Majestic (24 page)

As the men worked to lash it down, Will and the lieutenant turned their attention to the three alien bodies.

They'd had chests of ice brought, but in those days they didn't possess decent insulation and nothing but slush had survived the desert heat.

They opened the bag containing the freshest body, intending to check it before icing it down as best they could.

The smell was dreadful. But more disturbing by far to Will was the degree of deterioration that had set in overnight. The flesh was sunken, the eyes shriveled and collapsed. There was a considerable amount of thick, maroon liquid in the bottom of the bag.

"We've got to get this embalmed," Hesseltine said.

Will looked at it in horror and amazement. Unless he did something fast there wasn't going to be anything left for the scientists. And this one - this body was the strangest of the three. The other two were obviously alien.

But this one: Unless he missed his bet this was something very close to a human child.

He acted with his characteristic decision and commandeered a helicopter, his objective being to get the body to Los Alamos as soon as he could.

He gave Hesseltine instructions to wait with the disk, and then radioed Joe Rose to come up from Roswell and take command of the loading and transport process.

They resealed the body in its rubberized bag and got it strapped onto the runner platform of the chopper. He got in beside the pilot and in a moment was on his way back to the base. Leaving the disk made him nervous, but he saw no alternative. He was by then deeply mired in the absurd and wasteful interservice rivalry that characterized the MAJIC project all through the forties and fifties. The Air Force had already created its Blue Team to organize recoveries of crashed disks, bodies and debris. Air Force and CIA would work in competition along parallel tracks for years. Unfettered by any congressional oversight, they lavished their energies on wasteful competition while the others - as always - proceeded with clear direction and careful method.

At that moment, though, the only thing on Will's mind was his now desperate effort to get this body where it belonged before it was reduced to gristle and liquid.

He realized that Van had strengthened his position on the base by sending Colonel Blanchard on enforced leave and placing the much more rule-conscious Jennings in command.

He did have one hope, and that involved Jennings. The man was so bound by the chain of command that he was likely to report first and await orders rather than do anything overt when Will arrived on base with the body.

Will's fear was that the Air Force would commandeer it. Admiral Hillenkoetter was obviously in no position to prevent this. In return for his support in other matters, the President was likely to continue to side with General Vandenberg.

As they bounced along toward Roswell Will tried to find the view he had seen last night. Sure enough they swept across a small range and there it was, the town now washed by morning sun. He had been here, flying on wings of dream.

He shuddered, remembering the freedom and the fear. Two feet away from him the strange body rode in its canvas shroud. Given the incredible pressures of the situation, I find it remarkable that Wilfred Stone was functioning at all. But he was functioning, and well. As a matter of fact he was acting with considerable intelligence and decision.

The others had very intentionally shattered his model of reality. He no longer knew what to think about them or what they were doing.

Still, he acted. He tried.

They landed on a round helicopter target, and two medics trotted over to take charge of the corpse.

"What are your orders?" Will asked, as if only mildly curious.

"Place the object in the meat locker pending transport."

That sounded extremely suspicious. "Transport to where?"

"Unknown, sir. You'll have to ask the exec."

Jennings was moving with unexpected swiftness.

Will accompanied the bundle to the kitchen of the officer's mess, where it was placed in a walk-in freezer. He then went to the HQ building and called on the lieutenant colonel. He was annoyed to find that he had communicated with Ramey and already had orders to transport the bodies and everything else immediately and under guard to Eighth Air Force HQ in Fort Worth.

He was a tight, intense man and he obviously intended to exert the authority he had been given. "I have a direct, written order," he told Will. "I don't even know your credentials."

"You know I'm CIG, and I obviously report to Admiral Hillenkoetter."

"Then the admiral will appreciate the way we do things in the Air Force."

What Will did at this point was completely outrageous.

Without another word he went directly down the hall to the intelligence offices. Joe Rose had his setup there, a cubicle with phone and a typewriter.

There was a set of keys to Rose's rented Chevy hanging on the wall, left there according to standard station procedure. Will picked up the keys and went over to the officer's club.

There was no guard on the meat locker in the kitchen. They weren't expecting him to turn into a body snatcher.

But that is just what this audacious man did. It's too bad that he had to use his best qualities, his quick intelligence and decisiveness, to outsmart the Air Force instead of understand the others.

When the odor from inside the locker hit him he almost passed out.

He drove into the town with the bundle on the back seat. It was already a hot day and the inside of the car was sweltering.

He went up Main Street to the Gawter Funeral Home, chosen because it was the first one he found.

"I'd like to see Mr. Gawter," he said to the young woman at the reception desk.

"Who?"

"The owner."

"Mr. Steinman. Mr. Gawter died three years ago." She made a call, glanced up. "Is this in reference to a bereavement?"

"Yes." In a sense, it was.

"I'm so sorry for you. Mr. Steinman will meet you in the Contemplation Room. He'll show you our memorials and explain the different plans that we offer here at Gawter. Is your dear one still at the hospital?"

"No," Will replied evenly, "he's in a bag in the backseat of the car." Macabre though it is, Will Stone has a very definite sense of humor.

She blinked very rapidly for a moment. Then without a further word she conducted him to the "Contemplation Room," which turned out to be a showroom where coffins were lined up like late-model Buicks. A man of about fifty in a dark-blue suit approached. He was wearing a sad smile.

Will introduced himself and showed him his CIG credentials.

"This is a national emergency," he said. "I'm commandeering your place of business and your services forthwith. You are to close your doors at once for the duration of the time I am here. And if you ever speak to anybody concerning what you are about to witness you will be committing high treason and will be punished accordingly. Do you understand me?"

Steinman's lips opened with a dry rasp. In those days nobody would dream of impeding a government official in pursuit of his duties.

"I want you to send all your workers home until one o'clock this afternoon. Tell them that I am a federal mortuary inspector."

"Yes. Please come with me to my office."

They were soon watching the last of his six employees hurry out of the back of the building. Will got the bundle from the car.

He'd never been backstage in a funeral home before. There were three porcelain embalming tables in the preparation area, which was air-conditioned with an evaporative cooler. The result was that the air was warm and damp instead of hot and dry.

Each table had a drain in one corner, and was so angled that any fluids would flow right into it.

"Where do the drains go?"

"City sewer."

"I want every bit of fluid from this body saved."

"I'll get a bucket."

Will put the bundle on the table. It was so carefully tied that he had to cut the knots with his penknife. When Steinman came back he was confronted with the little man.

The odor was overpowering. Steinman handed Will a tube of Baume Ben-Gay. "Put a dab under your nose,"

he said. Will informs me that it didn't help.

Steinman opened a glass-fronted cabinet which contained trochars and rubber gloves and packages of Rock-Hard Cavity Fluid.

He put on some rubber gloves and lifted one of the arms. It was then that he noticed something very wrong.

No doubt it was the extreme lightness of the limb. He gasped and looked at Will in consternation. "What happened here?"

Will did not answer directly. How could he? "What can you do to slow down decomposition?"

"Embalm him or freeze him."

"I have to take him somewhere. Is there a freezer truck?"

"No truck can maintain temperature low enough to stop decay in a cadaver this far gone. It has to be frozen solid."

Will had no choice but to go for embalming. He saw that he would have to drive the thing up to Los Alamos himself.

"Sir, is this - may I ask - a child?"

"This is the body of a soldier."

Steinman peered at the face, then looked at Will. His eyes were stricken. "What happened to this man?"

Will tried for a believable answer. "An atomic accident. The rest is classified."

"Lord, Lord. What hath God wrought?"

Will had to get out of that room. The odor was just too much. He stood for a moment in the hall, gasping for breath. But he didn't dare leave Steinman alone with the body so he soon went back in.

"It's a mistake to leave the room when you have a stinker on the table," Steinman said casually. "Got to get used to it twice."

Will describes the humid, sultry atmosphere of the preparation room as feeling like rotted grease. He slopped too much Baume Ben-Gay under his nose, inhaled some of it and went into a sneezing attack so violent he was afraid it was going to turn into a virtual epileptic fit. The powdered eggs he'd swallowed earlier for breakfast threatened to come up while he was Still trying to control the sneezing.

Then he saw the mortician start trying to open the little man's coverall. It was silver with dozens of pockets and flaps and buttons on it.

While he fumbled around in complete confusion Will finally brought himself under control.

"Where's the zipper on this thing, anyhow?"

They couldn't find a zipper. There were no buttons, except on the pockets and the flaps. The little man was like a cheap doll that had been sewn into its dress.

"We'll cut it," Will announced. Steinman brought scissors, which were hopeless. Then he got a surgical scalpel. It didn't work either.

He looked hard at Will. "Mister, I want to know what's going on here. What is this?" He gestured at the corpse.

"I told you. A soldier - "

"Who got himself shrunken in some kind of atomic accident? And his coverall is made of cloth that won't cut and he looks like a cross between an angel and a troll? Mister, I want to know what all of this is about or I think that I am leaving this area. Why aren't you in some government facility? The Roswell Base is a mile from here. And there is the national laboratory in Los Alamos."

"The deterioration is happening far faster than we anticipated. You have the best facility in southern New Mexico."

"Is it some sort of spaceman? Is that what you are bringing in I here?"

"I don't know what in the world you're talking about," Will tried to butter his voice with scorn. "That nonsense belongs in the back pages of the newspapers. I have a dead man here, and he has a family that loves him."

"Which reminds me of the matter of payment."

"You'll be paid five hundred dollars."

"Well, that is good."

"So let's figure out how to get this damn coverall open and get on with it before we both suffocate."

Inch by inch they examined the garment. There were no seams anywhere. When Will touched it he could feel the slight, bony skin beneath and his flesh crawled.

"I found it! Damn, this is a cunning thing." Steinman had made a small opening in the cloth. As he pulled it got wider. It made a curious ripping sound, but he wasn't tearing anything. The two sides of the open seam were covered with strips of what looked to Will like stiff fur. It was composed of tiny hooked hairs that tangled when they were pressed together. The seam they made was almost invisible.

I don't know whether mankind invented Velcro independently, or if MAJIC secretly leaked the technology to the rest of us.

They opened the garment and lifted it off the body.

And it was a perfect body. Heartbreakingly perfect. The size of a boy of about ten. The skin was gray-white and completely hairless. The genitals were about as formed as those of a three-year-old. But they were there, uncircumcised. There was no belly button.

"My God, this is a little boy!"

"I told you - "

"You told me there was an accident. A soldier - shrunk I thought. Somehow."

"A boy soldier. Doing a very brave work for the good of his country."

"You people have gotten to killing children with your damn atomic shenanigans? For shame!"

"For America!"

"Let me tell you something, Mr. Government. You people forgot what America was a long time ago. This boy in this here uniform - there isn't anything in the world important enough to bring his young life to an end like this. And what did you do to his face? Operate on his eyes? Why, he's no more'n a human guinea pig."

Will made a note that Joe Rose was to work on this man, make certain he kept his lip buttoned.

"Embalm this cadaver, Mr. Steinman."

"I'll do it, but I need a death certificate. I want to know where the parents are and where to ship this child.

There's no way this little fella is leaving here in the back of a Chevrolet!"

After Steinman had made his incision a brownish-red fluid drained out into the bucket Will had put under the table. He collected the fluid in a jar.

Steinman brought out a syringe and a large bottle of embalming fluid. As a test Will had him swab some on the skin. When there was no reaction he let him fill the body with the fluid.