by Allen Wold
Durk reached out and took his purchases off the counter. He pushed past the two men, who stared at him in surprise at his rudeness. But all Durk could think of was the deer he'd seen being sucked down into the sand.
The communicator on Chang's desk beeped. The RTP Area Administrator put down the report she was reading and touched the on button.
"This is Timothy over at UNC Security," the resonant voice said from the speaker. "We've got five students in custody." He narrated briefly what Peter Frye and his friends had done.
"They didn't even know about the third-floor offices?" Chang asked when he'd finished.
"Never guessed. I think it really spoiled their day when we told them."
"Well, at least no permanent damage has been done. Was anybody hurt?"
"Not at all. And I think we've got some good brain potential here. Their destruction was quite imaginative, and they're all A or B students."
"Good. Send them down to Camp T-3. Have Donald put them through a full set of suitability tests as soon as possible. Those we can convert, we will. The others, well, we'll work them till they're fat enough."
"One of them already is," Timothy said with a dry chuckle, and signed off.
Mark Casey and Anne Marino were down in the secret lab below Data Tronix. They were exhausted by their night's activity scouting the Visitor headquarters to the south, as well as having to put in regular time at work upstairs as well, but they wanted to see the fruits of their efforts firsthand.
They stood on either side of Shirley Patchek as she worked at a table, assembling a large-scale map of the Visitor headquarters. Paul Freedman brought over another printout. This was a high-resolution screen dump of a portion of the plan, which Shirley would trim to fit in with the others already assembled. Each sheet, measuring eight-by-ten inches, showed an area about forty-by-sixty feet. As new data came in, or changes were made to the image stored in the computer, Paul would print out a new sheet to replace an outdated one.
"We still can't figure out what they did in that area where they put up all the new partitions in the stock department," Shirley was saying. "Most of those rooms are interior with no windows. But there is some heavy equipment there, and at least one computer."
"You're doing a great job," Anne said, straightening up from the table. She turned to Paul. "Any progress on those internal messages?" she asked.
"Most of them are just typical office communication," he said, going over to a terminal where he called up a data file. "At least, as far as we can tell. Those that refer to specific projects seem to fall into three main classes—general administration and security"—he punched a button and. a menu appeared on the screen—"reports monitoring the companies here in the Park," he moved the cursor to an entry labeled "Misc," "and communications with liaison officers at the universities around the area." He pushed a button and the menu was replaced with a new one. "And then," he went on, "there are these here that don't seem to fall into any category. " He sat back so Anne, and Mark too, could read over his shoulder.
"Who's 'Leon'?" Mark asked, reading the first of seven items in the menu.
"Somebody in charge of a special project. Not everything in his file has to do with that. Some of it is reports back to Diana—or Lydia—in the Los Angeles Mother Ship. Other items are personal communications with no significant content. But others refer to things listed in the other six files."
"That doesn't look like computer or communications subjects," Anne said. "I thought that was all the lizards were doing here."
"So did I," Paul said. "Ironic, Durham is the City of Medicine, but the Visitors do nothing but electronics. Except for this."
"'Sand Barrens,'" Mark read. "'Animal Transport,' 'Genetic Surgery,' what the hell is genetic surgery?"
"Damned if I know. Maybe gene splicing, though it doesn't sound like that."
"How does 'Local Farmers' fit in with this group?" Anne asked.
"It seems to be reports on observations of the people who live near this special project, wherever it is, mostly just saying that there's no trouble and no interference."
"We don't know where this Leon is working?" Mark asked. "He's not at the headquarters building?"
"Communications from him come in on an outside line," Shirley said, coming over to join them. "It's a dedicated line, with no regular telephone ringer, so we haven't been able to trace it."
"'Disposal,'" Anne said, reading the last of the menu entries. "What's that?"
"Let's look," Paul said, moving the cursor down to that line. He touched a button and yet a new list appeared. He scrolled through it to the bottom. There were only forty entries. He took the last one and displayed it on the screen.
"Remember," he said, "this is a transcription of a voice tape, so some of the words may be wrong." They read the brief entry.
SPEAKER A: We've got another abortion.
SPEAKER B: That's the third one this morning. Can they be used?
SPEAKER A: Total waste. Besides, after a biopsy who wants 'em?
SPEAKER B: All right, tell Leon I'll have someone come down in about an hour.
SPEAKER A: It's the implant forceps [?] I think. The [garbled] can recognize them on sight now.
SPEAKER B: Okay, I'll look into it. How are you disposing of them?
SPEAKER A: Incineration. That's all.
[SPEAKER A: unidentified female, tentatively a technician or lab assistant.]
[SPEAKER B: unidentified male, apparently a liaison between Chang and Leon.]
"And that's all there is?" Mark asked.
"For this one. The same report is in several other files, of course."
"It sure is different from everything else we've been able to pick up from them," Anne said. "This Speaker A called the headquarters just to report an abortion?"
"It's the implant forceps, whatever they are, that they called about, I think. I wish I knew what was going on."
"I wish I knew where they were," Mark said. "About how many pages of printout are there in this set of files?"
"A couple hundred. Not very much."
"I think we need to call in some outside help," Mark went on. He turned to Anne. "Is there anybody at Diger-Fairwell Zoologicals we can trust?" he asked her.
"Yes," she said. "That's a good idea. Paul, how soon can you have a printout?"
"About ten minutes."
"Bring it up to my office, will you?"
"Sure thing."
"Come on, Mark," Anne said, and they left the secret lab.
Anne's office, along with those of the other project directors, was on the second floor. They greeted fellow employees as they got off the elevator, and walked down to her door. If anybody wondered at the strange hours she and the others in the espionage project were keeping these days, nobody asked. Even the company president knew only that they were on a project and not just goofing off.
Anne stopped to speak with her secretary in the outer office. "What are we doing with biofeedback these days?" she asked.
"Nothing, Miss Marino, as far as I know."
"Anything with animals at all?"
"They're doing something with extremely low frequency detection over in Handicapped."
"Excellent. That will do just fine." She and Mark went into the inner office.
"What's that all about?" Mark asked. Technically, Anne was his superior, but for the duration of their espionage, that hardly mattered.
"Just making sure we have some kind of cover story," Anne said, sitting behind her desk and picking up the phone. "Gotta do something about this paperwork," she muttered as she dialed an outside line. She nodded and tapped her ear at the same time, telling Mark that she had detected a tap on the wire.
"Hello, this is Marino over at Data Tronix," she said when her call was answered. "May I speak with Dr. Van Oort, please?"
She waited for the connection to be made, and Mark took a seat.
"Hello, Dr. Van Oort? This is Dr. Marino. Yes. Look, we're having a problem with our E.L.F.
studies over here. We're just not used to dealing with animals, and I'd like to come over and talk with you about it for a minute. No, it's rather important. I think we may be damaging some of the animals. Yes, right now will be fine. See you then." She hung up.
"Nobody listening in could make any sense out of that," Mark said dryly.
"I don't think Dr. Van Oort understood any of it either," Anne admitted as Paul walked in carrying a sheaf of printout paper. "But she'll see us. Thanks, Paul, we'll be over at Diger-Fairwell for about an hour or so."
"Okay," Paul said, "you know where to find me." He left and Anne stuffed the printout into a briefcase.
Anne and Mark took a company car out of the parking lot and drove out onto Alexander, then down Cornwallis, but before they got to the big, futuristic Diger-Fairwell building they were stopped by a Visitor checkpoint. Anne, who was driving, handed the guard Mark's ID along with her own and repeated the story about needing to consult on animal encephalography. The guard did not see the briefcase behind the seat and did not insist on searching the car. He handed back their IDs and waved them on.
Dr. Lucia Van Oort turned out to be a very short woman in her midfifties, with short iron-gray hair. She greeted Mark and Anne in her office, but before they could say anything, she suggested they move to another room and led them into what looked like a parlor, with direct access to her office.
"This room, at least," she explained, "is bug free. Please sit down. Dr. Marino, I have no idea what you were talking about on the phone, but I assume it's something you don't want the Visitors to know about."
"That's correct," Anne said. She opened her briefcase and took out the folded stack of printouts. "I can't tell you how we got this," she went on, handing the papers to Dr. Van Oort, "only that it's all transcribed from conversations we've tapped ourselves."
Dr. Van Oort flipped through the pages. "All these speakers are Visitors?" she asked.
"That's right," Mark said. "As you can see, it has something to do with animals, but we just don't know what. Everything else they're doing at their headquarters here has to do with electronics."
"And you obviously want to know what they're up to," Dr. Van Oort said, putting the papers down on a table beside her chair. "It's a matter of familiarity, of course." There was a small intercom on the table. She pressed a button. "Send Carmichal and Hirakawa here, please," she said. "I trust," she went on after releasing the button, "that you'll see fit to take me into your confidence eventually."
"What we don't want to do," Anne explained, "is tell you things that you don't need to know, that might get us or you into trouble if the Visitors ever overhear those things mentioned."
"I understand. I have no desire to learn just how you managed to tap what appears to be in-house communications. But I take it you aren't here just to satisfy your curiosity."
"Of course not. If we can figure out what those papers mean, and how they tie in with the rest of Visitor activity, we'll probably need even more help from you, and you may find yourself more involved than you'd like to be."
"That's as may be," Dr. Van Oort said as a knock sounded at the door. It opened immediately to admit two women.
"Penny Carmichal," Dr. Van Oort said after introductions, "is a herpetologist and geneticist. JoAnn Hirakawa is our top ecologist and a carnivore specialist. More importantly, both can be trusted implicitly." She handed part of the bundle of printouts to Penny, and the rest to JoAnn.
Mark, Anne, and Dr. Van Oort sat silently while the two scientists skimmed through the documents. Penny looked up once at Anne and Mark. "Looks like two kinds of animals," she said. "Seems to be a breeding experiment." Then she went back to her reading.
JoAnn finished first and while waiting for Penny to finish, got up to look out the window. "My first impression," she said without turning around, "is that these animals are native to the Visitors' home planet, not something from Earth."
"Exactly," Penny agreed, still reading.
"Two species," JoAnn went on musingly, "one large, one small. I'd also guess, from what I've read so far, that one is a carnivore"—she turned to face the others—"and the other is a herbivore, the smaller of the two."
"Seems to make sense," Penny said, putting down her bundle and reaching for the one JoAnn had finished. JoAnn, in turn, came back to her seat to read the rest of the reports.
"I didn't know the Visitors had brought any animals with them," Anne said.
"We have reason to believe they did," Dr. Van Oort said, "aside from what you've shown us here. I've not seen any such creatures, but they had to at least have had food stock. Since they eat only live or freshly killed meat, they had to have some animals on board their ships, animals that would eat vegetable matter, be highly efficient in converting that to flesh, and would breed quickly. Something like rabbits or rats, I'd guess."
"A lot of this is totally irrelevant," JoAnn said, flipping through the pages.
"If you say so," Anne said. "We just brought over everything we had."
"Can you get us copies of the tapes?" Penny asked, looking up. "Some of these words you've got marked down as garbled might mean something to us."
"We'll try," Mark said, "but we were stopped on our way over here, and it was just luck that they didn't search the car. Above all, the Visitors must not know that their headquarters has been bugged."
"Good God!" JoAnn said, putting down her papers. "I thought this was just phone conversations you'd listened in on."
"They are," Mark said, "but that represents only about three percent of what we've been picking up lately."
"Does the underground know about this?" Dr. Van Oort asked.
"Not yet," Anne said. "We're doing this on our own. Besides, I don't think they have the people to spare to help out. We're going to have to be our own underground here, I'm afraid."
"We'll have to set up some kind of data drop," Dr. Van Oort said. "I agree it's too risky to just go around carrying the stuff. Where were you stopped?"
"On Cornwallis," Anne said, "between here and Alexander. It was a mobile checkpoint."
"How about cutting through the grounds in back?" Penny suggested. "Behind us is ITA, and Data Tronix is just beyond them, isn't it?"
"As long as we're not observed," Mark said, "that would do, but there's quite a bit of unforested area there."
"I have an aerial survey map from three years ago," Dr. Van Oort said. "We can work out a route and a drop station that won't implicate either of us, or ITA."
"Then let's do it that way," Anne said. "We'll just leave these papers with you. We'd better be getting back now."
"I'll give you a call," Dr. Van Oort said, getting up to show them out. They stopped their conversation as they left the parlor.
"I think your animals will do okay," Dr. Van Oort said as they crossed her office, "if you just mediate the laryngial tap and use a lower frequency alpha generator."
"Thanks a lot," Mark said. "We'll let you know how things work out."
"Almost time for lunch," Anne said as they rode the elevator down to the main floor, making small talk for the sake of any eavesdroppers.
"Hope they have something good at the cafeteria," Mark said, playing along. They left the building and got into the car.
"Did you really think the elevator might have been bugged?" he asked as Anne drove out onto Cornwallis.
"No sense taking chances. There's our friendly checkpoint again."
The guard pulled them over, and this time he didn't forget to look in the back seat. He had Anne open the briefcase, which contained only a few budgeting papers, then went through the trank and even looked under the hood. At last he let them go.
"I think we just barely lucked out that time," Mark said as they returned to Data Tronix.
Durk Attweiler medicated only five of his sick goats. The sixth one was doing so poorly that he didn't think it would survive anyway. Might as well save the medication for one it would help.
He went back to the house to fix hi
mself some lunch, and as he ate he couldn't help thinking about what Professor Barnes had said that morning, and about the deer he'd seen going down in the sand. What made it seem more than just a coincidence was the knowledge that the lizards had moved in next door, probably before the incident of the deer, though he hadn't been aware of them at the time. Nor had he been able to observe the Visitors since driving by with his tractor, but the fact that they had chosen to come out here to the country instead of staying near the technology of the Park and Durham seemed to hint that they might be doing something with animals.
Animals that lived in sand, and that dragged people down into it. Maybe deer too. He didn't like the thought of any animal like that living up in the sandy areas just east of his north acres.
After lunch he went back to his goat yard. The sick doe might last another week. Wouldn't even be worth eating, he thought. Perhaps he should put it out of its misery.
He patted the goat on its head, and it bleated weakly. Maybe it would be good for something after all, he thought. He went and got his truck, and put the goat in back. It tried to climb out, so he tied a rope to its horns and tied the ends to either side of the truck. He kept himself from thinking about what he was going to do, but just got in behind the wheel and drove up to his north acres.
He parked near the east fence and got out to look across it to the sandy area beyond. The few trees were tiny and scraggly; there was little brush, almost no grass. The soil was pale, leached, and dry. Soft too, he remembered, almost like beach sand. Moles couldn't live there; their burrows would have collapsed behind them. The sand was deep farther out, and with a very low clay content.
He went back to the truck, untied the goat, and carried it over to the fence. He dropped it over, then climbed after it. The goat wanted to go back into his field, but he didn't let it. Instead, he picked it up and started carrying it toward where the ground got sandier