Terror Firma. Matthew Thomas

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СКАЧАТЬ had asked her to come with him, but he had done it with that same air of hopeless, optimistic resignation that he asked her to do anything – go to a movie, share a curry, or on those rare occasions when copious amounts of lager got the better of his natural timidity, let him get inside her knickers. The answer to the last of these, as always, was no. A movie and curry were OK, but hot gusset action wasn’t the sort of thing best friends did.

      ‘But what if I meet a stunning Californian babe and we fall madly in love – what will you do then?’ he’d asked her.

      ‘Then I’ll look forward to the wedding and pray you name your first trans-Atlantic toddler after me. But if that’s the biggest risk I’m running letting you go on your own, fine. It’s not even a proper holiday. If you expect a girl to put up with two weeks of emotional blackmail, the least you can do is throw in a beach and a gallon of pina colada.’ Then she’d paused, looked at him searchingly, sadly maybe, and said: ‘Does everything you ever do have to be tied in with that ridiculous magazine?’

      He’d been hurt, as he always was. The ‘ridiculous magazine’, as Kate insisted on calling it, was Dave’s pride and joy: none other than the internationally renowned ScUFODIN Monthly – the official journal of the Scientific UFO Discovery and Information Network. And the international renown bit was no idle boast, either; only last month Dave had received an enthusiastic letter from Belgium.

      Kate steadfastly refused to acknowledge the journalistic worth of the magazine Dave edited. ‘It’s written by cranks, for cranks,’ she said.

      ‘And where does that leave me?’

      ‘Lovable but misguided? Your letters page reads like the visitors’ book of a care-in-the-community drop-in centre.’

      It was hard to disagree with this particular point in her otherwise unfounded argument. All of his formal education had trained him for a career in science, viewing the world as a rational and logical place. Inevitably enough he often found himself at odds with the New Age and conspiracy theory wings of the movement. He did his best to keep things on an even keel, but it was an uphill battle – like trying to catch a monsoon in a thimble. As an editor who largely relied on the contributions of his readers Dave was at the mercy of the zealots. By the time he’d cut out pieces on ‘Holes at the Poles’, Flat Earth Society propaganda and ‘I’ve had sex with an alien who looked like Helena Bonham-Carter’ abduction stories from the live-at-home-with-my-mum boys, his heavyweight magazine was regularly reduced to a flyweight pamphlet.

      And then there was the question of funding. For a journal that at best sold a few thousand copies, and was then universally consigned to a dentist’s waiting room in Aberdeen or the bottom of budgie cages, Dave was never short of operating cash. It wasn’t as if he ever had to go cap in hand to the magazine’s publicity-shy owners. Where it all came from was a mystery. Accounting had never been one of Dave’s strong points, but even he found himself a little uneasy at times over the prodigious quantities of cash that came pouring through the magazine’s bank account.

      As far as he could make out, most of it was simply given to him, though by whom and for what was harder to pin down. No doubt some came from wealthy and elderly benefactors, humoured in their final years and at least glad to have a ready source of emergency toilet paper. But who on Earth were ‘The Institute for Meteorological Advancement’ and the ‘The International Council of Illuminanti’? One month, when Dave took a stand in the interests of scientific integrity and devoted the entire issue to real testable theories, the mystery funding dried up. Dave was no financial whiz-kid but he knew not to rock a boat that didn’t even have a keel. Not wanting to incur the wrath of his normally dormant publishers, next month the lunatic fringe returned with a vengeance. And so did the money.

      So, truly scientific investigation of the UFO phenomena was currently at a low ebb, lower even than Dave’s love life – and as tides went that particular ocean surge was so far down the beach you could smell the rotting seaweed and had to step over the occasional surfer dying of toxic shock. But with Kate steadfastly declining his amorous advances, constantly maintaining that she wanted them to remain ‘just best friends’, for better or worse, ScUFODIN Monthly remained the real partner in Dave’s life.

      An overly cheerful mechanical voice, asking him to fasten his seatbelt, brought Dave back to the present with a bump. He was meant to be putting all that behind him on this trip of a lifetime, but as Kate was so fond of saying, ‘You don’t just bring your work home with you, you sleep with it. If you were female, you’d have its babies.’

      When he came down to it he had to admit she was right about the motives for his journey. Sure enough, he was claiming it as holiday, the first he’d had in three years as editor. But in his rare moments of self-honesty Dave knew there was only one reason he was visiting Nevada, and it wasn’t because he liked one-arm bandits or dancing girls with ostrich feathers sprouting from their pants. Well, OK leave in the last bit, but really this was a pilgrimage he’d wanted to make all his life. A holy journey you had to do once in a lifetime. Even though his personal desert Mecca was enshrined in triple-thickness security fences, antipersonnel minefields and luminous day-glo signs reading PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE, TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT WITH BIG GUNS he’d be there to worship at the first opportunity.

      Ten minutes later, with a cheerful smile and an optimistic swagger, he stepped off the plane at Las Vegas International Airport and gazed up at the star-filled desert sky. Kate or no Kate, while he was here, he knew he was going to have one hell of a time.

       4. Revelations

       February 1969, somewhere deep beneath North America

      The politician stepped onto the circular pedestal and self-consciously smoothed back his sweat-laced hair. One trouser leg was rolled up to the knee, revealing a pallid vein-riddled lower leg. Around him the intense darkness pressed in from all sides. When the beam of white light flooded in from above he squinted through heavy-browed eyes, his weighty jowls quivering as he searched for figures in the blackness beyond. Shortly, the sort of computerized voice that was much in fashion before computers had very much to say gave its verdict.

      ‘Subject confirmed as Richard Millhouse Nixon. Thirty-seventh President of the United States, and Chairman of the Committee of 300.’ From a rather tinny loudspeaker somewhere far above drifted the first few bars of ‘Hail to the Chief’. It was hard to escape the feeling it had done this many times before.

      The new President tentatively stepped down and shielded his eyes from the glare. Nothing moved, apart from a small vein at the side of his temple. Then, accompanied only by a faint whiff of sweat, which Nixon quickly realized was his own, a dark figure stepped from the shadows. The newcomer’s voice was like gallows-yard gravel ground under an executioner’s heel, yet as smooth and cultured as an upper-cut from an Oxford Don.

      ‘Can’t be too careful these days, Mr Chairman. Traitors where you least expect.’ There was no doubt which of his guest’s titles afforded the most respect.

      The Commander-in-Chief offered a half-hearted salute, then thought better of it and turned it into a cheerless wave. ‘Well no, I guess not. Reds … and worse shades, everywhere. You must be …’

      ‘They call me Becker. Some call me worse things, but when the enemies of justice hate your guts you know you’re doing something right. You can roll down that trouser leg too – we don’t pander to mysticism down here.’

      His guest looked to be in two minds. ‘I thought you Committee boys СКАЧАТЬ