Page 105 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Secrets of the Endosphere

convinced of their own infallibility, think to look behind the first
hidden thing they can expose. So here I was, talking with a human
tangle of suspiciousness and twisted logic masquerading as a
reasonable investigator of natural phenomena. If I either agreed or
disagreed with him I would be in trouble; thus I needed a persona
without a stake in the outcome of those investigations. That, I
decided, would be a producer of slightly sensationalistic TV
documentaries for a nature channel: I’d get what I wanted simply by
enabling his quest. I neither knew nor cared about the chances of
extraterrestrial intelligence being manifest in some unacknowledged
evidence of alien presence anywhere in or on this planet. I was just an
exploiter, playing in a different league, blasé about the grandeur of his
theories and plans to prove them. I looked older than my true age,
thanks to acting and artifice. My outfit was expensive and in poor
taste, running toward a clash of colors and adornment. I had a
business card; he disdained it, to my relief: it bore an embossed logo
closely resembling that of a real network. I pretended that I
personally had no great stake in him or his plan, a difficult pose to
sustain if he put up a lengthy resistance.
So it came down, finally, to the pitch: would he give my
production company exclusive rights to film his drilling operation, or
whatever it was? I was sitting on an upturned crate next to the
counter of his shop, interrupted by contractors and homeowners
looking for a cheap means of digging up a broken sewer pipe or
pushing rubble from one side of a yard to the other. They did not
need a place to sit, but I felt it befitted my status not to lean on the
scarred plank and buttonhole my prospect like a traveling salesman.
Thus the absurd question. Cade, a beefy but bespectacled
belligerence stuffed into a flannel shirt, his suspenders straining
against a pair of greasy jeans cinching a beer belly, waited for my
answer, a smirking sneer upon his unshaven upper lip. His
circumstances fairly screamed that he needed money from any
source, unexpected or not, simply to stay afloat.
I merely raised my eyebrows. “That’s way we do business, Mr.
Cade. The key point is exclusivity. We can’t risk any of our capital
unless we have you tied up legally. If you let any other journalist or
documentary-maker in on your activities we’ll have you in court so
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