Born Again

Born Again

By Ben Bova

Keating took the afternoon off and drove far out into the wooded Virginia hills, without any conscious destinantion merely drove through the late March sunshine in his agency furnished incospicuous gray Ford. He did not have to be told that it was bugged; that anything said inside the car would be faithfully recorded back at headquarters. And there were tracking transmitters built into the car, naturally. Even if he drove it to Paragonia, satellite sensors would spot him as plainly as they count missile silos in Siberia.

And he knew, just as surely, that he expected a contact, a message, a set of instructions or some sort of help from the entity he had refrained from killing that rainy night atop the Acropolis.

How can I be so certain that he’ll help me? Keating asked himself as he drove. There’s no doubt in my mind that he is what he said he is : an extraterrestrial, a creature from another world, sent here to keep us from blowing ourselves to kingdom come with our nuclear toys. But will he help me? Am I important enough to his plans to be rescued? Does he know what Lyle is going to do to me? Does he give a damn?

No answers came out of the sky as Keating drove blindly toward Charlottesville. It was not until he turned onto Interstate 64 and saw the signs for Monticello that he realized where he was heading.

Born Again. Photo : Elena

He joined a group of five Japanese tourists and follwed the guides through Thomas Jefferson’s home, half listening to the guides’ patter, half looking at the furnishings and gadgets of the brightest man ever to live in the White House. In the back of his mind Keating realized that he had slept in hotel rooms far more luxurious than Jefferson’s bedroom. Wes he one of them? He wondered. Were they tinkering with our world’s politics that far back?

Keating kept pace with the other tourists, but his attention was actually focused on a message that never came. He felt certain that they – whoever they were – would contact him. But by the time his group had been ushered back to the main entrance of the house, at the end of the tour, there had been no contact. He was out in the cold, completely alone.

He drove back in darkness to the apartment in Arlington that the agency had provided for him. It was a pleasan-enough set of rooms, with a view of the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome. Keating could sense the bugs that infested the walls, the phone, most likely the entire building. A fancy jailhouse, he knew