* * *
The time came for those scientists from the Institute who had volunteered for and been accepted to work on Jericho to bid farewell to Sudbury. With their families they were moved into the residential sector of the Brunnermont complex, where schooling, hospital care, recreation, entertainment, and all the other requisites of the modern style of living were provided. They came to accept as normal ingredients in their lives the discipline, the tight security measures and the isolation from society that Brunnermont demanded. They became a self-contained society-in-miniature of their own, charged with the custody of the greatest secret of all time, and sealed off from the world of prying eyes and ears by the electronically guarded three-mile-deep perimeter zone, the Marine Corps and Ranger squads that flitted like phantoms among the greenery of the surrounding hills, the gun pits that covered the approach roads and the silent, probing radar fingers that searched the skies above.
The roles of Clifford and Aub somehow became interchanged. Aub, once the epitome of enthusiasm and energy, had grown reserved and apprehensive, fearful of this thing that had intruded upon and was now taking over their lives. Clifford became the tireless driving force, dominating the project and sparing nothing and nobody in his relentless determination to meet ever more demanding schedules. Everything he had ever been and everything he had once stood for seemed to have been sacrificed to the voracious and insatiable new god that was taking possession of his being.
* * *
Like an immense iceberg, the larger part of the Brunnermont complex lay submerged deep in the Precambrian heart of the Appalachian mountains with just its tip breaking the surface. From the air this tip had much of the appearance of a scenically sculptured ultramodern village, with knife-edge-styled houses, chalets, and communal buildings clustered but secluded amid a setting of trees, shrubs, pathways, and lawns, broken by the occasional ornamental pool or flower bed. All this was intended more to relieve the harshness of the reality that lay below ground for the colony of inhabitants and to make some concession to their need for psychological relaxation than to conceal the nature of the establishment. Even the most amateur photographic interpreters would soon have noticed the impenetrable perimeter defenses, the ramps down which the access roads descended to subterranean destinations protected by steel doors and the disproportionately high volume of aerial and road traffic that constantly arrived and departed—though these things would reveal nothing of the installation’s true purpose.
One evening, some months after their arrival at Brunnermont, Aub and Sarah were strolling among the trees in a shady corner of the so-called village, enjoying the scents and the freshness carried down from the hills on the first cool breezes of autumn. Had it been another time, another place, it would have been a dreamland. As things were, their mood was heavy and strained.
“Why did it all have to turn out this way, Aub?” Sarah asked, after several minutes of silence.
“Mmm. What?”
“You, me, Brad . . . us. This thing that’s happened. I mean . . . I know what’s happened . . . but I still don’t really understand why.”
“Yeah . . . I know what you mean.” The ebullient Aub of earlier days was gone.
“I was thinking about it all earlier today,” she said, kicking a stone absently. “How different it all used to be. Do you remember when you first came marching into our house, the one we had in New Mexico . . . the day that Brad quit that job at ACRE? We never laugh now the way we used to laugh then. . . . You and Brad used to get drunk every night . . . we all went out together. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“What happened to those three people?”
Aub stared at the ground in front of his slowly pacing feet as he sought a reply that would neither hurt nor deceive.
“I guess . . . they had to grow up sometime.”
“But it’s not a question of growing up, is it? We were always grown-up enough; that wasn’t so very long ago. It’s more of a change. Brad has changed. He isn’t the Brad we used to know any more. And his changing is making us change. I thought I knew him, Aub, but I don’t. I don’t know what made him change so suddenly.”