his grenade launcher to blow the chopper to bits. Finally, as the sergeant neared the guerilla headquarters, a giant crocodile lunged out of the swamp and snapped its jaws at him, but with one swift toggle Emilio pulled a knife from the sergeant's belt and stabbed the reptile in the eye.

“Ho, shit!” Carlos whooped. “You're a fucking Rambo, hombre!”

Emilio completed the level with a total of two hundred and nine kills, which put him eighth on the all-time list. He couldn't believe it. He'd played Battle Blood dozens of times before and never got past level five. Now, though, the game seemed so easy he didn't even need to concentrate on it. As he advanced to level fourteen—an urban-combat battle in the dusty streets of Baghdad—he kept one eye on Carlos's sister, Marisol, who'd come into the living room to watch the game. She was twenty-six, ten years older than Carlos, and pretty damn hot too. She had long black hair and caramel skin and plump
tetas
that ballooned the front of her red dress. She usually scowled at Emilio when he came to visit—she hated the Trinitarios and wanted Carlos to quit the gang—but now she smiled as she stood beside the couch and stared at the TV. Emilio waited until she turned her head, and then he winked at her, cool and slow. She opened her mouth in surprise, but after a couple of seconds she smiled again. Meanwhile, Emilio's sergeant kept running across the screen, and the number of kills rose higher and higher.

Emilio smiled too. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this good. It was probably because he'd finally gotten a decent amount of sleep. After the crazy night in Inwood Hill Park he'd crashed at his grandmother's apartment and slept from six in the morning until six in the evening. When he woke up he was so hungry he went to the pizza place on 204th Street and ordered four slices. Everyone there was talking about some terrorist attack that had supposedly happened near the river, so after he finished eating he headed for Dyckman Street. Several police cars blocked the western end of the street, and behind them was a whole fucking battalion of soldiers. But there were no ambulances and no dead bodies, and someone on the street said it was just a training exercise or something, so Emilio lost interest. He spotted Carlos in the crowd and they hung out for a few hours on Dyckman before going to Carlos's apartment to play Battle Blood.