Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 7

Stunted!

Temple found the rubber soles of her “sensible” ballet flats no match for rubble.

She’d agreed to meet Silas T. on this uncivilized stretch of Paradise Road, but had underestimated the ability of her soles to deal with desert hikes.

Well, walks anyway.

Her tender arches strove for balance on the sharp irregular surface of stone-studded sand. It was like walking over a spike-embellished Hells Angels motorcycle jacket, not that one of those guys would ever do a Sir Walter Raleigh and throw his outer garment down for a lady to walk on.

Beside her, Silas T. Farnum hooked his thumbs in his trouser belt loops and gazed at the desolate sun-baked scene like Alexander the Great contemplating an empire extending from the Arabian and Caspian to the Black and Mediterranean Seas. She guessed that’s why history called that sort “visionaries.”

Farnum’s vision was on the small side, like him. “That’s it, right there.”

Temple squinted despite sunglasses. No gigantic hotels shaded this backlot to Vegas Strip glory. Looking where his stubby forefinger pointed, she saw what seemed like a giant parking garage abandoned after going up a scant ten stories. It was just a skeleton of a building, intersecting girders and concrete making a dull gray brown plaid mostly obscured by giant tarps and plastic sheeting. Past its homely, raw structure, Temple glimpsed gaudy slices of completed Vegas Strip edifices.

“That’s all you’ve got?” she asked Farnum. “I’m sand-blasting my insteps to see another stalled construction project?”

“Not … quite. Watch the top of the building.”

“Building” was an overambitious word for it, but Temple dutifully looked.

A blast of noise right beside her made her jump. That was some phone ringtone he had. Deep drums throbbed.

She glanced sideways, disapproving, only to see him holding a small recording device with a mighty big sound she was starting to recognize.…

Farnum beamed. “The symphonic opening theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey. So glad a person of your generation recognized it. That confirms you’re the one for me.”

“Well, I may not feel confident that I’m the ‘one for you,’ Mr. Farnum.”

“Are you watching the top of the building, Miss Barr?”

“All right, but if I’m watching that space, I’m giving it one more minute flat to impress me.”

He just chuckled.

Had Temple been wearing her usual spike heels, she would have kicked herself for being dragged into this iffy outing with a certified fruit loop. Here she was always telling Matt he was too sympathetic to life’s losers. At least that was his job. Her job was publicizing legitimate enterprises.…

Temple stared as she saw the familiar disk of the spaceship Enterprise rising like the Earth over the moon in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. No … that iconic Star Trek ship had big thrusters behind the main disk. This thing was all disk as it elevated against an ocean-deep sky of intense blue. This thing was a—

“It’s you.” She turned on Farnum. “It’s you releasing those fake UFOs all over the Strip.”

He shrugged modestly. “Well, my minions anyway. I’ve stationed operators in all the highest towers.”

“Those otherworldly balloons are radio controlled, but I’m not, Mr. Farnum. My PR practice does not go in for cheap tricks. I am outta here.”

She would have spun on her heel, but she didn’t have one right now. The move just ground her sore soles deeper into the loose stones.

“Ow!” she exclaimed, disliking the weakness of her position both physically and mentally. She’d let herself be charmed and taken for a ludicrous ride. Being a hundred pounds and five-foot-zero often got her dismissed as young and silly, not serious, and now she’d earned that designation.

“Wait, Miss Barr. Just look at the building once more, for the space of a nanosecond.”

Temple glared, but he’d produced another small black device from his summery suit jacket pocket.

She glared. At the building, not the man.

And it was gone. No, replaced by a dazzling tower with a glittering, spinning top. Blink. No, all that raw concrete and steel was still there.

Had she eaten something at lunch, something sprinkled over her salad while she’d gazed at the patio gardens? Something in the wine? She hadn’t seen the bottle opened. Careless. She was alone with this strange man and possibly doped in the medical sense of the word.

“What did you see?” Farnum demanded with almost a giggle.

“A magical illusion. A trick. I must admit it was a trick on a David Copperfield scale. A whole building shifting skins, I mean. But, I warn you. I’ve … associated with magicians. You’re using some kind of controlled projection.”

“On this size and scale?”

“Copperfield does it,” she repeated.

“Do I look like him?”

“More like the anti-Copperfield,” she admitted.

“I told you I would take you to where X marks the spot. This is the spot. This is the secret to be revealed in delicious bites by you. Sound bites, film bites, cell phone bites, old-fashioned print bites. Think. What did you see?”

“In a nanosecond? I saw a tower—as if Vegas isn’t filled with them. It could have been the Stratosphere across the Strip. Something revolving, suspended. Again, like the roller coaster around the Stratosphere. I guess the icing on the layer cake could be a giant version of your annoying mini flying saucers.”

“UFOs.”

“UFOs. So I’m to ‘sell’ an alien slide show?”

“You’re to sell a mystery.”

“That’s a disappointment.” She saw Farnum’s thumb click his creepy black box again and whipped her head around to spot the special effect it created. This second glimpse rang a bell in her cerebellum, or wherever memory cells abided, about an almost ancient local … and mark.

She pinned Farnum with her sternest look. She knew Vegas history better than anyone. “This site. It once hosted a Las Vegas landmark. In fact, Howard Hughes bought it before it opened, and when it was imploded, they used the footage in a movie called Mars Attacks! They called it the Landmark Hotel and it was a tower topped by a flying saucer and it was leveled in 1995. Are you telling me you have a freaking time machine?”

“Oh, no, Miss Barr. That would be an old, clichéd idea with little glamour and appeal.”

Temple gave a relieved sigh. She wouldn’t have to call for the men in white to take him away, after all, and she was sure he wasn’t a Man in Black. He’d never make the height requirement.

“Although time travel is closer than you think,” Farnum said. “What I have—what we have, is the latest in futuristic technology. I’ve created a stealth building that will soon be unveiled for gathering witnesses from the, shall we say, fringe scientific theory community. I have three thousand confirmed attendees driving and flying and possibly walking here at this moment. Also arriving will be media from all the alien-centered cable TV programming.”

“Alien-centered programming” sounded even more sinister to Temple. Was it a fancy name for mind control? Meanwhile, she needed to grasp what was going on.

“When were you going to tell me that the circus was coming to town? Never mind. So they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot and now you’ve erected a ‘stealth’ building on it?”

Farnum nodded soberly. “Night crews have been working on it here for months, not knowing the building goes into hibernation once they leave. First you see it, then you don’t.”

She stared at the dreary unfinished mass of the parking garage. “How was I supposed to market an invisible building? What kind of a convention would anyone hold in an invisible building?”

“You must never underestimate the power of the human imagination when it boldly goes seeking alien life-forms. We have Voyager cruising out beyond the solar system after thirty-five years and now Curiosity scanning Mars. Soon Las Vegas will share in the wealth and debut the hotel-casino Area 54—‘a little more far out than Area 51.’ My motto.” Farnum beamed at her.

“Beam me up, Scotty,” she muttered.

Too bad that was just an expression and there was no way for her to turn into a sparkly silhouette and disappear.

When it came to alien life-forms, Silas T. Farnum was a doozy.