Alien Diplomacy

by Gini Koch

  I shrugged. “It happens.”

  “We were discussing animal rescue,” Marling said. “I believe that’s something you have an interest in?”

  I didn’t know what they’d been talking about before we joined them, but for sure, animal rescue wasn’t it. I wondered if Marling was making a veiled reference to the K-9 dogs. But I decided not to press the issue, since I still had no idea what Leslie wanted. “I’m all for saving helpless animals. I understand you’re a bird man.”

  Marling beamed. “Yes, my Bellie.” It was interesting—when he smiled like this, his eyes, which were gray, had an almost pearly sheen to them. I wondered if he’d chosen his parrot in part because it was gray in color, too. The look was very pretty, though I couldn’t tell how it happened. Maybe the light hit his eyes differently when he was really smiling honestly. I wondered if other people’s eyes did that. If they did, I hadn’t noticed, but then that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

  “I thought her name was, um, longer.” There was no way I was going to get Rybelleclies out with proper pronunciation.

  He laughed. “It is, but I use her nickname more. You like birds?”

  I didn’t all that much, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “Birds are fine. I’m more of a cats, dogs, and horses girl.”

  “Ah, well, with your name, at least the first is understandable.”

  “Yes.” I tried for something else innocuous to say, since “hey, are you the one planning to kill everyone” and “what’s the status on the supersoldier projects you’re managing” didn’t seem like a wise gambit. “Interesting, what you can come up with when you’re making an anagram, isn’t it?”

  Marling nodded, the pearly sheen leaving his eyes as they went back to their regular gray. “True enough. Keeps my late wife near me.”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to bring up sad memories.”

  He shook his head. “Not your fault; you haven’t had to go through losing your husband yet.”

  This was getting uncomfortable, so I was relieved when Leslie took my arm. “The powder room calls. We’ll catch you when we get back in,” she said as she dragged me off. “No need to have to hear him wax rhapsodic about that stupid bird.”

  “I suppose. It’s an interesting name.”

  “It’s stupid,” she snapped. “I think it shows a lack of creativity, if all you can come up with is an anagram of your name when you’re trying to be clever.”

  I contemplated this as we moved through the throngs of people. It was kind of clever, really, though I had to figure there would be a more normal name someone could make out of Cybele Siler. It was a weird name, just as weird, really, as what Marling had named his bird.

  “What’s going on with you and Bryce?” I asked while I played around with the letters in my mind.

  “Oh, the usual,” she said. We left the ballroom. I was still turned around, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t the way Nathalie and I had gone.

  “What’s the usual?” I braced myself for her to suggest that I sleep with her, Bryce, Whitmore, and Villanova on their extra large bed of love.

  “Oh, he’s always complaining about something,” she said as she looked around. I got the impression she hadn’t censored that remark. Sure enough she turned back to me and smiled. “You know how it is.”

  “I guess. Um, you know I know about you and Marion and him and Langston, right?”

  She shrugged. “It’s complicated.” Like the anagrams. I visualized the letters as if sitting on a blackboard, waiting to be used. What else could you do with them?

  “I’ll bet. Look, are we actually heading for the bathroom?”

  “No, I just wanted to get away from them so I could talk to you.”

  “So talk. Really, I don’t know why you’re coming to me with a problem or whatever it is, instead of your friends. Are you and Bryce having a spat or something?” As I said his name I realized I could spell it out with the letters in Marling’s wife’s name.

  I thought about it. Could Bryce be Marling’s son? They didn’t look that much alike, but they didn’t look that different, either. Without a picture of his mother to compare him to, it was hard to say.

  Leslie nodded. “You’re the one who can help me. They can’t. Great dress, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” I jerked. The flirty compliment. It wasn’t usual at all. Maybe Bryce wasn’t imitating the head man at Titan to suck up but because he’d heard the head man at Titan toss that bon mot off regularly as he was growing up.

  If Leslie noticed that I’d stiffened, she didn’t let on. “So, have you heard about Jack?”

  “That he supposedly killed himself, yes.” I looked at the remaining letters in my mind. They didn’t spell Taylor, because there was no ‘t.’ “Leslie, are you in trouble?” I had a feeling she was, because I had a feeling she was pretend dating Marling’s supposedly dead son. But I wasn’t sure. I had to figure out what the other letters spelled.

  “Possibly. Do you believe Jack was a suicide?” Her voice sounded tense.

  I figured this was a test before she told me whatever the heck it was she’d been wanting to, which was hopefully a full indictment of Marling and Bryce. But as my father had always taught me and Darcy Lockwood had reinforced, when asked a question you don’t want to answer, shoot a question back as your reply. Plus I was distracted with doing anagrams in my mind. “What do you think?”

  She looked around and moved me farther away from where people were. We were by the stairs that led to the parking garage and something that called itself a disposal shaft, which I assumed meant it was the garbage chute. She stepped closer to me. “Jack Ryan didn’t kill himself, he was murdered.”

  Time was undoubtedly running out, so I just went for it. “Right, because he’d discovered there was going to be an assassination attempt at this event.” S-L-I-L-E-E were the letters left. Slyly? Yeah, but it was spelled wrong and made no sense. I flipped them around. L-E-E-S-L-I. That sounded kind of normal, but not quite.

  “No. Because he warned the wrong people to stay away.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. Who shouldn’t he have warned? Bryce?”

  Leslie stepped closer. I noticed she had gray eyes. “Well, yeah, that was a mistake. But he made a bigger one.”

  “Oh? What?” As I asked this, my mind flung the remaining letters from Cybele Siler into a coherent word—they spelled Leslie. My mind was whirring, and it tossed the letters for Antony Marling up onto my mental blackboard. “Who else did Jack talk to that he shouldn’t have?”

  She smiled, and the light near us gave her eyes a pearly sheen. “You.” She grabbed the handle nearest us and yanked it up as she shoved me, hard. The doors slammed open, and I fell backward, down the garbage chute.

  CHAPTER 83

  AS I FELL TIME SLOWED WAY DOWN. My mind shared that Antony Marling could be arranged into Taylor Manning as I saw Leslie slam the chute doors back down.

  I’d have marveled at Marling’s ability to hide his children in plain sight, but I was too busy trying to come up with a plan for how to not crack my head open or break every bone in my body as I fell.

  I was actually grateful she’d picked the garbage chute—I’d already have smashed into something hard and unforgiving if she’d chosen the stairs. She’d hit awfully hard, though. I was used to A-Cs hitting with that amount of strength, but not humans.

  For whatever reason, I clutched at my purse, a little too tightly, and heard a disgruntled sound. Right, I had Poofs with me. Time to see what they could do with this situation. “Harlie, Poofikins, Kitty needs help!”

  There was a blur and a feeling of really fast movement, and then I landed. Onto a big ball of fur. I rolled off and hugged the two Poofs who’d gone Jeff-sized. “Good Poofies!”

  They purred. It was very loud when they were this size, but I didn’t care. It also sort of echoed up the garbage chute, but again I didn’t care. It was a much better sound than listening to all my bones break. “Wow, Poofies, what a wonderful smell w
e’ve discovered.”

  Poofikins picked me up gently in its jaws, and then we all jumped down off of the big garbage can piled high with food, wrappers, and other things I didn’t want to contemplate. Harlie had my once lovely wrap in its jaws and dropped it on the ground. It was gross, but I shook it off and put it on. Who knew? I might need it. I hooked the clutch’s strap over my neck. It might not be my regular purse, but why mess with tradition?

  Once I was on my feet, the Poofs went back to small and disappeared. I checked my clutch. They were in it, grooming each other. I couldn’t blame them.

  Checked my phone—no bars. Not a surprise, since I was sure I was at least a couple of floors underground, and there was a lot of exposed metal down here. I felt reasonably steady and checked my dress. Black really did hide stains. Headed off to find an elevator or stairway so I could get back to everyone else.

  I was lost in moments, but I forged on, naturally ending up at a dead end. I heard a heavy step behind me and turned around slowly. I was expecting to see a human, Peter the Dingo Dog, Surly Vic, another person holding a gun. But it wasn’t a person standing there. It was a ten-foot-tall creature, encased in metal.

  It was sort of humanoid, in that it was standing on what I was fairly sure were legs and had what appeared to be arms. Or armlike things. It had five of them, so it was hard to be confident, but I went with arms because it had some really horrible-looking pincers, nails, and other weapons of mass destruction at the ends, sort of forming fingers, but only if Edward Scissorhands had done the rough draft.

  I could tell it had started life as a parasitic superbeing, though, because of the formation of its so-called head. It wasn’t a head so much as a roundish thing with spikes sticking out of it. No human could make this up—even in his wildest nightmares, Michael Bay wouldn’t make a Transformer that looked like this. Though I’d have given a lot to see Optimus Prime, or even Bumblebee, right about now.

  The metal did look very flexible, which boded but not well. I contemplated if I had a chance of running, but the question of “where to” loomed.

  “Say hello to the next generation of soldier,” a familiar voice said from behind the supersoldier. Even with all that had gone on, whose voice it was came as a surprise. This event was really testing my ability to roll with the shocking revelations.

  “Madeline Cartwright, interesting to find you here.”

  “Is it?” She gave me a disapproving look as she stepped around the so-far still monster. She had both a gun and a remote control. It didn’t take rocket science to guess what the remote controlled.

  “Yeah, it is. Sorry to disappoint.”

  She looked me up and down. “I knew you’d survive something that would and should kill a normal person. Nice dress, though.”

  “I’m lucky that way.” I wondered if she knew I wasn’t a normal person anymore and really prayed she didn’t. “And thanks, it’s a designer original.”

  “If you were going to live out the night, I’d tell you to ensure that you kept the designer on retainer.”

  “Good to know. So, you and Marling are working together? Or is it just a family affair with him, Bryce, and Leslie, and you’re crashing that party?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Please. Antony thinks he’s so clever, hiding his children within the political hoi polloi. Anyone with the slightest brainpower can fiddle around with their names to come up with who his offspring are. I mean, you figured it out, right?”

  “Yeah.” At the last minute, but I wasn’t going to share that with Cartwright. I wondered if Olga knew and then realized that of course she did. She’d given me the paper that held all the pertinent clues. No chance of seeing Olga here, though. She was wisely sitting this one out. “They must resemble their mother.”

  “Yes, for the most part.” She smiled. “My sister was brilliant.”

  “Your sister? How has that secret been kept from the Pentagon?” Or Mom, Chuckie, or anyone else?

  She chuckled. “Unlike my bother-in-law, I changed my name to something completely different, no anagrams.”

  “Wise.”

  “Then I married a nice man who worked for a nice general. It was fairly easy after that. Besides, decades ago, no one was using computers to track. And I’ve been a model employee.”

  “True enough. I have to be honest, out of everyone I’ve dealt with, you didn’t hit my radar as being the Dominatrix of Doom. Um, good job. I guess.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. Love the title. I may use it, with your permission. In private, of course.”

  “Go for it. So, before you kill me or whatever, would you mind clearing up a couple of things?”

  She checked her watch. “Yes. We have time.”

  “We do?”

  “Yes. You’re dying on stage, so to speak. It will be quite dramatic. I believe experiencing your death in this way should short your husband out, empathically and possibly mentally, too. He’ll either be useless or so out of control that he’ll end up dead, one way or another.”

  “Nice.” I decided not to ask what she thought everyone else with us would be doing. If I didn’t focus her on them, then maybe they’d have a shot. “So, why were assassins hired to kill me?”

  Cartwright snorted. It fell much more on my side of the snort house. Pity. I tended to prefer those who snorted like I did. “You were identified two years ago as a problem. You’ve been nothing but a thorn in our sides. And everyone who’s gone up against you has died or been imprisoned. Or run off.”

  “Yeah. You still in touch with good ol’ Rue and Ronaldo Al Dejahl?”

  “No. But I’m sure they’ll be back.”

  “Me too. Bummer though that idea is. So, back to the assassins. It seems like overkill, so to speak, especially since it alerted us that something was going on.”

  “So what? You were supposed to be alerted.”

  “Really? Hadn’t seen that one coming,” I admitted.

  She nodded. “We let just enough leak so that the reporter would scramble to warn the world. Unsurprisingly, he went to Reynolds.” The way she said Chuckie’s name, I knew she’d absolutely planned some horrible way for him to die.

  “Why leak that? We’re actually prepared.”

  Cartwright laughed. “There is no way you’re prepared for this. Either our enemies will all die, shortly, or they’ll fail to save all those people and lose their jobs. I personally can’t wait for your mother to get offloaded.”

  “Stay away from my mother.”

  “Or you’ll what? Kill me? I have the gun and the remote control.”

  I needed more information, so I let her have that one. “True enough. So, who all is in on this with you? I mean, clearly you’re in it with Marling and the kids. Who, as I think of it, are pretending to have a relationship with their sibling.” I was too wired to gag, so I saved that reaction for later, taking the optimistic view that I’d have a later.

  “Why not? They’re pretending to have relationships with Marion and Langston.”

  “Get out! So, they aren’t gay, either one of them?”

  “No. They’re very adaptable. Marion and Langston were both vulnerable and in useful positions.”

  “Wow. Are they, um, you know…actually a…um, real couple?”

  “Who can tell? Antony’s machinations have certainly affected their psyches. Among other things.” She sighed. “I’d be upset, but they’ve been too useful.”

  We were, I realized, gossiping, and she seemed to be enjoying it. It dawned on me that she probably didn’t have a lot of friends, if any, she was surrounded by people she was faking out, everyone liked to let their hair down every now and again, and every supergenius liked to have someone to impress, especially if they’d been doing most of their genius stuff in the shadows for a very long time.

  “Amazing. Do they know you’re their aunt?”

  “No. Their mother died when they were young. It was better that we broke emotional contact.”

  “How’d she die?”


  Cartwright looked sad for a moment. “Early experiments with the supersoldier program. It was very unstable when we first started.”

  “Bummer. Why hide the kids, though?”

  “Antony was concerned that they’d be used against him. So he hid them to be safe.”

  “Interesting the way things change. So, was Ronald Yates involved? At the beginning, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes. He’s the one who approached us first.” She smiled fondly and even looked a little misty. “He was a great man.” Uh-oh. I knew what was coming. Decades ago Cartwright would have been young—hard to believe, but reality said it was so—and that meant she’d have been Yates Bait. And I’d killed him.

  Sure enough, she looked at me, and her eyes narrowed. “And you killed him.” Right on cue.

  “He was dying anyway. Mephistopheles was all that kept Yates going.”

  She gave me a long look, then nodded slowly. “True enough.”

  I was shocked to my core, but I chose to not show it. “So, Cantu, Armstrong, Kramer, all the rest of the Cabal of Evil, how much do they know?”

  She laughed again. “I do love your names for things. Everyone else says you use the names to belittle or because you’re not bright enough to remember the real names, but I think you do it because you have an interesting worldview.”

  “Thanks, I think you’re the only one who feels that way.” It was the weirdest thing, in an entire day of ultra weirdness, but I was sorry she was evil. I was actually enjoying the conversation. “The names just sort of come to me, it’s not like I even try. But everyone else seems to find my names for things wince-worthy at best.”

  “Not everyone appreciates those of us who can think outside of the box.”

  “True enough. So, the others, are they patsies, informed helpers, or what? And, seriously, what is Lillian Culver’s damage? You want a supersoldier? Just clone and enlarge her, and the world will run screaming in terror.”

  Cartwright gave a belly laugh. “I know! She’s horrible. And clueless, for the most part. She, like the others, is aware of the supersoldier projects, as you call them. But they’re not aware of what powers the soldiers possess.” She patted the beast next to her. “They’re truly amazing.”