Dreamcatcher(71)

Underhill unslung the tape recorder, set it on the desk facing

Kurtz, and pushed PLAY. A toneless robot voice said: 'NSA radio intercept. Multiband. 62914A44. This material is classified top secret. Time of intercept 0627, November fourteen, two-zero-zero-one. Intercept recording begins after the tone. If you are not rated Security 91  Clearance One, please press STOP now.'

'Please,' Kurtz said, nodding. 'Good. That'd stop most unauthor?ized personnel, don't you think?'  

There was a pause, a two-second beep, then a young woman's voice said: 'One. Two. Three. Please don't hurt us. Ne tious blessez pas.' A two-second silence, and then a young man's voice said. 'Five. Seven. Eleven. We are helpless. Nous sommes sans défense. Please don't hurt us, we are helpless. Ne nous faites - '

'By God, it's like a Berlitz language lesson from the Great Beyond,' Kurtz said.

'Recognize the voices?' Underhill asked.

Kurtz shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

The next voice was Bill Clinton's. 'Thirteen. Seventeen. Nine?teen.' In Clinton's Arkansas accent, the last one came out Nahnteen. 'There is no infection here. Il n'y a pas d'infection ici.' Another two?-second pause, and then Tom Brokaw spoke from the tape recorder. 'Twenty-three. Twenty-seven. Twenty-nine. We are dying. On se meurt, on crève. We are dying.'

Underhill pushed STOP. 'In case you wondered, the first voice is Sarah Jessica Parker, an actress. The second is Brad Pitt.'

'Who's he?'

'An actor.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Each pause is followed by another voice. All the voices are or would be recognizable to large segments of the people in this area. There's Alfred Hitchcock, Paul Harvey, Garth Brooks, Tim Sample  -  he's a Maine-style humorist, very popular  -  and hundreds of others, some of which we haven't identified.'

'Hundreds of others? How long did this intercept last?'

'Strictly speaking, it's not an intercept at all but a clear-band transmission which we have been jamming since 0800. Which means a bunch of it got out, but we doubt if anyone who picked it up will have understood much of it. And if they do - ' Underhill gave a little What can you do shrug. 'It's still going on. The voices appear to be real. The few voiceprint comparisons that were run are identical. Whatever else they are, these guys could put Rich Little out of business.'

The whup-whup-whup of the helicopters came clearly through the walls. Kurtz could feel it as well as hear it. Through the boards, through the OSHA poster, and from there into the gray meat that was mostly water, telling him to come on come on come on, hurry up hurry up hurry up. His blood responded to it, but he sat quietly, looking at Owen Underhill. Thinking about Owen Underhill. Make haste slowly; that was a useful saying. Especially when dealing with folks like Owen. How's your groin, indeed.

You f**ked with me once, buck, Kurtz thought. Maybe didn't cross my line, but by God, you scuffed at it, didn't you? Yes, I think so. And I think you'll bear watching.

'Same four messages over and over,' Underhill said, and ticked them off on the fingers of his left hand. 'Don't hurt us. We're helpless. There's no infection here. The last one - '

'No infection,' Kurtz mused. 'Huh. They've got their nerve, don't they?'

He had seen pictures of the reddish-gold fuzz growing on all the trees around Blue Boy. And on people. Corpses, mostly, at least so far. The techs had named it Ripley fungus, after the tough broad Sigourney Weaver had played in those space movies. Most of them were too young to remember the other Ripley, who had done the 'Believe It or Not' feature in the newspapers. 'Believe It or Not' was pretty much gone, now; too freaky for the politically correct twenty-first century. But it fit this situation, Kurtz thought. Oh yes, like a glove. Made old Mr Ripley's Siamese twins and two-headed cows look positively normal by comparison.

'The last one is We're dying,' Underhill said. 'That one's inter?esting because of the two different French versions accompanying the English. The first is straightforward. The second  -  on crève  -  is slangy. We might say "Our goose is cooked."' He looked directly at Kurtz, who wished Perlmutter were here to see that yes, it could be done, 'Are they cooked? I mean, assuming we don't help them along?'

'Why French, Owen?'

Underhill shrugged. 'It's still the other language up here.'

'Ah. And the prime numbers? just to show us we're dealing with intelligent beings? As if any other kind could travel here from another star system, or dimension, or wherever it is they come from?'

'I guess so. What about the flashlights, boss?'

'Most are now down in the woods. They disintegrate fairly rapidly, once they run out of juice. The ones we've been able to retrieve look like soup cans with the labels stripped off. Considering their size, they put on a hell of a show, don't they? Scared the living hell out of the locals.'

When the flashlights disintegrated, they left patches of the fungus or ergot or whatever the hell it was behind. The same seemed true of the aliens themselves. The ones that were left were just up there standing around their ship like commuters standing around a broken-down bus, bawling that they weren't infectious, il n'y a pas d'infection ici, praise the Lord and pass the biscuits. And once the stuff was on you, you were most likely  -  what had Owen said? A cooked goose. They didn't know that for sure, of course, it was early yet, but they had to make the assumption.