V_The 2nd Generation

by Kenneth Johnson

  The captain acknowledged the greeting and climbed leisurely out of his side as Martin quickly opened Emma's door and spoke pointedly to her, "Running a tad late, Emma."

  "Yes. I'm so sorry." She was frazzled, knowing there were only seconds to go.

  "My fault." The captain waved chivalrously.

  Martin took her arm quickly. "Well, let's just get on inside."

  "Martin," she whispered, "what about the—?"

  "No time to dilly dally," he interrupted with what she knew was patently false cheer, "come along."

  Martin was hurrying her away from the deadly car. The captain had fallen into step with them and noticed something, "Emma, did you forget your purse?" She looked at him. Then at the car.

  Martin felt that the moment was turning awkward. "I'll get it for you." He took a step but Emma caught his sleeve.

  "Martin. No. I'll get it."

  He wanted to protest, but she was already on the move. She hurried back toward the car.

  From their position a block distant Street-C was dumbstruck. Gary also stared in disbelief. "Holy Christ, what is she doing!?"

  Martin glanced at his watch. There were only eight seconds to go . . . then seven . . . six . . .

  Emma opened the front door, glancing at the boom box as she grabbed her purse out and walked quickly back toward the men. She forced a little smile, inwardly praying that the timer might be running just a little slow.

  It wasn't.

  In the Candlestick meeting room, Diana's eyes snapped up sharply to meet Jeremy's when they heard the loud explosion.

  On Griffith Street, Mark spun around and looked off toward the stadium. He saw the boiling fireball, thirty yards in diameter, mushrooming upward into the sky.

  Though Street-C and Gary were a block away they were still close enough to feel the intense heat of it. They were trying desperately to see through the smoke what had happened.

  Martin and the captain had been knocked down hard. The explosive force had also set Diana's shuttle afire, causing a secondary blast. A Visitor with his entire uniform in flames scrambled out screaming in hysteria. He stumbled over a woman who had been flattened by the concussive force of the primary explosion. The woman, wearing a red sweater and an ankle-length peasant dress, was not moving.

  ONE OF THE DOORS AT THE CHEMICAL FACTORY THAT WAS MARKED Restricted opened as a big African-American worker emerged. Blue was very nervous but trying his best to act casual and professional as he slowly walked away. He was concealing a small vial of orange liquid in his large hand and anxious not to attract attention. His eyes were focused on a stand of vertical pipes about fifteen feet ahead of him. If he could just manage to get around them he could quickly disappear into the innards of the noisy industrial plant. He was about three steps away from the pipes when a Visitor technician in a white lab coat with a security badge dangling around his neck came out of the same restricted door and called to him, "Hey. What were you doing in here?"

  Without looking back, Blue waved an apology and answered casually, "Nothing. Wrong door. Sorry."

  The technician was insistent. "Just hang on. What have you got there?"

  Blue knew there was no place to hide the chemical sample he'd stolen. "Nothing. Look, I'm gonna be late so—"

  The technician slapped a button just inside the door and an alarm siren began to wail. Blue took off running. He saw two Teammate guards responding to the alarm and hurrying toward him blocking his route through the forest of pipes. He looked around quickly and dashed up an open metal stairway within the network of huge pipes. He knew that the Teammates would be right behind him. He ran across a grated platform, turned a corner, and collided with Charles Elgin who was understandably startled. Then Charles saw the look of panic in the big laborer's eyes. "Blue? What's wrong? What is it?"

  "They're waiting at the south wall!" Blue urgently pressed the chemical sample into Charles's hand.

  "What? Who's waiting?" Then Charles recognized the orange liquid in the vial. He tied to push it back at the big man. "Blue, no. What have you done?"

  "Do it, Charlie!" Blue was vehement. "For your daughter. For my sister. For all of us!" He heard heavy footsteps coming quickly up the metal stairs beneath him. Looking down, Blue saw the Teammates clambering up, readying their weapons. He looked at Charles and shook him, trying to make it look as though Charles were trying to hold on to him. He shouted at Charles, "Let me go, dammit! Let go!"

  He "struggled" for a second longer, then broke away and ran on up the steps. Charles instinctively hid the vial of chemical as the two guards dashed right past him after Blue, one of them shouting, "Take him alive! Alive! So we can get his connections!"

  Blue heard that shout as he reached a catwalk on the next higher level. Stella Stein was working there and was completely bewildered as Blue ran past. He knew there was a nearby catwalk that bridged to the next section. If he could get to that one he might be able to make it to the north perimeter and escape. But his heart sank when he saw a helmeted Patroller coming toward him from exactly that last route to freedom. Blue realized there was no way out for him. He looked back fearfully at Stella, a woman he despised, but the only human being near. She had never seen such a look of terror in anyone's eyes, certainly not big, strapping Blue. He said quickly, with his voice trembling, "I couldn't handle torture. I couldn't." Stella was dumbfounded as she watched him swing his leg over the catwalk's safety rail. Blue looked down with tears in his brown eyes and said, "God save the Resistance."

  Stella realized what he was about to do and screamed, "Blue! No! Blue!" But he had jumped.

  She watched in horror as Blue fell forty feet down through the air among the pipes. From Charles's vantage point a level lower he also watched in shock and disbelief as Blue landed in the smoking vat of acid, disappearing beneath the surface. No one heard Blue's final, submerged shriek of searing agony. It was as though he had landed in the liquid fire of molten steel.

  The others stared in terror at the surface of the violently churning acid for a long moment as Blue remained submerged. Then erupting up from it fleetingly appeared his bloodied, melting, half-eaten body, which burned a nightmarish imprint that Stella and Charles would ever after see in their mind's eyes.

  Stella screamed again, "Blue! God Almighty!"

  The Visitor Patroller had reached Stella's side, furious that Blue had escaped. "Fucking bastard! What'd he say to you?" Stella was so stunned and nauseous that she couldn't speak. The Patroller shook her and shouted in her face, "What did he say to you!"

  Stella looked at the Patroller's glaring eyes that she could barely see through his dark visor. She was stammering, "He . . . he said . . ."

  "What?" The Patroller shook her harder.

  "He said, 'God . . . forgive me.' "

  The Patroller angrily flung her aside with a huff and headed down. Stella continued to stare at the acid that was still smoking and boiling violently below. She was overwhelmed, not just by the horror of Blue's death, but by his astonishing dedication, his loyalty, and his ultimate sacrifice to the cause of the Resistance.

  20

  FLAMES ROILED OUT OF THE OPENINGS WHERE THE FRONT AND BACK windows of Emma's car had been. The two rear doors had been blown completely off along with part of the roof. The two front doors dangled open. The car's entire metal frame was glowing red-hot. Martin had finally recovered himself enough to get to his feet, but was still trying to clear his head as he stumbled to where Emma lay stunned but stirring. Her clothing and hair had been badly singed and she had been nearly deafened by the explosion. She had nasty scrapes on her hands and the left side of her face from landing on the pavement. She was trying to raise herself up, looking around dazedly confused. Her whole body suddenly started trembling violently.

  Shawn had rushed out from the stadium office and raced toward them shouting, "What happened? Emma!"

  The question shocked Emma back into awareness. Her panicked eyes met Martin's. She had no idea what to say as Shawn reached them
and forcefully repeated, "What happened here?"

  As she opened her mouth to speak Martin jumped in ahead of her. "Can't you see?" He shouted at Shawn. "Someone tried to kill her! They put a bomb in her car!"

  "What!" Shawn stared at the flaming wreckage in amazement.

  Martin continued on the offensive. "Help me get her up." Then he met Emma's eyes. "Are you okay? Can you walk?" He and Shawn lifted the battered young woman to her feet. She was dizzy, disoriented.

  "Oh, Martin . . . I'm sorry that I—"

  Again he cut her off. "I'm just glad the bastards didn't kill you." She looked into his strong eyes that were willing her to be silent and to follow his lead. Martin led her toward a nearby SFPD car as he called out to the Patrol captain. "Take this car! Get her out of here!"

  As the captain hurried around to the driver's side Martin eased the shaken young woman into the passenger seat. Their faces were very close and she whispered tearfully to Martin, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

  He looked again into her fearful green eyes. He pressed his forehead firmly against hers for a long moment to honor her courage. Then he kissed her cheek and stepped back, closing her door. Her squad car window reflected the fiery scene behind him, but Martin looked through it to hold Emma's eyes until the captain pulled the car quickly away.

  AS NATHAN WATCHED FROM BEHIND THE JUNK PILE JUST OUTSIDE THE chemical plant's perimeter, he was surprised and wary to see someone other than Blue hurriedly approaching on the other side of the Cyclone fence. It seemed clear, though, that the stoop-shouldered man in glasses was nervously searching for them. Nathan decided to stand up just enough to be seen. The man spotted him, looked back over his shoulder toward the plant, to be certain he wasn't being observed, then hurried to the fence.

  Bryke kept a sharp lookout behind Nathan as he met Charles, who pulled the vial of chemical out from inside his shirt.

  Nathan was scanning the area behind the scientist. "Where's Blue?"

  "He's dead." Charles's eyes held Nathan's. Nathan saw profound respect in them as Charles said, "Blue died a hero." Then the scientist carefully slipped the vial through the fence and into Nathan's hands. "Here's your sample." Nathan saw there was a small slip of paper attached. "It's my name and contact number." Charles locked eyes with Nathan again, then turned and hurried back toward the factory.

  KAYTA WAS MASSAGING MIKE'S KNEES AND LEGS AS HE LAY ON HIS cot. Mike had been struck by her extreme attentiveness to him since administering the first excruciating treatment. "Why are you bothering to do this?"

  Her violet eyes met his for a tiny moment. "It's what healers do." She continued working a deep massage into his legs and he found himself flinching. She noticed his reaction. "It hurts?"

  "Yeah, some."

  "That you feel the hurt is good. When I first touched your legs was no feeling at all, you remember?"

  "Yeah, I remember," he said grudgingly. Donovan hated to admit being wrong, even when it was about something that might be good for him. But he had felt as though his muscles and nerves were very slowly reawakening after a long, torturous nightmare. The last years had been an endless, swirling miasma of pain and darkness interspersed with seasons of glaring light designed to sear his eyes and dislocate his nervous system. The Visitors' treatment of him had been very effective. More successful, he privately feared, than he really wanted to know. Even so, since being rescued by the Resistance Mike had wracked his memory, straining every neuron and synapse of his brain trying to recall what he might have told his interrogators, what secrets he might have unwittingly passed along, whose names or locations he might have given up. But he felt as if he was looking down an impossibly long, shadowy hallway that was interspersed with dozens of gauzy drapes billowing one after the other, stretching nearly to infinity and obscuring the distance between himself and the truth.

  The touch of Kayta's hands was healing. Her hands had a uniquely soothing quality, as if something more than mere physical therapy was being transferred to the tissues that she manipulated in his leg.

  "You remind me of a guy I met once," Mike said.

  "I do? A 'guy'?" She looked at him with a curious smile as her fingers continued to probe deeply and manipulate his popliteal nerve and its attendant artery just behind the femur on the back of his knee.

  "A guy, yeah, a man." He saw she was still confused. "I mean, it's not that you look like him. It's something else."

  "Who was he?"

  "He was this strange old hermit priest I met in the Himalayas. People in the villages told me nobody could remember when he hadn't been there, which meant he was well over a hundred years old."

  "Very old for a human," she knew.

  "Yeah, particularly nowadays. But this old coot was as spry as a twenty-year-old. He'd go bounding up the steep cliff sides like a young billy goat."

  "How did you meet him? Through your job as a news cameraman?"

  "You know about that?"

  "Some." She could tell by his occasional grimace that her massage of his crural muscle above the patella on his right knee still caused him discomfort. She hoped that talking might perhaps distract him. "Tell me."

  "I was embedded—that means living among and traveling with—you understand?"

  "Like we three Zedti are with you," she said with a nod.

  Mike thought about the irony of that parallel for a moment before he continued. "Yeah. Anyway, I was in country embedded with a group of Tibetan freedom fighters who were struggling against the Chinese army that had occupied their nation. I was in some battles with them. And once I got injured pretty bad. Took a bullet in the side."

  "Your left side, yes." He looked up at her, she smiled shyly. "I saw the scar. Please go on."

  "And I also took a fun little tumble down a cliff. I was pretty thrashed. One of the villagers slung me over an ox and took me to the old man." Mike's eyes grew distant as he recalled, "It was a little mud and straw hut that smelled like spices and licorice. And from the first moment his hands touched me I knew there was something very special about him."

  "I too have known that feeling," Kayta said. Mike looked into her violet eyes. Something about the tone of her voice suggested that she was speaking about the current circumstance. That she was referring to him. She returned his gaze steadily.

  She certainly was lovely. Finally Mike said, "Yeah."

  Then Kayta turned her attention back to his legs. "It sounds as though your old 'guy' was a healer."

  "He must've been. There was this warmth that seemed to radiate from the palms of his hands—just like yours—and it spread right through me. It was amazing then and it is now."

  "He got the bullet out?"

  Mike laughed lightly. "Yeah. Suddenly he was holding it up to show me. I hadn't felt a thing. He was like a magician. He stopped the bleeding, saved my life."

  "Well, I'm very glad he was successful," she said quietly, "I know that many others are glad as well."

  Kayta changed her position to work on his other leg. In doing so she bent over him in a way that unintentionally allowed Mike to see a considerable amount of cleavage within her pale blue button-down shirt. Mike studied her a moment, then, "Kayta, forgive me but I can't help but be curious . . ."

  She looked up. "About . . . ?"

  "Why a race evolved from insects has breasts."

  The lovely blonde smiled charmingly. "Evolution works in mysterious ways, doesn't it? Why do human males have nipples?"

  Ysabel was passing and overheard the question. She peered saucily over her glasses. "So they have something else to pierce."

  Mike looked back at Kayta. "Seriously . . ."

  She continued kneading his legs. "There are so many variations in life-forms I've encountered during our travels across space, and even among the Zedti, that I've gotten used to curiosities."

  "Such as?"

  "The females of Ayden's species are different from mine. They excrete gelatinous eggs which the male carries to fruition in a pouch within his abdomen."
/>   "Like sea horses here on Earth. Okay. Not so far-fetched," Mike agreed. "What about Bryke?"

  "In Bryke's genus, the breasts are merely nonfunctioning remnants. Not unlike the nipples on a human male. Her species deposits larvae in a birthing colony."

  "So she doesn't have parents in the sense that we do?"

  "No."

  He looked at her sideways. "And your species . . . ?"

  "Obviously evolved more closely to Earth's mammals. We give birth to living young who require the nourishment of breast milk."

  "So the Zedti species are very different from each other. But you all get along?"

  "Our ancestors realized long ago that our most promising future lay in a cooperative society which welcomed and nurtured all."

  "But among the Zedti, your particular species . . . is the most like mine?"

  Her soft violet eyes looked again, and gently, into his. "It would seem so, yes."

  EMMA WAS LEANING HER HEAD AGAINST THE COOL GLASS OF THE squad car's passenger window. Her eyes were fixed with a thousand-yard stare. She was still stunned by what had befallen her and amazed that she had survived it. Being only twenty-seven she had always felt that sense of immortality common to most young people. Only in the last few days had that begun to change. The feeling first originated with her eye-opening experience in the blimp hangar as she'd walked among the ill, dying, and dead. But today it had become much more personal and tangible in the extreme. The concussion that had flattened her to the pavement was a shocking blast of pure reality. The physical heat from the fiery explosion had scorched her badly. Had she been only a step or two closer she might not have survived. Death was a concept that had now become real to her for the first time in her life. It was something she could no longer ignore. And something she realized she was going to have to consider in all its aspects. In addition to that, or perhaps because of it, she was having grave second thoughts about her ability to function as a member of the Resistance.