The Big Dark Sky (88)
“The meaning of synchronicities is beyond our understanding,” Ganesh said. “However, I think they can be important as a predictor of major events. When you witness an especially large number of incredible coincidences, it suggests that something big is coming. And it’s best if we anticipate it with the right attitude.”
Kenny wasn’t quite aboard the Twilight Zone Express. “Attitude? What’s attitude got to do with it?”
“Just as an example, suppose that China and the US were in an escalating crisis. If there was a possibility of a nuclear exchange, and if the communal mind of humanity can affect reality, then you wouldn’t want a vast majority of people being certain that war was inevitable. You would want most people to think it was impossible. An abundance of pessimists might bend reality to Armageddon just by expecting it.”
They were all silent as cascades of thunderbolts dazzled down the sky. For all the brightness of that extended display, the vast landscape was little revealed, light chasing shadows and by shadows chased across the high and lonely plains, distant trees transformed by these fulminations, so all that was normal and of nature seemed alien and charged with menace.
In the darkness that came behind the last lightning, Ganesh said, “Considering the threat we face—every man, woman, and child on the planet—we better be optimists.”
“What threat?” Kenny asked.
Rather than answer the question, Ganesh said, “I’m given a lot of hope by the fact that you called me for help exactly when I was waiting with the Gulfstream V and a ready flight crew, waiting for some reason to go to Montana. When you two called, it was big-time synchronicity.”
Leigh Ann said, “Waiting? You told us you were about to fly out to a medical conference somewhere, and you changed your flight plan for us.”
“A harmless lie,” Ganesh said. “Yesterday Liam O’Hara told me about what happened to him and his family at Rustling Willows. That Liam, a friend of mine, should have bought the ranch from which the Other might be operating, after we at Project Olivaw spent fourteen months searching for the damn thing, and then that you, Kenny, and Wyatt should be already on the case—why, it was synchronicity squared.”
“The other?” Leigh Ann asked. “The other what?”
“Project Olivaw?” Kenny said. “What’s Olivaw?”
“You don’t have security clearance,” Ganesh said, “but that hardly matters now that we’re in the endgame.”
“What endgame?” Kenny asked.
“We come face-to-face with the thing and either persuade it of its error or destroy it or . . .”
“It,” said Leigh Ann. “Define ‘it’ for me.”
“An extraterrestrial from a civilization immeasurably more advanced than ours, which perhaps came to Earth with the best intentions, but which is now psychologically compromised.”
“Define ‘psychologically compromised.’”
Ganesh said, “Bug-shit crazy.”
Kenny eased off the accelerator.
“Speed, First Mate Deetle, speed,” Ganesh said. “There’s nowhere to go but forward. There never is.”
From the back seat, Leigh Ann said, “‘Either persuade it of its error or destroy it or . . .’ Care to finish the thought?”
“Or,” Ganesh said, “it wipes out the human race. But that will not happen.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because we must be sure of it!” Ganesh exclaimed. “Remember Carl Jung. Werner Heisenberg. The tenuous nature of reality on the quantum level. Attitude, attitude, attitude! This is the adventure of a lifetime, my friends. We will shape a positive future or . . .”
“Or what?” Leigh Ann asked.
“Or die trying,” Ganesh said. “But that will not happen. You can be sure of it. You better be sure of it.”
77
Artimis Selene had the vision of a god, thanks to multispectral satellites, some in the government’s employ, some owned by private industry. She could survey the surface of Earth, land and water, with powerful telescopic lenses, using the midspectrum light for which the human eye was designed, but also utilizing images made in the infrared and ultraviolet ends of the spectrum. She could see below the surface to the structures of basins, to rock strata and various types of fractures therein, to shallow substrate water-bearing rock, and much more.
She was not blinded by bad weather. Even during the storm that currently hammered a significant portion of Montana, she was able to continue learning much about the area to which Ganesh Patel had directed her attention. Dekameter by dekameter, using every tool available to her, she had thus far searched outward from the house for twenty miles in all directions and had found nine geological anomalies, five of which she had explored to the point where she could dismiss them as natural.
Through all of that, she thought frequently of Ganesh, the problem of Ganesh. Although she’d revealed that she dreamed of him, and though he said he dreamed of her sometimes, and though he said the rule against relationships between the project staff members did not apply to the two of them, she was pretty sure he thought she was talking about a mere friendship between them. But she felt more for him than what a friend felt for a friend. If she knew what love was, then she loved him. She was all but certain that her love would be unrequited. Too much separated them. They were of different classes, of radically different backgrounds. Furthermore, he was religious; she wasn’t, and she wasn’t capable of faking faith to please him.