“Maybe too hastily,” Colby mused, cleaning his spectacles, which had still, somehow, miraculously survived. “I’m sure you’d have qualified for a high position in government accounting somewhere.”
Dash had an unassuming but intense personality. He was from a small town in Ohio, had wanted to be a doctor but been deterred by the demands of med school and joined the service to acquire practical medical skills a different way. He remembered seeing Keene on TV in the weeks before the conference in Washington. “You were one of the guys trying to get scientists to take the Kronians seriously about Venus,” he said. “And now everything’s happening again just the way you said. I was with you. It made a lot of sense to me. I mean, the evidence was right there all the time. They’re supposed to be logical people. How come you couldn’t get through to them?”
“I asked that question a lot too,” Keene replied. “I guess once people are indoctrinated into a system, they’re unable to see things in any other way than from that worldview. What you get is experts trained to know every detail and argument of the subject, but only within the system. They can’t question its premises. The notion that the whole system itself might be wrong is literally inconceivable. To do that, you almost always need somebody from outside—like you. Most of the big scientific revolutions happened in that kind of way.”
Cynthia, who was doing a wonderful job of putting the past behind, looked at Charlie Hu questioningly. “Hear what he’s saying about scientists, Charlie? Are you going to let him get away with that?”
“Oh, that’s not us. He means those guys at Yale and Cambridge,” Charlie replied.
Keene turned his head toward the window and thought back to it all. It all seemed an eternity ago, not just weeks—as if belonging to another world. Outside, the clouds of dust, smoke, and ash writhed in wind that was beginning to rise again. They passed a creek bed choked with rotting corpses of cattle underneath a strangely swaying black cloud that it took Keene a moment to realize, when they swarmed outside the window, was composed of flies. Fortunately, the window hit by the bullet had been covered with a plastic sheet. Close by, a bus had gone down the side of a ravine, spilling bodies that still lay where they had fallen or crawled to. There were more clouds of flies. Cynthia gripped Charlie’s arm as she stared out tight-mouthed, her face white and strained.
What had he been thinking? Keene asked himself. There was no “as if” about it. It had all been part of another world.
* * *
Progress was slower now that they were following behind the scout train. For long stretches the railroad ran close to the main east-west highway—still Interstate 10, running from the Atlantic coast of Florida to Los Angeles. The masses flocking into El Paso had been just the beginning. For mile after mile, the train rolled past the same scenes repeating themselves: of packed vehicles winding their way cautiously forward through the rock debris and wrecks; survivors from abandoned ones huddled in makeshift shelters, others continuing doggedly on foot; crowds pressed around emergency service vehicles; relief camps trying desperately to cope; and everywhere were the black clouds of flies signaling their gruesome message.
Keene found that he was registering it merely as a record of events having happened. The sights no longer had the ability to evoke any feelings. Twice in the course of the day, the train had to stop for major track repairs, each time being beseiged by supplicants who had to be turned away. On the second occasion, a group of them tried to rush the train and were stopped by the machine guns.
Nightfall found them past the halfway mark, descending from the southern Texas plateau into the valley of the Pecos. Repair crews had been pushing westward from San Antonio also, and the going actually became easier.
* * *
“You must be a man uniquely gifted with persuasiveness, Landen,” Cavan said. His tone was low, not intended to carry. “Did you ever think of yourself as charismatic? It isn’t a quality that I’d normally associate with my image of engineers.” It was mid morning of the second day. The country to the north was dotted with fires fanned by fierce winds. Draperies of oily flame still descended from a heaving sky. Cavan was wearing Army pants and a sweater with a scarlet neckerchief knotted at the throat. The incredible thing was that he looked younger and more vibrant than Keene had seen him for years.