"I ordered a pizza. Takes about twenty five minutes to get here. ” I sat back down in the living room after handing Harv another beer. This one the older man set to one side on the coaster on the end table.
"No anchovies, right? ” Harv asked.
"None, and no green peppers. Hate green peppers. ” I sat there appraising the other man. In the ten years I’d worked in the field I had never met anyone like Dr. Harvey Gilpsen. Irreverent, vulgar, vocal and direct. He oozed a lack of charm out of every pour that was charming in and of itself. I could see him with his walrus mustache telling some off color story to a bunch of Congressmen or Senator’s wives and having them laugh until they cried, where anyone else would have been drummed out and shot at sunrise for using the same kind of language in the presence of ladies. The old guy just had the gift to reduce everything down to a four-letter word and get away with it. I was finding I liked his style.
"Now listen to me. You got your invention, sure. Nobody but the government is going to buy it and they won’t want it. They hate to pay anybody, when they got all those free loaders working for them at the labs. You file the patent and it is theirs. They will steal it, use it and later, when you find out, they will claim they developed it at the same time you did at Lawrence Livermore or Berkeley or Los Alamos. It happens all the time and no one in the private sector gets rich off this stuff. ” Harv got up and dropped his coat on the floor. It sounded like it weighed ten pounds.
"Let me hang that up for you. ” I started to reach down to get it.
"Nope, just leave it there. I got all kinds of stuff in there to show you as we work through the details tonight. ” Harv took a sip of beer and pulled out a small leather case from the outside pocket of the jacket and opened it. "Irina and Pasha. ” He handed me a photo. It was about four by six and in black and white, but it was a clear picture of both of them in a park, next to a carousel. "That was taken last week and I thought you might like it. ”
I held it in both hands and stared at it longingly, tears welling up in my eyes. I looked up to catch the other man’s gaze. "Thank you. ” That was all I could think of to say.
"They’re fine! Don’t be such a girl! I’ll keep track of them. She didn’t have a hard time when she got back. Her debriefing was relatively short considering the actions against the state she was charged with originally. It took a couple of phone calls to get the dogs to stop chewing on her, but now she’s working at Kursh in the south, on their time machine. After she told them what she knew and looked at the mess they’d made of their project, the senior director put her to work immediately to clean it all up and get it moving again in the right direction. ” Harv paused for a long, deep belch.
"I would have thought people like Anderson wouldn’t have wanted her working on this project for our enemies. ” I responded.
"Ted, there are two groups in this country right now. Those that see Commies crawling out of the sewers in New York City and behind everything happening in the world not in the interests of the US. Then there is this other group that knows we got a
lot bigger enemy to deal with than a bunch of clods from the Urals that still don’t know what an outhouse is for. Anderson and his type are all about power and their ideological hysteria that comes in and out of fashion, like high-top sneakers. There is nothing we can do about that, they will just keep causing us to move around things and get past them. But there is a solid core group in this country working diligently to correct the mistakes of others and prepare for the worst, while hoping for the best. ” Harv, reached down and pulled out another item. A small black notebook like the one I’d seen years ago in Montauk.
"Is there a committee handling all of this? ” I asked.
"Oh shit! There are committees trying to climb over other committees to hump better-looking committees. My God, we got committees spying on one another. We got one, all they do is disinformation. They spin all the tall tales about flying saucers and anyone who starts to relate to them, they discredit and prove they’re false. There are committees set up, just so somebody can find out about them and blow the whistle on them in books or tabloids and then everyone shakes their head and says 'See? We told you so’. ” Harv looked through his book for a moment. "Most of the time they are set up to keep things from happening. They spend their time delaying people from doing really good research. In that way we can keep the majority of the responsibility in a close group where we all know each other and what we are doing. That way it will work. ”
"Then what have I been doing for the past ten years? ” I felt the old familiar flash of anger go through me.
"Getting your ass kicked on the JV squad. Now you’re ready to join the Varsity and providing some really nice window dressing to keep prying eyes off the real projects. ” Harv smiled and I shook my head in exasperation as the doorbell rang. A man in a suit was standing there holding a pizza box.
"You ordered this? ”
"Yes, we did. ” I looked at him as he handed me the box. "Oh, I thought that kid was trying to put a fast one over on me. Oh well. Such is life. ” He walked off the front porch and back into the darkness.
"One of yours? ” I put the pizza down and Harv cracked a shy grin.
"Yeah, they are a little over protective. But I treat them well so they know a good thing when they find it. ” Harv opened the box and took out a piece of hot pizza.
"They didn’t like... ah... ” I looked for the right words.
"Kill the delivery kid? Oh, hell no! Turned him over to the aliens for anal probing and mutilation perhaps, but nothing serious. ” Harv slapped his leg and started to laugh to the point of almost choking. "Oh shit, you’re fun, Ted! The look on your face! They paid the little brat and checked the pizza to make sure it didn’t have a bug or that the box was wired. These guys are fanatics about what they do. Anal probing! HA-HA! I gotta remember that one. ”
"You’re an asshole, Harv. ” I blurted out.
"Yes, well that is a functional part of the body that is highly needed as opposed to being a toe or wart on your rear. Now let’s eat and get down to business. You got a pad and pencil to take some notes you’re going to need? ” Harv munched away on the pizza. The sauce colored his mustache as he licked his fingers.
"Yes, I do. ” I sat down on the floor with my back up against the desk and pulled a piece of pizza from the box and started to eat as well.
"We have been trying to clean up the mess that T. Townsend Brown and his friends made in the forties. That part of the cover story is true. You know that much. The rest of the stuff about alien invasion forces and raping the Earth is all speculation on the part of planners that have worked on this project for years. Somehow it got integrated into the story and it didn’t seem like we needed to take it out since it served the purpose to motivate people. But the truth is, they are already here. We pretty
much try to keep them at Dulce in New Mexico at a base there that has been used for years to do hybrid experimentation seeing if human and alien genetics can be mixed and a species created that can survive on this planet. We got about three main groups that we deal with. The first one are those little gray sons of bitches everyone keeps seeing and writing about. The second are their bosses; these guys are the bright ones, Nordic in nature. Shit, they look like a damn Nazi poster boy, if I ever saw one. Big blonde bastards with blue eyes and light complexions. They run the little grays that are a biologically produced machine, basically. The grays are just throw aways to the Nordics. They make them in labs and then put them in the field. They can do all kinds of tricky stuff, but they are really vulnerable to lead poisoning. Shoot one in the head and you got yourself a dead alien that isn’t much threat to anyone. Then we got these reptilian motherfuckers, the Alpha Draconians. Now these guys are the scum of the universe, let me tell you. They are plentiful and can live on anything that has flesh on its bones. They can eat any kind of red-blooded flesh and do. Seems like they and the Nordics have been fighting it out for a long time in space and that’s why they came here, when they detected the hole in the space/time continuum. The problem is the Nordics are getting fewer and fewer and the reptiles are just growing and increasing in numbers all the damn time. So eventually, they are bound to win. ” Harv paused and looked at the two remaining pieces of pizza in the box. I pushed it toward him and he happily took the larger piece and started to merrily munch away.
"So, what I have read in some of the new books about flying saucers, aliens, cattle mutilations and abductions is correct? ” Pondering the questions I began to consider the other man’s sanity as well as my own for listening to him.
"Oh, hell yeah! What happens is one of these guys now and then springs to it and figures out we are working with the Nordics and they try to get that shit published. That is when Uncle Bob, that is what we call our heavy-handed friends outside, is called in. They show up in black suits and sunglasses, driving black cars with no plates on them and just scare the living be-Jesus right out some poor schmuck that thinks he is the first one with the truth. The truth is a lot of the time we tell him the absolute truth and that is enough to get guys to close down publishing companies, clipping services, newsletters and even magazines. They go off and start looking at growing hibiscuses in Hawaii or something equally appropriate. ” Harv took the last piece of the pizza with some comment about the fact that it was never good cold and finished it off.
"So are they successful? The people trying to genetically alter humans into aliens. ” I asked.
"Other way 'round, laddie buck! Aliens into humans, and, no, not completely. There is a lot about the genetics of our species they need to learn yet, so they work away down there in New Mexico, pushing and pulling on test tubes and making things that would scare the hell out of grown ass men much less the little girls down the street. Shit, they kill off about twenty failures a week. Man, would that set off the prolife groups if they knew about that. ” Harv got up and washed his hands in the sink, drying them on a dishcloth and came back to sit down. "That was good. I haven’t eaten so much since... well, lunch, I guess, and I was getting weak from the lack of carbohydrates. Anyway, let me tell you if the Reptilians can get inside Dulce there will be hell to pay. They will make that place look like a slaughterhouse. The hope is that the Nordics can break the code, find the way to hybridize their own kind and cause accelerated growth to occur here, thereby making this a place where new recruits come from for the cause. In return, they give us scarps of information and technology. ”
"They are the ones responsible for the saucers we have in the hanger and the device in the Pit? ” I wondered.
"Oh hell no! Nobody knows where that thing in the Pit came from. They looked at it and flat out told us that they had no idea who came up with that thing. It’s from somewhere way... out there. ” Harv motioned with his arm and hand to a space toward the ceiling that indicated great distant.
"Then why can I make one of them work. ” I got up and stretched my legs before sitting down behind the desk.
"Isn’t that interesting, nephew? That is just what we want to know. You figured out how to make the machine in the Pit work, you figured out Kammler’s equation and you can get that little guy in the hanger to play Dixie and give you a hummer. So I ask myself, 'Self? What is it about Dr. Theodore Humphrey that makes him so good at what he does? ’ Then I came up with a little something that I thought was interesting. ” Harv paused for dramatic effect until I shrugged and raised my hands for for the ringmaster to continue his diatribe.
"I think you, nephew, are talking to someone who knows how all of this works. Now, wait! Don’t jump on me just yet. I realize old Max was running a scam on the side and when you showed him you could get that Cosmic Corvette to work he up and called his little gray buddies. The big bad lizard men equally want to know where that thing came from and how it got here, as well as how the device in the Pit works. So it’s clear to me these guys have tech to drop out and through space, but they haven’t mastered time. At least not yet. Now, I will shut up. ” Harv sat back with that twinkle in his eyes again.
He fired for effect and scored a perfect hit. Right where I had gotten on my own over the last year. I chewed the end of my pencil and looked at the man carefully, considering again, for the first time in a long time, how good he’d be at poker.
"What are you offering me? ”
Harv smiled. "The whole enchilada, nephew. All the parts of the game laid out, tied down, spread eagle, butt ass naked. You take over the operation at Five-One, figure out how to use the portal and mix it with the gizmos on the Corvette, bada-bing, bada-bang, bada-boom! Get results! Beg, borrow, steal, kill, I don’t care! Whatever you need, I will get it. Just make damn sure the thing works. Put it together with HAARP, Dulce and NASA stuff and anything else you want from the national labs, secret programs or even civilian stuff we have to steal. I. Don’t. Care. Make it real in less than ten years and I will hand you the keys to the kingdom. ” Harv sat back and interlaced his fingers over his broad expanse of a belly.
"Who do I work for at that point? ”
"Some USC Trojan asshole named... ah... Theodore Humphrey. You report to me and me alone. I report to the head guy and the President, although I don’t think Nixon will last out his term. ” Harv never moved a muscle while he talked that time. He was a good poker player.
"The head guy? Who is it? ” I pushed up the bet.
"No way. Worth more than your life or mine. ” Harv sighed, looking off into space. "Put it to ya this way boyo: you get him when I retire to Miami to screw middle aged nineteen year old stewardesses until I’m dead. ”
"That would make me your protegee then? ” I waited to see if I’d gone too far.
"Oh, nephew! You always have been! ” Harv didn’t elaborate on that one at all. But I had a funny feeling in my guts that he knew the answer only too well.
"It started with my dad’s work. It took me years to understand what he was doing then it hit me. The second factor was at Montauk. I figured out Bates had missed the whole principal behind the workings of the device in the Pit. The third event was Kammler, who showed me the American obsession with big is not beautiful, but small makes more sense. Then Ratterman gave me the latest. The template that makes the Sport Model work. ” I waited. Gilpsen’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the last name.
"You talked to that Nazi Simon Ratterman? I mean 'talked’, as in face to fascist face... with him? ” Harv leaned forward and raised a cautionary hand. "This is truly important Ted: Talked. to him? Face to face? ”
"In the cafeteria at Five-One, two months ago. We were in a zone where time stopped. We spent twenty minutes there and sixteen hours passed before I came back to our ‘reality’, if that is what we call this. ”
"The Germans didn’t know if they should string him up or give him the Knights Cross. The Americans felt the same, especially your dad. Kammler absolutely feared him and admired him beyond even the Fuhrer. I hated the rat bastard son of a bitch, but that was because he was smarter than me. I was also young, dumb and fulla cum and cocky as hell at the time. But he’s gotta be in his eighties if he is a day. ” Harv was counting on his fingers.
"Not a day over forty-five. Still smokes and loves coffee. ” I added to make sure we were talking about the same guy.
"He is the one who helped your dad out, you know? ” Harv winced at his own statement.
"How did he do that? ”
"He sent him a drawing via another person who could get in and out of the country like a ghost. Well, we thought she was coming in and out. Now that you tell me Ratterman was at the base, I believe they can go anywhere. Doesn’t matter really. Anyway, he sent someone to show your dad how to modify the unit he was building in the lab out in back of the house. We figured as much later on from one of his journals. ” Harv looked up at the ceiling.
"I have all his journals. ” I said, basically accusing him of lying.
"There was one you didn’t get. ” Harv reached into his coat and pulled out a black notebook and handed it to me. "That’s a copy. Typed for easy reading. Look at page 152. ”
I flipped through it and read then looked up in shock. "I remember this name! ”
"Ann Corbett. Yeah. Ratterman sent her to give your father a drawing he needed to refine his device. She either killed your dad or abducted him to wherever the Rat Man works out of now. We spent a long time trying to find her and never did. ” Harv got up and put on his coat. "So, yes or no, nephew? In or out? You a player or a spectator, Dr. Humphrey? ”
"I am in, one hundred percent, with one proviso: if I find you have lied to me, and I mean about anything, I am gone. That day, that hour, that minute. ” I stood up.
"Everything I have told you tonight is true. When there is something I would normally lie about to you, I will avoid making any comment on the subject. That is the best I can do. It will take time, but before long Ted, you will know it all. ” Harv spit in his hand and extended it. I did the same and we shook on it.
"When do I go to work? ” I asked.
"You are at work. Head back to Five-One in the next couple of days, everything will be ready for you to pick up the pieces and make sense out of it. Then we’ll talk some more. I’ll be back out here in. let’s say, two weeks? Be on board by then and get me a report as to what we need to do to test the ships and the device. ”
Harv opened the door and two men emerged from the shadows with guns in their hands. He rumbled down the walkway toward the car, yelling.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! This is Boulder fucking City, guys! The only people you have to worry about out here are the goddamn Baptists. ”