V_The 2nd Generation

by Kenneth Johnson

  Gina's almond eyes flashed provocatively as she now slid her hand down the front of his pants. "I'm very glad to hear that." Then she submerged him into another succulent kiss.

  In the passage outside, Shawn disconnected his listening device and walked slowly away, considering his options.

  DARKNESS HAD FALLEN AND THE STREETLIGHTS WERE ON AS THE black limousine glided to a stop in front of Emma's condominium on Nob Hill's upscale Clay Street. Emma and Visitor Press Secretary Paul had been ensconced in the backseat. As she gathered up her things she said, "Well, I'm really glad to hear that Diana liked the new vid."

  "She didn't just like it, she loved it." With the tip of his forefinger, he touched Emma's nose playfully. "I'm telling you, she watched your parts several times."

  "That's great, Paul. And thanks for the lift." She slid out, sensing that Paul was watching her parts at that moment.

  He caught her wrist lightly. "Hey, are you busy right now?"

  The pretty singer looked back in at him. He had been getting increasingly chummy of late and it was obviously more than just professional enthusiasm. She wanted neither to encourage him nor alienate him, so she spoke as though she had completely missed his real subtext. "Yeah, my accountant's coming. Some other time?"

  He looked at her a moment. "Sure," he said smoothly, "I'd really enjoy sharing some of the perks of the High Command. Little shuttle ride out to the moon?"

  She was genuinely surprised. "Really!"

  "Mmmm," he sounded as though he was striving to keep his voice as casual as possible, "but it'll get pretty busy for me after our Leader arrives."

  Emma was stunned. In the two decades of occupation the Visitor Leader had never come to the Earth. It was portentous news that Emma didn't know quite how to process. She stared at Paul, speaking slowly, "Your Leader is coming here!"

  "Yes. To rally our troops and your people."

  She frowned, confused. "Rally them for what?"

  Paul smiled as coquettishly as Emma herself might have. "Well, if we ever get some alone time, I'll fill you in." He gave her a meaningful wink, then signaled his driver.

  Emma watched the limo driving away, trying to fathom the importance of what she had just learned.

  AS PAUL'S LIMO GLIDED DOWN CLAY STREET FROM NOB HILL TOWARD Chinatown, he contemplated his forthcoming conquest of Emma. The human species hadn't been particularly inviting to him at first, but after several sexual encounters with human women over the years he had discovered that they could be nearly as gratifying as his own kind, particularly if he kept his eyes closed. And even more than the sexual release, he enjoyed his triumphal domination of them.

  The proximity to the very alluring pop star that he had enjoyed for over a year had awakened a definite curiosity about how it would be with her. He was determined to find out and felt sure that he would soon have dominion over her.

  He breathed a long, contented sigh of anticipated enjoyment as he gazed out the window at the passing scene, at the colorful neon signs flickering their Chinese messages. He did not notice the frail figure walking slowly toward a bus stop.

  Charlotte Elgin had been feeling very light-headed. She suddenly became even more unsteady and paused to lean against a mailbox. She felt extremely weak. The February night had turned colder and the wind was gusting down from the north. Until she had shaved off her thick black hair Charlotte hadn't realized how much it had contributed to keeping her head warm. She pulled the thin scarf tighter around her buzz-cut scalp and slowly continued toward the bus stop.

  THAT SAME EVENING, RUBY WAS BOUNCING CHEERFULLY DOWN Washington Street. Having read many works of Charles Dickens at her mother's suggestion, Ruby had adopted the Artful Dodger as her role model and studied his panache. On this night she felt more than ever like him. She had just scored a load of peppermint chewing gum from the back of a truck at Lafayette Square, and while she knew that in the grand scheme of things chewing gum wasn't very important, she had noted how everyone at the Resistance warehouse brightened up when she brought some once before. Ruby figured that every little bit helped. As she passed the alley east of Franklin she caught a glimpse of something weird in her peripheral vision. She stopped and backed up to look more carefully into the alley, then her blue eyes widened. "Holy shit!"

  Sticking out of a trash pile against one wall of the alley were the arm and hand of a Teammate, frozen in death. But Ruby could see that something was very strange about it. She moved closer cautiously, frightened but keeping her cool. She saw that the flesh didn't look human any longer, but rather had a dried, orangey, semitransparent quality to it. She could see the withered veins and the bones within. She picked up a stick and poked it. It seemed almost like thin fiberglass. It was unlike anything she had ever seen. Very gingerly Ruby used the stick to ease back some pieces of trash for a better look, but then she heard the voices and radios of an approaching Teammate unit. Thinking quickly, Ruby grabbed a piece of newspaper and broke off a piece of the crusty hand. Then she dashed away just before Teammate Debra Stein appeared at the mouth of the alley.

  "This one was part of his patrol," Debra called off to those behind her. "I'll go see if—Oh, my God!" Debra had seen the strange arm and what remained of the hand sticking out of the Teammate sleeve. She came to it and pulled the trash away to reveal a chrysalis-like husk of the burly Hispanic Teammate with the thick mustache who'd had a close encounter with Bryke.

  Debra drew back in horror as her Teammate companions gathered beside her. They all stared down at the fearful face of the husk. It was skeletal. The eyeballs were shriveled like raisins. Its gaping mouth had many broken teeth and it was contorted in gruesome final agony.

  AYDEN AND KAYTA HAD FOLLOWED JULIE AND NATHAN TO THE downscale urban neighborhood at Twenty-first Street and Potrero, then watched as the two freedom fighters climbed up the back fire escape to the third floor, Julie struggling somewhat because of her game hip. Ayden and Kayta had immediately sought a higher vantage point on a building opposite. The streetlights from below made the sheen on their skin seem to glow. Once on the rooftop, Kayta patched her audio scanner to Ayden's optical device. He scanned with it until he found the apartment that Willy shared with Harmy, who was just letting in the Resistance pair. Julie hugged the waitress and tousled her frizzy, strawberry blond hair. "Boy, I've missed seeing you guys."

  Harmy hugged Julie tightly in return. "Us, too, you."

  As Julie embraced Willy, Nathan nodded toward Harmy. "Hi, I'm Nathan."

  "Ah." Harmy pressed his hand. "As seen on TV: 'the mentally unbalanced deserter.' Welcome to the asylum, Nathan."

  "He's over here," Willy said as he led them to the filthy, hairy, motionless figure that lay askew across their couch. The liberated prisoner's head was turned away. "No one else was kept like this. He was crazed. Must've been in that cell for years. He's crippled. There were morphalyne packets everywhere."

  "They must have addicted him to it." Julie was feeling the man's grimy wrist, checking his pulse.

  "Morphalyne"—Nathan shook his head—"no wonder he was acting crazy."

  Harmy looked at the crippled man sympathetically. "Why would they do such a horrible thing?" Then she rolled her eyes with immediate realization. "And why do I even ask."

  Julie looked at Nathan. "Turn him toward me. I'll do the ret scan." The prisoner groaned deliriously as Nathan turned him over. The man's thick, brownish gray hair had been filthy and uncut for years. Like his beard it was thickly matted with grime and clotted blood. What skin they could see between his beard and hair was pocked and mottled with grit ground deeply into the pores.

  Willy leaned closer, and said, "Jon, the young janitor who helped us get him out, said the Flagship lab was developing a voice modifier to make us Visitors sound like humans."

  Nathan understood the implications immediately. "To try to infiltrate us."

  "So it would seem," Willy said with a nod. "They may even be able to mimic specific people's voices. They're also injecting experimental in
sect pheromones into some Patrollers. And creating faces and skin that have a peculiar sheen." Nathan and Julie looked at each other, puzzled over that one, but on the rooftop across the street Kayta and Ayden traded a sharp glance and their concern grew as Willy continued. "Oh, and they're also creating contact lenses that make their eyes violent."

  "Violent?" Julie frowned. "You mean violet?"

  "Ah," Willy affirmed, "violet, yes. Other odd colors, too, Jon thinks."

  "But why are they doing it all? Did your friend tell you?"

  "He didn't know yet."

  Julie turned her attention to scanning the prisoner's bloodshot eye. Then she checked the readout. What she saw made her literally stop breathing. Her face turned ashen as she looked sharply back down at the prisoner's filthy face.

  The others were disconcerted by her reaction. Nathan spoke for all three of them, "What's wrong? Julie? . . . Who is he?"

  Julie glanced up at them with a very strange, fearful look in her eyes. Her mouth worked, but she was too stunned to speak. She stared again breathlessly at the bestial figure as Willy took the scanner from her limp hand and read what it had reported.

  "He's . . . Mike Donovan?!"

  13

  ON THE ROOF ACROSS THE STREET, AYDEN AND KAYTA ALSO REACTED with surprise upon hearing Donovan's name. Ayden refocused his viewer on the group inside Harmy's flat. Though the image flickered occasionally, they could be seen in a fair amount of detail, enhanced by an infrared filter. Kayta and Ayden could hear their voices through intermittent static.

  Harmy was staring in amazement at Willy. "How could it possibly be Mike?"

  Nathan checked the readout and saw the information was solid. "I thought he was killed back in '91, in London."

  "We all did," Willy said, frowning. "Why'd Diana keep him alive?"

  Julie was working to regain her composure. "We have to get him out of here, Willy. It's very dangerous for you and Harmy."

  Outside, Kayta touched the leather sleeve of Ayden's bomber jacket, indicating down toward Potrero Street where an SFPD squad car was quietly driving in from the north to block a nearby intersection. A squad of helmeted Visitor Patrollers, their pulse weapons at the ready, moved stealthily past the police vehicle in the direction of Harmy's tenement. Ayden quickly checked the other direction and saw a Teammate unit also converging on it from the east.

  Kayta's violet eyes looked urgently at Ayden, ready for his orders, but the steely man indicated patience. He pointed down to where Nathan, Willy, and Julie were already carrying the unconscious Mike Donovan toward Julie's car. "And look there." Ayden was indicating the Visitor Patrol, whose leader had brought her troops to a halt. Kayta also saw that the Teammate unit had likewise paused in their advance, though neither group could yet see the Resistance people on the near side of the building.

  "What's going on?" Kayta wondered. "They seem confused."

  Ayden was puzzling over it as well. "Perhaps they got conflicting orders."

  They watched silently as Julie and Nathan drove Mike safely away, but Ayden and Kayta remained perplexed by the Visitor troops' peculiar behavior.

  THE LIGHTS WERE LOW AND EMMA HAD CAREFULLY DRAWN THE rich curtains tightly closed in her elegant living room. She was watching a vid, but had purposely chosen not to use her wall-sized plasma. Instead she was sitting nervously in a large, overstuffed chair with her legs curled securely beneath her. It was as though she were trying to make the smallest profile possible as she watched the tiny vid screen on her lap. The volume was very low, barely whispering in her ear, but Emma hadn't missed a word.

  She had been watching the Resistance vid given to her by Julie and Margarita. It was the same vid that young Danny had shown his friend Thomas. When it ended Emma sat motionless. Her heart was greatly troubled by all the compelling images she had seen and the startling information she had heard. But her mind was struggling with how it could all be true. It was as though she'd always believed the Earth was flat but in the last few minutes a disquieting possibility of roundness had developed.

  She was having great difficulty getting her mind around the concepts the vid had presented and with the consequences those concepts might have for her. She stared past the small blank vid screen, past the beautifully appointed stylishness of her home, into the darkness of an uncertain future.

  The door chime went through her like an electric jolt. "Jesus!" she exclaimed and with jittery hands she quickly pulled the damning disk from the vid unit and thrust it deep into the cushions of the chair. Then she took a breath to try to calm herself and touched the intercom. "Yes?"

  She heard a woman's frantic voice call out, "Miss Emma? Thank God you're there! It's Mary Elgin! I need your help!"

  Emma emerged from her condo a moment later pulling her heavy sable coat over the pale green silk dressing gown she'd been wearing. Her feet were in unlaced running sneakers. Mary beckoned her quickly toward the backseat of a waiting taxi. "Here! She's in here with Charles."

  Emma saw a man she took to be Mary's husband inside the cab holding Charlotte in his arms. The girl was ghostly pale, her eyes dark and sunken.

  Mary had opened the door. "We think it's insulin shock. We found out she'd been giving her medicine to my father-in-law."

  "Oh, Mary, I'm so sorry," Emma said with concern, "but I don't understand. What can I do to help?"

  Charles spoke up urgently, "Come to a hospital with us. Please. They might let her in if we're with you."

  Emma was still totally confused. "What do you mean, if—"

  "Please!" Mary was desperate. "She could die!"

  "Okay, Mary, okay"—Emma pulled open the taxi's front door—"let's go."

  IN THE RESISTANCE WAREHOUSE ANTHROPOLOGIST ROBERT MAXWELL and Margarita both wore latex gloves as they examined the strange husklike hand Ruby had found.

  "It's been drained dry." Margarita turned it slowly under the bright surgical light they had stolen a year earlier. "As if all the fluids had been drawn right out of it."

  "Mmm," Robert acknowledged, thoroughly intrigued. His thick black brows furrowed as his dark eyes examined the tiniest details while he probed the crusty skin with a thin scalpel. "But this chrysalis effect is so strange. I've only ever seen anything like it in insects."

  They heard Julie call softly to them from the darkened corner of the warehouse that served as their infirmary, "I think he's waking."

  Julie looked back down toward Mike Donovan, who lay on the cot beside which she was sitting. He was stirring very slightly. Julie and Nathan had cut away the foul prison rags, then washed and considerably trimmed the filthy matted hair and beard. Julie had started an IV drip to replenish his fluids and begin medication. She had worked carefully with cotton swabs, soap, and mild astringents to gently coax the grime from Donovan's face while Nathan tried to cleanse the rest of his body. Julie saw that Mike was at least forty pounds thinner than when she'd last seen him a decade and a half earlier. His cheeks were hollow, and his collarbone and ribs had an unnatural prominence. But what troubled her most were his legs, which were very emaciated. Her physician's eye immediately deduced that the muscles were atrophied from lack of use and she examined an ugly series of scars that were raised above and behind his knees. His hands, so supple and strong the last time she'd seen them, were skeletal now and their skin, like the rest of his body, bore a sickly yellow pallor.

  At the foot of the cot, Nathan was stuffing the last of the foul prison rags into a plastic garbage bag when Donovan suddenly snapped awake with a shout that startled everyone.

  "Easy, easy, it's okay," Julie said soothingly as she touched his shoulder. He jerked back and looked hastily around like a cornered wild animal. Then he seemed to realize that his wrists were restrained to the cot. "It's okay," Julie spoke calmly, but Nathan noticed that she was exhibiting an emotional awkwardness as she withdrew her hand from his shoulder. The beleaguered patient looked at her and tried to focus his vision. Julie searched for words and finally said, "Mr. Donovan. Welcome bac
k. We've . . . we've missed you." He pulled again at the binders that held his wrists. "Easy," she counseled, "we just restrained you so you wouldn't hurt yourself or pull out the IV. I'm going to loosen them now, okay?" She began to do so as she went on softly, "Just breathe easy . . . Do you remember us?"

  Donovan looked at her numbly, but with recognition. Robert leaned in, his dark eyes alight and smiling. "Hey, Mike. It's Robert. I sure remember how you saved my daughters."

  Mike looked vaguely at Robert while Julie adjusted the small bandage that had come unstuck on his upper arm when he started awake. She checked the inch-long incision that she had made earlier and then reapplied the bandage. Donovan was fighting the glaze over his eyes as he looked at Julie and squinted. His voice was hoarse and listless. ". . . Doc . . . ?"

  "Yeah. Can't get rid of me," Julie tried to say lightly, but there was a much heavier emotion in her eyes. "So, how're you feeling?"

  ". . . Some water?"

  "Here." Margarita, who had quietly arrived behind Julie, filled a paper cup. Donovan's bony, quivering hand took the cup, brought it to his thin, parched lips, and he slowly drank. Some of the water escaped at the corner of his mouth and dribbled down his chin. They all watched, trying to comprehend how this feeble graying man could once have been the most robust freedom fighter of them all. It was a sobering lesson in mortality. If this was what had become of the legendary Mike Donovan what might become of them?

  Donovan finished the water and looked hazily back at Julie. She saw a question in his eyes and asked, "What?"

  His voice came low and hopeful, his speech was slurred. "You got some dope?"

  "We're going to get you off the morph. You're on an antipsychotic drip with some methadone to ease you down."