“Yeah. I do.”
“That’s why he asked if Piper was here when we came in.”
Cameron waited, but apparently, a response was required before Charlie would move to the next thing. Like interfacing with a robot.
“Okay.”
“But I don’t think he wanted to tell you anyway. Which is maybe why he didn’t.”
“Sure.”
“But you need to know.”
“Okay. Thanks. What?” Cameron didn’t care for this preamble. It was giving him time to grow nervous.
“Piper loves Meyer.”
“Of … of course she does.”
“So when her psychic connection strengthens, she’ll want to hear what he says.”
“Sure. That makes sense.”
“But that means you can’t trust her, Cameron.”
Cameron blinked. “Why not?”
“You saw the network of magnetized stones. You can see it’s basically complete. The aliens aren’t like us. They don’t want to just barge in because they know how humans are. They can’t make contact with us until they know what cards we’re holding.”
“You mean until they know what we’re thinking.”
Charlie nodded. “It’s a lot easier to play poker when you know what you’re facing. Their ships are impervious, and they’re in no hurry. Nowhere in the records can we see what looks like a rush. We see planning, plotting, logical thought. They come, they stake their positions, they lay their monoliths. This, with the rows, is the most developed monolithic configuration we’ve ever seen. In the past, they made a few points to gather what they needed to know, but humanity was simpler then. They could descend from the sky in their chariots and be seen as gods. We’re not as naive now. We know what we’re facing. We don’t think fire is magic. They know we can fight, and they know our nature demands that we will, no matter how they might try to begin discourse. So they can’t just open the window and shout hellos. They have to put their hands around our throats first then demand our attention.”
Cameron nodded. This was the most he’d ever heard Charlie speak. Charlie was brilliant but socially retarded. It was almost hypnotic to hear him in his true element.
“To me, these networks seem finished. The complexity is daunting. It means they’re serious this time. They intend to act more seriously than they have in the past, and to speak to us — such as they speak, which may well be telepathic — in harsher words. But now that the network is complete, I would assume there is very little keeping this mothership overhead.” He glanced upward.
“Where will it go?”
“Vail.”
“Why Vail?”
“Because Vail is a brain. Like the other eight spots appear to be brains. If we understand the network at all, the brains will be where thoughts, as an average, presumably, are collected and visible to them. We can already tell something is changing. My spores are germinating. Your psychic phenomena are reawakening. And Piper can hear Meyer.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Your father and I are of like minds about many things, but we can only make guesses, and about some guesses we are divided. He has always been forgiving, believing that in spite of the aliens’ past, this time it will be different. This time, we will make meaningful contact and share information. But I feel different. And for that reason, I believe that contact must be disrupted.”
“Disrupted?”
“Piper seems to be forming a connection to Meyer. She will want to trust him, but he can’t be trusted. Under different circumstances, The Nine might have been seen as gods. I would guess that instead, they will be seen as the modern version of gods.”
“What’s the modern version of gods?”
“Celebrities,” Charlie said.
Cameron laughed hard at that, and the sound was too loud in the otherwise quiet lab. But Charlie’s face hadn’t changed or broken into a smile.
“You’re serious.”
Charlie nodded shortly. “They will need human corroborators. When those nine people return, which I believe they logically need to, they will be very popular with the media — the modern version of stone tablets brought down from high mountains, perhaps. But they won’t be the people they once were, all of whom were already known, trusted, and liked by the population. When they return, they will be alien mouthpieces. Piper will, as I said, want to believe him, support him, just have him back. Because although we all know she’s with you, she loves him.”
Cameron considered denying, but what was the point? Everyone did know. They were barely even trying to keep a secret, and even slept in the same home, away from the others.
“What’s this all about?” Cameron asked.
“You need to stay with her,” Charlie said. “Very, very close. You probably won’t be able to convince her of what I’m saying, but you can still be a counterbalance. Keep this in mind at all times, as you stick to her side like glue: for six months, humanity had cared only about finding the missing. But it is perhaps more appropriate to fear the found.”
“You said something about disrupting contact.”
“Contact. Then colonization. Maybe a kind of trial. Then if history shows, annihilation.”
Cameron swallowed. Charlie’s facade showed no fear, but his lack of fear was, in itself, terrifying. The lab was dark and silent beyond their cone of light and prophecy.
“When he returns,” Charlie said, “it will logically be at Vail. We’re almost out of time, judging by the change in energy and psychic phenomena.”
“So … ”
“You need to go back, and be there when it happens.”
“And then … ?” Cameron prompted.
His head twitched before Charlie could answer. A flick of movement had caught his eye on the monitor.
Charlie leaned in to see what Cameron was looking at. “Well, that’s unexpected.”
Cameron barely heard. He was out of his seat, through the office door, sprinting to beat the devil.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Piper’s eyes opened.
Something had changed.
She watched the small ranch house ceiling, seeing the crack where the plaster had split, vividly recalling an emotion that never belonged to her. She remembered the night the crack had formed as if she’d witnessed it, but the sight was like an emotion. She saw both from a distance, fogged with a vague recollection’s haze.
A man and a woman, not in the bed she lay in now, but in this spot. A tremor shook the ground. That wasn’t unusual; the ground here, on this particular swatch of land, often trembled. The woman whose emotion she was experiencing had felt afraid the first few nights here, seeing the way lights seemed to pass the windows despite there being no roads, noticing the way, when she went to the restroom in the middle of the night, her toothbrush would invert or her hair products would seem to have subtly moved. She’d been afraid the first time she’d encountered what looked like a long, tall, gray stranger at the end of her hallway but seen nothing after she’d shouted, when her eyes had adjusted.
Piper, still in bed, looking up, felt it all.
The woman had been frightened for sure. Even her strong-and-silent rancher husband had seemed obviously shaken. But they’d adjusted. Sometimes, there were great events, like the time they’d come home to find all their cows slaughtered or the time the tractors had vanished then were found months later, buried to their steering wheels in the western field. But most of the time there were gentle tremors, lights that flitted across the sky too quickly to follow, hovering balls of lightning, green ghost lights. A person could get used to anything, and the couple who’d spent so many nights here were used to plenty.
But the night that crack had formed in the plaster, she’d been frightened plenty. There had been a sound like a passing train, close enough to be in the room. Lights had come on so brightly that the current through their filaments had popped in turn, somehow without tripping the breaker. A metal chair had skidded across the room and slammed into
her husband’s metal foot locker. Her metal jewelry had shot together from across the room into a clump.
Then it had ended, and she’d stared out the window, seeing a glowing light in the distance, coming from the cavern with the stone arch over its top.
Piper swung her feet over the side of the bed. She stood. She walked outside.
The air was cool despite the day’s warmth, but Piper barely felt it. She slept in shorts and a tee, and was vaguely aware of gooseflesh blooming on her arms and legs.
She looked up.
The great sphere was above. An iris in the bottom opened, and even though the distance was too great and she knew it couldn’t be so, she seemed to see Meyer in a transparent bubble, his arms wide like his smile. He was dressed as she remembered him most: in a suit, with a tie and dress shoes. Not a sensible way to dress for an alien abduction.
But then again, he hadn’t really been abducted.
This was his power look. His in-charge look. The way he’d been dressed when she’d first met him, after he’d taken a particular interest in her clothing line, pulling it from crowdfunding consideration and moving it to the pool of candidates worth individual, one-on-one consideration. She’d entered his office and seen him like this, his smile wide and perhaps artificial, his interest in Piper a bit less than professional in a way she hadn’t minded then and didn’t mind now.
Did he look like a victim? Did he look like a man worth saving? A man who needed his wife to cross hundreds of miles on horseback to rescue? No. Not at all.
Meyer reached for her. The distance was, again, too far. She shouldn’t be able to see him clearly but could; she definitely shouldn’t be able to touch him. His arm was long; her reach was sure. She raised her hands to him as he came forward, waiting for his embrace, wanting nothing more than to be in his arms, to feel his surety, to be with his —
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“PIPER! PIPER, GET INSIDE!”
Cameron ran with his throat burning, wondering what he must look like. He hadn’t run this fast since high school track, or with this much shameless abandon since much younger than that. His arms were wild, scissoring, cutting the air. His lungs gulped air in giant heaving breaths. His heart was thumping everywhere, too fast, fit to burst. He could feel it in his feet. In his head. And of course in his chest, rattling his ribs like an animal caged.
The ship above had moved just enough to put its titanic belly directly over the open area between ranch house and lab. Piper had come halfway, staring straight ahead, not seeming to notice or hear. The night was dark and moonless, and until the light appeared above, she’d been outside in total darkness. He’d seen her on the monitor, though, visible in the haunting green of infrared. Because of this place’s reputation for attracting unwanted attention, neither the ranch house nor the cliff-bunkered lab had been built with exterior lighting. Crossing the space before dawn or after dark required a flashlight. Piper had come out with nothing, yet hadn’t tripped or hesitated.
Of course now, with the light of the ship overhead, he could see her perfectly.
“PIPER, LOOK AT ME! WAKE UP! WAKE UP, DAMMIT!”
Cameron couldn’t shout much more. His breath was shallow, his lungs working too fast to oxygenate his blood through efficient means. He knew the chemistry. His father had taught it to him one useless afternoon, as he’d tried explaining ways in which alien biology (since they’d clearly seeded life from their own stock) might be similar to their own. Right now, he was burning nothing but sugar. Sugar from his blood. Sugar from glycogen in his muscles. The process, ironically, happened in the absence of oxygen.
“PIPER! PI … PER!”
She was lit from above, like a starlet standing under a spotlight. A single cone of light, shining down from up high. Light thickened into something almost tangible, seeming to become milky, churning. Her arms rose as if reaching, her head’s direction not so much as registering his shouts. Liquid light wrapped and eclipsed her.
He watched her rise upward. Watched the ship’s belly close.
With the bright light gone, Cameron found himself blind. There were stars above and weak lights behind, but his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and for a terrifying moment, he was pumping forward with all his might, unable to see a thing.
His foot struck something hard. He fell. The ground’s concussive force was duller than it should have been, as if it had struck everything at once. He rolled, having no idea of his orientation or what he might strike on the rebound.
Cameron finally came to rest with his back flat, one leg slightly twisted over the other, his face throbbing and feeling somehow broken.
The dark ship above, as if to taunt him, glowed a single ring of blue around its equator.
Then it zipped out of sight, headed east with impossible speed.
Cameron lay on his back on the baked clay, heart in his ears, blood on his face, breath harsh and clawing for purchase.
Piper wasn’t the only one who’d regained some of her psychic gifts.
Cameron had caught the final flicker of Piper’s thoughts mingled with those of another — someone nearby, aboard the ship.
Meyer. She’d seen Meyer, calling her home.
But he’d heard his thoughts too. In addition to Piper’s, Cameron had caught a piece of Meyer Dempsey’s thoughts in that last moment … or the thoughts of whatever Meyer had become. And Cameron knew.
Charlie emerged from the lab, his feet more hurried than Cameron had ever known them.
“They took her,” Cameron gasped, his breath still at a loss, “as bait.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Trevor was eating Quaker Oats from a bowl. His neck was almost sore from the vulture-like prison posture breakfast seemed to require these days. He’d surely fared better over the last months of confinement than his mother or sister, but Trevor still felt an odd Shining vibe. If the bunker wanted to be silent and tomblike forever and ever, every day the same — fine. Trevor would eat with his face too close to the bowl, scooping numb spoonfuls of gruel into his mouth like a convict in one of his father’s movies, imagining himself in a black stocking cap like the one Christopher sometimes wore, his hands in black wool gloves with cutoff fingers. The gruel was Quaker Oats instead of true porridge, but what the hell. Oats froze well, and he was sick of canned shit.
For the first time, catching his mother watching him eat, Trevor wondered if he was as balanced as he believed.
“You’re with me, right? Tell me you understand and are with me.” Trevor shoveled oats into his maw, Heather’s messy black hair barely visible in his peripheral vision.
At first, he’d eaten his oats with milk and brown sugar. But the milk came from powder, and lately he couldn’t shake the certainty that mice — mice who’d wormed through his father’s ultra-secure perimeter, like maybe through the holes blown by his current best friend — had been running through the powder, even though they unfroze it in batches and stored it in sealed containers. Still, a man ate his oats plain. Like a horse.
“I understand.”
“And you’re with me.”
Trevor hadn’t slept well at all. He hadn’t liked the urgent way his mother had dragged him out of bed, suddenly eager to make sides in a single-digit group. They’d all more or less been getting along. Raj had been a little bitch for a long time, but even he’d stopped complaining. They were all fine. He didn’t like the idea of sides, of “being with” anyone if it meant “being against” anyone else. And this was his sister they were talking about. His pregnant sister, carrying Trevor’s first nephew.
He hadn’t liked the way his mother had apparently spent her nights chipping through concrete like a trapped animal chewing at the bars of its cage.
He hadn’t liked the strange yellow light barely visible through the hole, or the sound of water.
He hadn’t liked the fact that his father, who was a pretty smart guy, had okayed building atop any sort of running water. Was the underground stream new? Had the builders p
roperly diverted it enough to not undermine the foundation? Trevor supposed it was possible. Likely even. Maybe there was water underground everywhere. That’s what sump pumps were for, right?
And those were just the new things Trevor didn’t like. The new things among many that kept him awake most of the night after Heather had begun snoring like the demented.
He still didn’t like being here, trapped by all the people stupidly camped above, clotting their air intakes like plaque inside a hardening artery.
He still didn’t like the way the spheres — ships like the one that might have taken his father — hadn’t left them alone since Christopher and the others had tried blowing up the house above. It was as if they knew what was happening and meant to protect the place.
And he really, really didn’t like the waiting. Because it seemed to Trevor that if the ships really wanted to protect the place, they could just kill off the problematic humans who’d claimed residence inside it. And it seemed that they could kill them any time they wanted — just blow a hole through the concrete roof with their death rays then scoop their corpses like seeds from a gourd. What were they waiting for? And what would happen when the wait — whatever it was for — had ended?
It was hard to believe what his mother had said, but clearly there was something under the bunker. And while he wasn’t sure Lila was nuts enough to be talking to her psychic unborn baby, he did know she’d once had terrible pains and that those had stopped — as if, maybe, something had been desperately trying to get her attention, and finally had it.
“And you’re with me,” Trevor’s mother repeated.
“Fine. I guess.”
“Good. Because — ”
His mother, judging by black hair moving in the corner of Trevor’s eye, seemed to look up, interrupting herself. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of looking over, so he kept shoveling oats into his mouth, his eyes on the table’s center.
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