“He’s assaulting a reporter!” Jack shouted.
But before he could say more, he was hauled to his feet, his cuffs snipped off, and he was shoved toward a growing crowd of video crews and reporters.
He turned to see in the glare of the lights two gurneys being wheeled down the driveway. Strapped on them were the pale forms of A’eiio and E’iouy. Both lay inert, their eyes closed.
“Did you kill them?” shouted Jack, running forward, but restrained by a burly officer. “DID YOU KILL THEM?”
A sergeant stepped forward, his hands raised. “No. They’ve been tranquilized. It was necessary. They tried to evade arrest.”
“Arrest? Arrest? What the hell have they done?”
From the crowd came an angry babble, with phrases like “dangerous aliens” and “protect us” rising like glass shards from the chatter.
Jack pressed forward, leading the growing throng of reporters. “Do you even know what these drugs would do to them? Did you even know that you wouldn’t kill them?”
A television reporter thrust her microphone at the sergeant. “Can you tell us why they were arrested?”
The sergeant shook his head. “Look, there’ll be a news conference at headquarters tomorrow morning. They’ll explain this stuff then.”
He turned and left, as the two emergency vans bearing the unconscious fairies accelerated away, lights flashing, sirens blaring.
Jack decided he needed to call his editor, to add this stunning development to the story he had uploaded. But in his rush to get to the fairies’ house, he had missed a message. It had been sent earlier from A’eiio. With trembling hands, he accessed it:
“They may come for us. You have to protect Sam! Her race cannot survive any captivity!”
• • •
The television truck careened around the corner and accelerated down the dark, narrow downtown street, lurching to a halt, nearly hitting a police car. The car was blocking the road, its emergency lights casting a whirling kaleidoscope of reflections off the houses on either side.
Jack leaped out, skirting the car and running toward the address A’eiio had given him, a modest structure nestled among the others. “Poor, dear Sam!” he thought. “She’s defenseless! She’ll be traumatized!”
The house’s front window erupted in a cascade of glass as a blue-clad form erupted out of it. The flailing policeman landed in thick bushes at the curb and rolled over, groaning.
“What the hell did you do to her!” Jack shouted, trying to mount the steps.
“Awwww, shhhhitttt,” moaned the cop, trying to haul himself to his feet.
Another cop burst from the doorway, eyes wide. “Little monster is strong!” he exclaimed. “Call for backup!”
Two more cops appeared, limping. Both of them showing bruised faces. One shoved Jack back down the steps.
“Don’t go in there! Get back. This thing’ll tear you apart!”
“What thing?” asked Jack. “An ogre?”
“Just get back. They sent us to pick up some girl. She’s a whatcha-call-it. A pixie.”
“She did this?” Jack stood transfixed at the sight of the injured policemen.
A static-filled radio message told the cops that Sam had been spotted. Bright lights switched on behind him, signaling that the TV crew had begun filming.
He followed the cops down the street, to find one pointing up at the roof. Jack looked up to see Sam, naked, running along the roof line, adeptly launching her small body in soaring leaps between buildings. Reaching a spot down the street from the officers, she vaulted herself off the roof into the thick branches of a large oak, leaped down, sprinted across the street, and began to scale the outside of a tall apartment house.
“I can’t keep up!” exclaimed the television cameraman, trying to capture her acrobatic escape.”
“SAM!” shouted Jack. “I’M COMING FOR YOU!” He heard a distant voice that he recognized as hers, but he couldn’t tell what she had said.
Jack doubled back to the television van. The crew didn’t see him, busy trying to video Sam. He climbed into the van, started the engine and slammed it into reverse, speeding backward down the street to the main intersection. He wrestled the van into a quick U-turn and found the emergency flashers and switched them on, hoping Sam would recognize that it was him.
Almost sideswiping a passing sports car, he accelerated to the next block in the direction he thought Sam might have headed. Slowing, he turned up the street. He reached the end of the block, turned left, and went up another block.
He was halfway down that block when a loud thump on the roof startled him. He stopped, and Sam swung down, opened the door and slid in.
“Thank God!” he exclaimed. “Are you okay?” He was startled by her eyes. He could swear that they had been a glowing red when she leaped into the van, but now they were the blue he had come to know so well.
“Yes. I hope the officers aren’t too badly hurt.”
“You did that? You beat them up?”
Sam smiled slightly and shrugged. “They wanted to capture me.”
“We need to get you away from here. Are you strong or something?”
“When I need to be.”
“Well, I sure won’t challenge you to a wrestling match. Where can I take you that’s safe?”
“There’s a place, where we—”
She was interrupted by the warble of sirens, and three police cars zoomed in from side streets, lurching to a stop in front of the van. Jack checked the rear view mirror and saw two cars come up behind them, lights flashing.
Cops streamed out of the cars, leveling an arsenal of pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles at them.
“Show your hands!” shouted the cop who advanced, aiming a shotgun at the windshield. “We will shoot you!”
Jack raised his hands, glimpsing a movement out of the corner of his eye. Sam had opened the van door, and was sliding out.
“Don’t!” he exclaimed.
“They might hurt you,” said Sam calmly, padding toward the cops on bare feet.
“You look like the creatures of this planet,” declared the werewolf Flaktuckmetang suspiciously. He wore the battle armor he’d not been able to wear since he had been sentenced to exile. He had taken care to display the medals he had earned for performance of his duties before the exile.
“And dolphins look like fish,” Christopher shot back, cocking his head and smiling. “But they are not. We are a far superior race.”
They stood facing one another in the sunbaked desert, each standing at the front of a dozen of their species—Pilgrims and werewolves. Behind each group floated the huge, shimmering wormholes in which they had arrived.
The werewolves brandished weapons, because the surprise encounter with the Pilgrims’ wormhole in orbit had nearly triggered a battle. After a tense standoff in the vacuum of space, they had warily landed their wormholes in the vast emptiness of the desert, and the blistering, dry winds gusting around them.
“Your ambush could have caused a disaster, intercepting us as we were deploying the . . . device. There could have been . . . consequences.” The werewolf gestured to the pack of massive praetorians looming behind him, which aimed an array of their ornately decorated rifles, grenade launchers, and hand-cannons at the group.
“It was no ambush,” said Christopher, raising his hands in an open gesture of conciliation. “It was a contact . . . to talk. We have been observing your deployment. We need to talk about what you are doing.”
“What we are doing is no business of yours. And we don’t know who . . . what . . . you are. You are not in the wormhole network . . . in the Alliance of species. Why have you kept yourself hidden?”
“We know your plans . . . of the Palliation,” said Christopher. “We’ve observed your preparations. We want to help you.”
“Help?” The werewolf gave a guttural, derisive laugh. “We don’t need your help, whatever you are. Leave, or we will kill you.”
“Our goals a
re the same. We both want to preserve this planet’s environment; but to cull its population. The only difference between our goals is that you only want to preserve it for exiles. We seek to emigrate here from our home planet. Otherwise, our race will die. Here, we can better preserve the planet than these—”
“If you approach us again, we will see it as an act of war.” The werewolf showed his fangs. “We haven’t had a good war in a very long time.”
“We can be of use to you. We can sabotage the Remediation. That will help ensure that the other species in the network will agree to your plan.”
Flaktuckmetang gave another growling chuckle. “Haven’t you been monitoring their news? About the one I killed? The arrests? The interning? There was even a death. They killed a fairy. No, the Remediation will not be implemented.”
Christopher shrugged. “But you can’t be certain. This planet’s creatures may somehow decide to do the rational thing. We can ensure that there is absolutely no chance the Remediation will succeed.”
“How? You are aliens on this planet. You have no role in their decisions.”
“Actually, we do.” Christopher smiled and shrugged. “We’ve been colonizing the planet covertly for decades. We have people high in government, in industry. They can advocate for special interests . . . oil, coal, plastics. They can deny that there is a disruption of their planet . . . a global heating. And they can very effectively campaign against the Remediation. We had planned to infiltrate and gradually take control before the planet was terminally ruined. But this is a better opportunity. For both our races.” He gestured broadly at the expanse around them. “There is room on this planet for all of us. For all Mythicals and Pilgrims. Once . . .” he trailed off. There was no need to finish the sentence.
The werewolf gestured for the pack to lower their weapons. “I will take your proposal to my Warden. Until then, do not approach our operations or you will be attacked.”
• • •
Smears of blood stained the glass, some being in the form of small hand prints. Jack felt a gut-wrenching knot of panic and fear, as he peered through the bloodstains and into the bio-containment cell holding Sam. She was curled up in a corner, handcuffed to a chain attached to the cinder block wall. She wore an orange prison jumpsuit and prison slippers.
“Sam!” he had to shout, because the cell was sealed. It was normally used to house prisoners with the most dangerous diseases. But Sam’s only “disease” was a pheromonal emanation that rendered the guards dopily smitten.
Sam raised her head and looked blearily up at him. Her normally glistening blue eyes were dull with depression, or maybe drugs, or both. She seemed not to recognize him at first; then her expression brightened and she gave him a wan smile.
“You came,” she mouthed.
“I’m getting you out of here!” he exclaimed, as his fear transformed to utter rage.
He turned to the guard who had been hauling him, handcuffed, past the cell. “Do you know what the hell you’re doing to her? Do you even know how to take care of her? Do you even know what she needs to stay alive?”
“She’s dangerous,” said the guard offhandedly. “She attacked our officers. And she’s an alien, and we don’t know what poisons she’s spittin’ out. So, it’s up to the docs to figure out what to do.”
He knew his options and credibility were limited, since he was in custody himself for trying to help Sam escape. But he hoped the phone call he’d made to the editor of Lightning News could bring a lawyer. After all, the online site was owned by the media conglomerate Bennett Communications. And, the site had a vested economic interest in getting him out. He was their reporter right in the middle of the hottest story on the planet.
Sure enough, only half an hour after he’d been deposited in the jail’s interview room, a portly, balding, vest-suited lawyer, Donald Pearce, hustled into the room, declaring that he would be representing Jack.
But Jack already had his defense strategy mapped out. In his first reporting job on the court beat, he’d witnessed lots of defense lawyers spin webs of almost-truths to get their clients sprung. He’d already began spinning his own web.
“Okay, I was not helping her escape,” he told Pearce, raising his eyebrows to signal the beginning of a concocted story.
“Right,” said Pearce, smiling conspiratorially and scribbling notes.
“I was covering the story for Lightning News, and was looking for her, and she just jumped into the van.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” said Pearce, scribbling.
“And I didn’t steal the van. The TV crew let me borrow it.” Jack knew the television crew would readily agree to the small lie, in return for an exclusive interview.
“Okay,” said Pearce. “I’ll go see the TV crew and the prosecutor. We’ll get you out of here.” The lawyer stood to go, but Jack stopped him.
“I also want to give you a much bigger task. A tempting case for a lawyer. This is a civil rights case. These Mythicals are being held in custody for no good reason but their species. They haven’t committed crimes. In fact, given that their jailers don’t even know how to take care of them, they could die.”
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“Get them out.”
Pearce shrugged and shook his head. “Look, this is far beyond what my employers would go for. This is—”
“This is the biggest damned story ever! And getting these Mythicals out will get Lightning News the biggest exclusive ever.”
“Yeah, well, I’m telling you that as a news outlet, they wouldn’t have a hell of a lot of influence with any judge. In fact, since this roundup was nationwide, it would be a matter for the Supreme Court.”
“That’s why I’m suggesting you go see a fairy by the name of E’iouy. He’s in custody. He’s a lawyer . . . a prominent lawyer. You work with him. He’ll know how to proceed.”
“Hell, you mean to tell me there could be a fairy . . . an alien . . . arguing before the Supreme Court?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Standing at the control panel, peering at the view screen, the Pilgrim wormhole pilot easily spotted the circle of lights beaming into the star-filled night sky from the expanse of the valley. Nearby, he could see the dimmer lights of the huge adjacent dwelling.
Christopher peered over the pilot’s shoulder as he touched buttons to launch the wormhole sweeping down to waft gently into a hover just above the helicopter landing pad. Christopher passed through the airlock into the chamber that enclosed the hole and stood waiting while a technician extended a ladder down to the ground.
He laboriously lowered his portly bulk down to the ground, to see multibillionaire Nathan Clark standing on the broad porch of his massive log home. He wore his usual khaki pants, plaid shirt, and impassive expression. The tall, steel-gray-haired mogul had not come to dominate the country’s energy markets by letting his emotions show.
Stepping up beside him, his slightly younger brother, David, shorter and seemingly less imposing in slacks and a polo shirt. But Christopher had watched the younger Clark totally bulldoze a roomful of senators who foolishly tried to pass a bill that would affect profits of Clark Industries.
Particularly impressive about the brothers was that they had accrued their immense wealth in only two decades, since they had arrived through the wormhole as penniless Pilgrims.
Christopher approached them, and Nathan wasted no time getting to the point of their meeting. “Are the monsters planning what we thought?” he asked.
“Yes. They call it the Palliation.” Christopher mounted the stairs, as the Clark brothers led him into the two-story great room of the log home.
“Palliation?” asked Nathan. “That means alleviate, right? What the hell do they want to alleviate?”
“The deterioration of the planet. The werewolves are now inserting an array of electromagnetic pulse weapons in orbit. At a given signal, they will trigger them to decimate the planet’s electrical infrastructure . .
. to destroy all power generation, communications, transportation. As a result, a huge percentage of the planet’s population will die.”
“Absolutely out of the question!” exclaimed Nathan. “They would also destroy all that we have built!”
“Yes, that would,” said David in more measured tones. “We were quite prepared to evolve our business away from fossil fuels, toward ecologically sound sources. This catastrophic plan of these inhuman creatures would mean that we would inherit a ruined technological infrastructure. We have the means to stop this nonsense, do we not?”
“I’m not sure,” said Christopher, as Nathan waved him to a seat on the leather couch before the massive stone fireplace, with its crackling fire. Nathan and David took seats in large armchairs.
“Not sure?” spat Nathan. “You mean to say after decades of monitoring this menagerie of freaks that you’re not sure we can rid the planet of them?”
“It’s not necessary to do that, for now. What I’m telling you is that I think our aims are currently consonant.”
Nathan leaned forward, glaring at Christopher. “There are some twenty thousand of us in Pilgrim colonies around this planet. And we can arm them and use our own wormhole to attack these . . . things.”
Christopher’s smile faded. He decided that—as powerful as these men were—it was time he asserted his authority. He pulled himself out of the chair and paced before them.
“You have been invaluable to our plans, no doubt,” he said. “But I am responsible for this pilgrimage. Our own environment is now ruined. There are fewer than a million of us left. Our former plan to infiltrate and dominate is too slow. So your orders—”
“OUR ORDERS!” shouted Nathan, standing to tower over Christopher. “YOU DO NOT GIVE US ORDERS!”
Christopher remained imperturbable. “Actually we do. We made you . . . we can ruin you. So, your orders are to use your influence . . . bribery, blackmail, whatever is necessary . . . to ensure that this Remediation does not go forward. I have told the werewolves that we will do that. And I will ask them in return that we be given sufficient notice of the Palliation. We will temporarily evacuate or harden our colonies against the electromagnetic burst, and allow its consequences to unfold. We can then return to a more pristine, less populous planet that we will occupy.”
Mythicals Page 15