Okun didn't understand the precise relationship between the Van Allen belts and the arrival of the spaceships. And he didn't much care. What was important to him was that the dates matched. Now he had a way of sifting through the rubbish and finding the gold. But he was dismayed by two discoveries. First, there were hardly any real reports. Lenel hadn't been exaggerating when he said 99.9 percent of everything in the stacks was a bunch of hooey or bullpucky or whatever he'd called it. After several days of combing through the files, they had found about four hundred case studies occurring during the specified five-day periods. Then came the long process of poring over them and throwing out the fakes that happened to have been reported during those times. The scientists ruled out all but sixty-two of the reported sightings and encounters. Only twenty of these had occurred later than 1960. And four of those were mere sightings. That left only sixteen good reports.
One of them was the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, incident.
One was the Bridget Jones case, where the central witness was dead.
Then there were thirteen people who claimed they had been abducted. And that's where things got interesting. All told very similar stories. They had been driving along lonely roads or at home engaged in some quiet activity when they suddenly stopped whatever they were doing. The drivers pulled to the side of the road. The people taken from their homes sat down or stood still. All the abductees described being surrounded by short, quick-moving creatures with enlarged heads. Many claimed they had been flown to a spaceship, where various experiments were performed on their persons. Six of them described a leader who was much taller that the others. Okun knew from other reading he had done that mentions of a much taller leader were common.
But there was one report that stood out from the others. It was about a woman who claimed she had been interrogated about a Y-shape. Her file said she was a person in the public eye, and care was taken to expunge any clue to her identity. But Okun knew her name was Trina Gluck and she lived in Fresno. In fact, he knew her street and house number. Scrawled onto the front page of the document in a handwriting style he was learning to recognize was the woman's name and address.
Two weeks later, he rode into Las Vegas with the boys. As always, the van dropped them off in front of their bank, Parducci Savings. Nothing on the outside of the building let on that it was a bank. There was no logo, no place to park, no slot for night deposits. Inside, the lobby looked like someone's living room, with lots of family photos on the walls and too much furniture. There was a counter with two teller's windows and behind that a couple of doors leading to private offices. These doors were never open. Salvatore Parducci, a heavyset man with an appetite for fine suits and gold bracelets, was the manager. He spoke in a luxuriously soft voice punctuated by sudden bursts of loud, braying laughter.
Okun knew there was something unusual about the bank on his first visit. Moments after opening his new account, Salvatore came around the counter with his arms spread wide and embraced him. While he was being squeezed against the powerful man's girth, Salvatore looked down, and purred, "Welcome. My family thanks you for trusting us with your money." On another occasion, Okun watched a helicopter land beside the building. An old lady stepped out of it carrying a casserole dish and came inside. It turned out to be Signora Parducci, delivering lunch to her son. She flirted shamelessly with Cibatutto in Italian before disappearing into one of the back offices. Very shady.
This morning's transaction had been uneventful except for Okun withdrawing an unusually large amount of cash, three hundred dollars. "Feeling lucky," he explained with a grin.
It was a sunny morning, and the old fellows were in high spirits. They were marching down the boulevard toward a cafe that offered one-cent breakfasts. After that, it was onward to the casinos for a day of cards. Okun seemed preoccupied. He kept to the back of the pack, fingering the wad of cash in his pocket. "Hey, you guys," he called. The old men stopped walking and turned around. "Nothing personal, but I think I'll try my luck at one of the smaller casinos today. By myself." His friends were visibly disappointed.
"Hey, what happened to all for one and one for all?" Freiling asked. "We're supposed to play as a team." When that approach didn't work, he tried another. "We'll let you win a few."
"It's not the money. I just feel like being alone today."
"Completely understandable," Lenel declared. "I'm tired of looking at these ugly old coots myself. It wouldn't hurt to have a break."
"Dr. Freiling," Cibatutto cried. 'This man called you an ugly coot!"
Freiling put up his dukes. "Who said so? I'll knock his block off."
As the two men began sparring, Dworkin came a step closer to his young friend, and silently pronounced the words, "Be careful." Okun wondered if he knew.
An hour later, he had rented a car and was heading west.
Brinelle Gluck was the girl he'd always wanted to meet—nerdy, artsy, and, in her own way, beautiful. It was love at first sight. She was a couple of years older and a couple of inches taller than him and as slender as a microscope. From her moccasins to her perfect miniature breasts to her long straight hair, she was, for him, a vision of loveliness. He immediately regretted having dressed like a total square.
"Do I know you?" she asked when she opened the door.
Hating to begin anything with the word "no," he answered, "Maybe in a past life. Were you ever a monkey in Tibet?"
Instead of slamming the door in his face, she actually thought about it for a second before she answered. "Yes, now that you mention it, I was."
They both laughed at her reply and spent the next thirty minutes rambling through one topic after another. After reincarnation, they talked about Brinelle's poetry and modern dance, the Beatles, Bangladesh, biointensive gardening, the world's scariest roller coasters, and the Carlos Castaneda books. Okun felt his heart racing with excitement when she reached out and briefly touched his chest. She fondled his ankh.
"I don't usually like jewelry, but that is the most outtasight piece. Where'd you get it?"
The question caught him off guard. "Um, I can't remember. I've had it for years."
When she asked him his name, he blurted, "Bob. Bob Robertson."
"I'm Brinelle Gluck. I wish I had a nice normal name like yours. You have no idea what it's like to get teased about your name all the time. So, Mr. Bob Robertson, what do you do? Got a job?"
"Yeah, I guess you could call it a job."
"What is it you do?" Okun was starting to get uncomfortable with this part of the conversation.
"I'm a scientist."
"Really? What branch of science?"
"Boring stuff, planes, rockets, just a lot of technical stuff."
"I see. Where do you do all this boring stuff?"
"Labs, mainly."
"No duh. I mean what's the name of the lab. My dad knows hundreds of people who work at Livermore and Stanford and UCLA."
He really liked this girl, and he wanted desperately to tell her the truth or at least to explain that he wasn't allowed to say. But he'd been coached a thousand times never ever to give that response. It aroused suspicion and curiosity, two things to which Area 51 was allergic. He had been told to turn and walk away or, if that wasn't possible, to lie.
"I work at JPL in the microcircuitry division. We do the circuit boards and harness wiring for the space program, mostly satellites."
Then she did something that broke his heart. She nodded. It was a big dopey nod with an expression on her face that showed how impressed she was. She had just gotten around to asking him why he'd knocked on the door when the phone rang.
"I gotta get that. Come in and sit down." Brinelle disappeared into another room.
The house was impressive. It was a small palace built in the Spanish style, with lots of exposed wood and high, whitewashed ceilings. He wandered into the sunken living room and examined a painting. It looked vaguely familiar, and he wondered if it might be the work of a famous artist. It was that kind of house.
He sat down on the sofa and let his life flash before his eyes. This chick is mondo diggable, he told himself. I haven't known her an hour, and I've already lied to her a couple of times. If I keep working at Area 51, I'll never be friends with her or anyone else. There are too many secrets to keep. Suddenly, he pictured himself at forty, still with long hair, still puttering around with the spaceship, still single. When Dworkin and the others were gone would he continue to work down there alone?
Contemplating these matters, he reached into a bowl of nuts on the coffee table and was trying to open one with his teeth when another woman walked into the room. "And who might you be?" she asked.
"Um, hello. Is your name Gluck? Trina Gluck?"
"It might be. Who are you?"
"Hello, I'm Bob. Bob Robertson. I work at JPL in the microcircuitry division. We do a lot of the electronic work for the space program. I was just having a very pleasant conversation with your daughter."
The woman, elegant, in her late fifties, was obviously Brinelle's mom. From the way she was dressed, it looked like she'd just come back from a social function.
"Are you a friend of my daughters?"
"Sort of. I mean, I hope so. But actually, I'm here to see you. I recently read the report on your abduction and wanted to ask you some questions about it."
Instantly, Okun knew he'd said the wrong thing. The woman's expression turned ugly- "Get out of this house before I call the police."
Okun tried to make her understand how important it was, but she wouldn't listen. Brinelle came back in and tried to take his side, but her mom was irate, screaming at the top of her lungs, tears on her face. When he stopped in the doorway, she began pushing the door closed. "Dr. Wells sent me," he blurted out, just as the door slammed in his face.
He stood on the doorstep, stunned. How could he have been so stupid? Up to that moment, he'd treated it all as a game, the Great American Flying Saucer Hunt. But obviously, it was a deep personal wound for this woman. The instant he'd mentioned the word abduction, a wave of pain had broken across her face. For Trina Gluck, it wasn't a game. Okun started off down the brick driveway when the door opened again.
Mrs. Gluck stepped onto the porch and waved him back inside. "If Dr. Wells sent you, you can come in."
The kidnapping, as she called it, had taken place about ten years earlier, shortly after her husband, a congressman, had declared his candidacy for one of California's Senate seats. It was Memorial Day weekend, and Brinelle was away at her first slumber party. Trina's husband was in bed reading. She was in the bathroom brushing her teeth when her arm suddenly relaxed to her side. A moment later, the toothbrush clattered into the sink. Although she'd never so much as imagined an encounter with aliens before, she somehow knew immediately what was happening. She was terrified and felt the impulse to scream, but couldn't. She still had control over her eyes and tried to turn toward the door, but her neck would not cooperate. She felt the first one come into the room a moment before she saw its reflection in the mirror. She described it as being about three or four feet tall with a large head and shiny silver eyes, but it moved about the room so quickly she couldn't get a good look at it. After the first one examined her hair and nightgown, others came through the doorway.
One of them stood directly behind her, hidden from view, and identified itself to her as "the friend." This creature spoke to her using her own voice for what seemed like a long time. The distinction between her own thoughts and those of the friend began to blur. She felt small hands touching her body in several places and heard them rummaging through the drawers and cabinets. She felt her shock settling into anger and struggled to regain control of herself. When the friend asked how they could help her relax and cooperate, she asked for her husband. Go get my husband out of bed. But a moment later she heard her own voice reply, "Your husband is asleep now."
She was taken outdoors and laid on her back in some of the bushes by the side of the house. The friend made her understand she had a skin disease, something contagious on her stomach and pelvis. Small hands lifted her nightgown while other hands lifted her head so she could watch the operation that would cure her. Silently begging them to stop, she watched a needlelike instrument slice into her skin. The blade opened a bloodless incision down the left side of her belly, from the rib cage down to the hip. A second instrument she couldn't see was inserted into the opening. As it slid between her skin and stomach, the friend congratulated her on being clean again. Still listening to her own voice being used by another being, she was given a brief lecture of some sort. It might have been on hygiene, but she couldn't be sure.
When the operation was finished she was put into a sitting position, then lifted up into the sky. It was the sensation of sitting in a strong net and being lifted by a very fast crane. She watched as the lights of the city receded between her knees.
Then she was in a gray room. She heard the soft rustling of their movements, like pieces of silk being rubbed together. She rolled her head to the side, and noticed she was lying on a platform or table a few feet above the floor. The room appeared to be circular, almost spherical in shape. A bank of windows was set low against the wall, almost part of the floor. Nearby she noticed a pile of clothing, old dirty clothes, and she had the sense that someone had been sleeping there. The friend came and repositioned her head so that all she could see was the blank gray ceiling. She was told that the examination would continue.
Then a new creature stepped into her peripheral vision and approached the table. It was much taller than the others, but she felt that it was different in other ways as well. It seemed to be a leader of some sort. It leaned in and brought its face closer until she could see her distorted reflection in the bulging eyes. They reminded her of insect eyes although the face around them was nearly human in shape. She closed her own eyes, hoping that if she ignored this tall creature, it would back away. But it continued hovering over the table, studying her.
Without using an audible voice, the leader began pronouncing a series of words or ideas, as if it were reading down a list. She knew she was being asked about each item, but did not understand her role in the exchange. The only one of these "words" she could recall later was the letter Y, and only because it had been asked of her repeatedly. Several times, the tall creature probed her thoughts for the meaning of this symbol. She tried to cooperate, thinking they might spare her life if she could give them the information they wanted. It was clear to her it didn't mean the letter Y in the alphabet. It occurred to her that it might be a place, a landmark in a city perhaps. She thought of the Space Needle in Seattle and the arch in St. Louis, but the creature seemed dissatisfied with these answers.
It stood up, and, as it moved away from her, she must have lost consciousness.
"My husband woke me up at two in the morning saying he'd had a dream someone was trying to break into the house. He went downstairs to look around and noticed the security alarm had been disarmed. It never worked properly after that, and we ended up having to have it replaced. I asked him for a glass of water because my throat felt dried out. When I sat up to take it, he noticed there were leaves and dirt all over my back and in my hair. We decided that I must have been sleepwalking and that I was the one who had turned off the alarm. We went down and checked the side of the house, because the leaves in bed matched the japonicas growing out there, but nothing looked unusual, no signs of struggle or anything like that. I told him about having this sensation that I'd gone somewhere, but at that point it was still buried at the back of my mind.
"We talked about it the next morning over breakfast, and I mentioned to him again about this sense of mine that I'd been carried off somewhere. He wanted to call the police, but I wouldn't let him. When he left for the office, I went up to the bathroom and took a shower. Then it all came back to me in a crash when I opened the medicine chest and saw my toothbrush hanging in the rack next to his. I never put it there. I was always very meticulous about standing it in the little ceramic cup. That little detail caused an avalanche. I remembered the whole thing at once. I didn't stand there remembering it piece by piece. It all came back to me in a single moment. I looked on my stomach and found a thin red mark, like a scratch, where I remembered them cutting me open. Later our doctor told me it was a scar. He said it was so thin that I must have had it since I was a child. But I know I didn't.
"We called the police, and that was a mistake. I felt utterly violated, like I'd been raped, and when I told everything to the police it was clear they didn't believe me! Then the FBI showed up and the CIA and the Army. I was going through a severe nervous breakdown, and they behaved as if I were making the whole thing up to get some attention. That's probably been the hardest part of this whole thing, being isolated and made to feel like 1 did something wrong. Dr. Wells was the first person who tried to understand what I was going through. He put me in touch with Dave Natchez and the survivors group, so I had some support, someone who believed me. Well, my husband believed me; without him I probably wouldn't have survived. Does that answer your questions?"
Okun felt a little overwhelmed by everything she'd told him. "Yeah, I think so."
"So how is Dr. Wells?" she asked, trying to lighten the mood. "Still crazy, I hope."
"Unfortunately, Dr. Wells passed away."
"How awful. I'm sorry to hear that. Were you close?" Not knowing how to answer the question, Okun merely shrugged. She went on. "I wish I'd written back sooner. I got a letter from him about six months ago, and I just haven't made time to answer it. Oh, I feel terrible."
"Six months ago?"
"Yes, I know. I have no excuse. I could have found the time."
"Could I see the letter?"
"Certainly." It bore a postmark six months earlier. The envelope was printed stationery from somewhere called Sunnyglen Villa in San Mateo, a town at the base of the San Francisco peninsula. The letter was only a couple of sentences long and revealed nothing.
"Do you have a phone I can borrow?"
He called Sunnyglen Villa and asked to speak with Dr. Immanuel Wells. The soft-spoken woman on the other end said Mr. Wells was ill and couldn't take any phone calls. She offered to take a message, asking if he was "with an agency." Okun said he was an old family friend and said he'd call back later. He stared down at the envelope, wondering what sort of mental institution would give itself a name like Sunnyglen.
It was the middle of the afternoon. If he was going to get back to Las Vegas before the van picked them up, he'd have to leave soon. After he thanked Mrs. Gluck for sharing her story, Brinelle walked him out to his car.
"Hey, what's your hurry? Why don't you stay for dinner?"
"Gotta get back to work."
"You're gonna drive to San Mateo right now, aren't you?"
Okun laughed. "I wish. No, seriously, I have to get back to Pasadena."
"I see. Paranormal investigator all day, jet propulsion engineer all night. Don't you hate it when people lie to you, Bob?"
"Yeah, as a matter of fact I do."
"Hey, I've got an idea," she said brightly. "Let's go visit Dr. Wells together. We can crash at my friend's place in Palo Alto."
Okun couldn't tell if she was being serious or not.