The Millennium Blues Page 12

  If she had been in Moscow on open assignment, she would have suggested a feature on the Russian secret police and its survival into the year 2000 and what that said about the lingering resistance to the political changes that had shrunk the Soviet empire almost to its pre-World War II borders, and then the shattered the Soviets into their constituent and quarreling republics. The secret police were still a force, the Russian Army was still a massive presence, Soviet missiles with nuclear warheads, wherever they were located, still were ample to blow up the rest of the world, and some Soviet citizens had confessed to her an uneasy feeling that conservatives were mobilizing again for a political coup that would return “the good old days,” perhaps with a dramatic incident that would force tighter governmental controls.

  But she was in Moscow to report a different kind of spirit: the summit meeting of the millennium—not just the U.S. and the Russia or even the major Western powers, but leaders from East and West and from Australia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America as well. They were gathering in Moscow beginning that day and continuing for an entire week to shape the world of the 21st century. Of course everything had been carefully worked out behind the scenes in diplomatic meetings at the United Nations and meetings of regional organizations, and particularly at two-power and later five-power mini-summits.

  The next week would be an occasion to ratify those agreements, to sign non-aggression pacts all over the place, to make announcements about the dismantling of warheads and plans to prevent further proliferation, and to shake hands and generally publish platitudes about freedom and peace and plenty and good will. The news media knew all that, knew that nothing that truly could be defined as news would come out of this event, could predict exactly what would happen, could script it better than the spin-doctors themselves. But they could not stay away.

  This had been an Event. This had been the contemporary counterpart of the Congress of Vienna or the Yalta Conference. Here would be shaped, perhaps with greater success than its predecessors, the political world of the 21st century. And from here, for the next week, anchor people would announce the obvious with the Kremlin walls or Lenin's tomb or the Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed in the background, and they would query their traveling correspondents and political experts to learn answers already imprinted on prompters.

  And Sally would have been there, getting establishing footage, hunting up illustrative shots from the archives, interviewing fifty Soviet citizens and a dozen tourists for commentary to break up the scenes of talking heads—maybe, if she had been lucky, stumbling on a real news break that would get her identified on the air or at least recognition or a commendation from the studio executives in New York. By such means—the right place and the right time coinciding with recognition of its significance and the readiness to film—were careers lifted out of the earthbound into the stratosphere.

  So Sally had been analyzing the likely chain of events, cultivating her sources, planning the official schedule with notes about targets of opportunity, when the telephone had rung. The sound had startled her. Visitors to Moscow, even in these latter, relaxed days, were always tense, waiting subconsciously for the tap on the shoulder, the knock on the door, the ring of the telephone. Only when one left and felt the arbitrary hand of the state released did one realize that one's nerves and muscles and even a place at the back of the brain had been knotted all this time.

  Sally had picked up the telephone. It had been Atlanta, and after a few moments Sally had been connected with Lloyd Saunders, her immediate supervisor at CNN News. “Take a small crew—just you and Sid ought to be enough—and go check out a UFO sighting somewhere on the central Siberian plateau. Not too far from Tunguska."

  “Tunguska?"

  “You know—the place of that mysterious explosion in 1908."

  “Oh, that one."

  He didn't miss the irony. “You can look it up. Anyway, I'll give you the coordinates. There's nothing nearby except maybe a village."

  “Why are you doing this to me, Lloyd?"

  “I'm just trying to get you out of the deadly routine of the Moscow summit."

  “Seriously. I'm going to chase to the ends of nowhere and find—nothing."

  “There's something, Sally. Pravda ran a story about it—."

  “Pravda is always running stories about UFOs and aliens. When it comes to that sort of stuff, they're the National Enquirer of Eastern Europe."

  “We've got confirmation from a confidential source in the Pentagon. There's a spaceship sitting on a hill out there."

  “They're pulling one on you, Lloyd."

  “I'd think so, too, kid, but we've got stories about similar sightings from Uruguay, New Guinea, Zaire, and northern California in the Mount Shasta area. We've dispatched crews to each of them."

  Sally gave up. “It'll take time to reach there, even after we get permission."

  “I'm on it already. Don't worry: this is sweetness-and-light time. You can take the Lear jet. Get me a good story, kid."

  “Sure, Lloyd.” And after she put down the telephone she said it again to the empty air.

  The closer they got to the spaceship on the hill, the shabbier it looked. The surface of the metal was battered as if by hammer blows; the portholes were black, gaping holes. What had happened here? Sally wondered. She began to construct a scenario in which a spaceship had landed and the frightened villagers had stormed the hill, forced their way into the ship, and exterminated the aliens. Or, she thought, this was a crewless observation vessel, and it had sat there for days, months, perhaps even years, until the villagers, impatient for consequences, had turned upon the ship in anger and disappointment.

  Sid was getting tape, but she could tell from his shoulders and his moving eyebrows that he didn't know what to make of it either. Alexei seemed unconcerned, as if this were the mania of these absurd Westerners and it was none of his business. The road was rough here, however, and he grasped her elbow to steady her as they approached.

  As they got within a hundred meters, the ship began to appear as if it had been pieced together out of odd bits of sheet metal. She could see where they had been nailed together.

  “What's going on here?” Sid asked.

  “I don't understand,” Sally said.

  Slowly they went around the structure. It was the same on all sides. Its circular shape had been an illusion; up close it had angles like a hexagon or an octagon. It only looked like a spaceship.

  “Come here,” Alexei said. He ducked under one corner of the structure. Sally followed and stood up inside a darkened space illuminated here and there by sunlight coming through what once had appeared like portholes. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that they were standing inside a wooden framework to which the sheets of metal had been nailed. On the insides of some of the sheets were printed Cyrillic letters and a few pictures or paintings. One of them was of a Pepsi Cola bottle.

  Sid followed them. After he had adjusted his lenses he began to tape the interior. They waited in silence until he was done.

  “Take it back to the village and get the antenna set up so that we can relay everything to the satellite in"—Sally checked her watch—"an hour and a half. We'll walk back."

  When Sid was gone, Sally turned to Alexei.

  “It is—. How do you say it in English?” Alexei asked. “A representation."

  “An icon,” Sally said.

  “Of some new religion perhaps."

  “The villagers—they built it."

  Alexei nodded.

  “It must have been a tremendous effort for them—comparable to a pyramid for the Pharaohs."

  “All is possible to the Russian soul."

  “They must have scavenged sheet metal from everywhere."

  “These are the people who built the cathedrals. That's what this is—a cathedral. To a new religion."

  “No,” Sally said. “A decoy."

  Alexei looked at her for a moment in the gloom and then shrugged. “What does it matter? It is onl
y peasant folly. And you see"—he pointed to a corner where a blanket covered a pile of straw—"the young people of the village have used this place for their own ceremonies."

  “Yes,” she said, moistening her suddenly dry lips. She wondered suddenly at her motivation for sending Sid back to the village.

  “You have been sent on a—what do you call it?—wild-goose chase."

  “Not quite,” she said and was annoyed that she sounded a little breathless.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “there can be compensations.” He took her arms in his hands and kissed her with what she thought of as Slavic intensity and drew her toward the blanket.

  She returned to the everyday world and the smell of moldy straw. She peered at her watch in the darkness. “My God,” she said, “we've got only twenty minutes until my story has to be ready."

  “A few more minutes,” he said, reaching for her. “There will be other news stories, but occasions like this are rare."

  But she already was struggling into her clothes. She didn't want to look at him, concerned that she might not be able to resist his appeal. Then, when she could not help but see him out of the corner of her eye, she thought that his features were a little heavy and that he had a weak mouth and a roll of fat around his middle.

  She went down the hill, not worried about her footing, not caring whether he was following her, and half ran-half walked to the village. She made her self-imposed deadline with only two minutes to spare. Sid had the folding antenna fanned out next to the jeep and already hunting the signal that would zero it in on the satellite. When the antenna steadied, Sid pressed the button that started the rapid transmission of the tapes he had shot.

  By the time Sally had picked up the handset Sid was finished and she had regained her breath. “Sally Krebs, Central Siberia, to CNN News, Atlanta, Lloyd Saunders. Lloyd,” she said, not hoping to get an answer, “we've just sent you all the tapes Sid shot, but it's just a human-interest piece."

  “I know,” Lloyd said. “Sally, I'm glad you're there. We were worried about you—."

  “That's why you've been monitoring the satellite? Well, listen, it's a cargo cult. Like in New Guinea after World War II. The natives built airstrips and airplanes hoping to entice the gods to send them cargo directly instead of having it intercepted by the white man. These poor peasants are hoping to lure aliens here to give them wonderful gifts: electricity, washing machines, television, VCRs, automobiles."

  There was a pause for the message to get halfway around the world. “I know,” Lloyd said. “But it's not just peasants. Those people in northern California were expecting immortality, a cure for cancer, enlightenment about the nature and meaning of the universe—maybe even a trip to the stars."

  “If you knew,” Sally said, “why did you send me here?"

  Another pause. “You just took longer. The other crews discovered the same thing, although we had to get some experts to figure out what it all meant."

  “Thanks a lot,” Sally said.

  “But you've got to get out of there,” Lloyd said, not waiting for Sally's response. “All hell broke loose in Moscow after you left. The President was assassinated, a new hard-line government has taken over, and we weren't sure for a while if they would let out the diplomats, much less the news media. If the coup leaders had had time to consolidate their power, I'm not sure that they wouldn't have held the world's leaders as hostages. As it was, they all got away in the confusion except the French, the Indian delegation, and a few African representatives. And the Chinese party secretary—although it's not sure whether he was trapped or stayed on purpose.

  “Anyway, it's not safe to go back to Moscow. If you can get enough fuel, the experts say the best bet is to fly south to Ulan Bator."

  “Thanks a lot,” she said again, and wondered if Alexei would want to depart with them.

  No, she thought. It would be better for everyone if they left him behind in Igarka and let him make his way back, if he wished, to Moscow.

  But she was more concerned about the fact that this stupid assignment might have canceled her rendezvous with fame.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  September 12, 2000

  Murray Smith-Ng

  The observation hut sat on the edge of the volcano's jagged rim like a hunched vulture brooding over the absence of carrion; it had rested there for twenty years while its occupants had read the instruments connected to sensors in the crater below and watched, with growing contempt, the wisps of vapor escaping from ancient vents.

  Murray Smith-Ng looked out the window facing the crater, admiring the yellow sulfur deposits on the jagged peaks and lower in the pit the steam jets, boiling wells, and mud cauldrons that dotted the crater floor. Its bright colors—reds, yellows, greens—made it resemble a scene from a Disney version of The Inferno, complete with odors of fire and brimstone and the sound of subterranean rumblings.

  “I still don't understand why you're here,” Richard Kelso said. The tall vulcanologist was standing just behind Smith-Ng and to his left as they looked into the crater. Behind them was a table with a vertical centerboard studded with instruments registering their measurements and recording devices vomiting paper trails, all inside a wicker enclosure. Above them draped fabric softened the lines of the ceiling. A generator chugging outside fed power to the window air conditioner that ran constantly to combat both the tropical heat and the volcanic vapors.

  “To check my equations against the reality,” Smith-Ng said. “But I hadn't realized it would be so overpowering."

  “You still think it's going to blow?"

  “I'm just like that equipment over there,” Smith-Ng said. “You put the figures into the equations, and the equations tell you whether there will be a catastrophic change."

  “And your equations tell you something catastrophic is going to happen here at Papandayan?"

  “Not just at Papandayan. If my calculations are right, volcanoes will erupt all around the circle of flames."

  “Ring of fire,” Kelso corrected dryly.

  “You've found me out,” Smith-Ng said. “I don't know a caldera from a hole in the ground. I just plug in the figures I get from people who do know volcanoes. As I understand it, a great belt of volcanoes girdles the basin of the Pacific—the ‘ring of fire,’ as you call it."

  A vigorous jet of steam spurted almost to the crater rim before it evaporated. The floor of the hut trembled, and Smith-Ng looked quickly at Kelso. The vulcanologist shrugged and raised his pale eyebrows.

  “We get volcanoes in the same regions as earthquakes. Probably the same underlying reason for both—the places where the earth is still folding and fracturing. They may not be directly related, but both seem to be means of relieving local strains. Just south of here the Indo-Australian plate is submerging itself under the Eurasian plate."

  “You seem to be a lot less positive you know what's going on down there than some of your fellow vulcanologists,” Smith-Ng said.

  “They're theorists. I'm an experimentalist. Theories are always neater than reality."

  “That's what I am, of course,” Smith-Ng said, his round face trickling with sweat from the Java climate and the still active volcano below. “A theorist. And I gather you don't think much of my theories."

  Kelso gestured at the crater. “Words and numbers seem inadequate to describe something like that. It's like trying to confine an elemental force. When you've seen what a volcano can do, without warning, you feel more like the primitives who thought they were sleeping gods and prayed to keep them from waking up."

  “Speaking of that,” Smith-Ng said, “my driver mentioned a word when he left me off: barata-something...."

  “Bharatagadha,” Kelso said. “It's the Indonesian version of Ragnarok. The final cosmic battle of the gods. There's a strange similarity among the legends of the various races. All of them visualize the world ending in some catastrophic way. As if they knew stuff science hasn't figured out yet."

  “Ragnarok,” Smith-Ng said. “B
haratagadha. I'll have to work those in somewhere.” A mud cauldron welled higher and spilled over into boiling wells nearby. “Is it doing something?” Smith-Ng asked. His voice went up a note.

  “Sometimes there's a little more activity,” Kelso said, “sometimes a little less."

  “Why do I feel you'd be disappointed,” Smith-Ng said, his eyes fixed upon the crater floor, “if my calculations proved useful, if your sleeping gods became predictable?"

  Kelso didn't look at him. “Of course I'd rather you were wrong. Here, at least. Do you know what happened in 1772 when Papandayan erupted?"

  Smith-Ng shook his head.

  “It blew out most of a mountain. It destroyed a sizable portion of the countryside around and killed thousands of people. And that was before Java became the most heavily populated nation in the world—more than 1,500 people per square mile. Think what it would do today. And you wonder why I hope your predictions are wrong?"

  “Well,” Smith-Ng said, a little uneasy, as always, when confronted by the real world, “even if it happens, I didn't make it happen, you know."

  “I know. You asked if I'd be disappointed. Put it a little stronger: dismayed, disturbed, maybe even disintegrated. Because there have been signs—rumblings, a bit of seismic activity, an increase in the temperatures of the mud cauldrons and in the flows of the boiling wells."