The Stalk

by Janet Morris

  Out of the side of his mouth, inclining his head just a little and never taking his eyes from Cummings' frustrated, flushed face, Remson muttered, "Hurry them up, can you?"

  Reice hated to back off, what with the Cummings guys wanting to come in and Remson not wanting to let them.

  But orders were orders. Reice turned to motion the techs to cut the session short and then stared in horror.

  He heard the sound of another voice, which probably was Cummings, from the tone of injury and intimidation, but he couldn't make out what the voice said. He was too horrorstruck and fascinated by what he was seeing.

  For some reason, the modeler was showing a full holographic image of a being. Not a person. An alien being. Something with a conical skull and funny body that didn't seem quite possible in its physiology. The model was rotating, and as it turned toward Reice, he was caught by its dark, sad, and then luminous eyes. It rotated away.

  "Shit," Reice breathed, and nearly leapt to the first window to pound on it. Hurry up! he motioned urgently.

  He'd thought the modeler was supposed to make a replica of the person being modeled, not show representations of what the person had stored in his or her memory banks.

  Because that wasn't human, that was one of the Unity aliens, and Reice knew that for certain. He also knew that nobody like Cummings—a civilian, and a high-powered one—ought to be looking at highly classified data about Unity aliens.

  Then Reice did pound on the glass with his fists and turned around, leaning against the glass. No wonder all these security precautions. "Sir," he said in a parade-ground voice, "this is a classified session. I'm sorry, but I can't allow your visitors inside here. As a matter of fact, we've got to close that door right away "

  And since Remson didn't tell him to stop, he hit the emergency override and the automated door started closing.

  Cummings, Jr. threatened, "Remson, I'll have your ass for this. I want my son out of there and I want him—"

  The door shut completely, cutting off exterior sounds. Reice waited tensely for an attack on the barrier or for Remson to tell him that he'd screwed up.

  Neither happened. If there'd been pounding on the door, Reice would have heard it; if there'd been worse, Remson would have given him some direct order.

  But there was nothing. No sound from outside. Vince Remson finally rubbed the back of his neck, turned toward the window into the modeling bay, and said, "Reice ..."

  Reice said, "Yes, sir?"

  "Nice job, I think. Can you tell me why we're displaying aliens here? I thought we were modeling the lucky couple for posterity." Very calm. Very level, without a hint of accusation.

  Well, then, Reice hadn't done the wrong thing, shutting off the confrontation with Cummings.

  "Ah—no, sir. But I'll find out—"

  "I'll find out. I just wanted to know if you knew." Remson moved by Reice in a rush of air and Reice smelled, unexpectedly, the smell of nervous body odor. So Remson wasn't as cool as all that.

  Remson palmed the lock into the tech bay casually, as if he was in and out of there all the time. Reice had been instructed to stay outside, so he couldn't follow.

  The door didn't shut on its own, though: he could still listen.

  Remson's big head with its jagged profile dipped toward the white-coated tech, who stood hurriedly. "Why are we seeing that image, when you're supposed to be modeling persons for later study?" he said very quietly.

  The technician was a woman. She straightened up, craned her neck, and said with vehemence, "Mr. Remson, you're seeing the result of the modeling of Dini Forat. Would you like to bring in another team to check our work? We'd be more than happy to—"

  "What?" Remson took a step backward. So did Reice, in sympathy, and because maybe he'd just heard more than was healthy for a ConSec staffer.

  "What do you mean?" Remson asked.

  The woman technician had graying blond hair, and her fingers tugged at it nervously. "Whether what we have as a primary image is a function of some great trauma, or a malfunction of the system, what you are seeing is a psychometric modeling profile of Ms. Forat."

  "But that's an alien," said Reice from the doorway, unable to help himself.

  "So it is, Reice," Remson said, "and you never saw anything but a glitch resulting from command errors to the modeling, system." He turned back to the technician. "I want absolutely squeaky clean and completely unremarkable human models of those two young people before you, or any of your associates, leave this bay. Is that clear?"

  "Yes, Mr. Remson, but how can we—?"

  "Reprogram your machines. Find an error. Make a whole new scan. I don't care what you do. I'm going to have to show these profiles to Cummings, you can bet. And they had better be as innocuous as we can make them."

  "But the data," said the technician, turning white, "is absolutely cor—"

  "—unacceptable. I told you, start over. From the top. and get me what I need. And before you do that, bracket the initial scans and I'll seal the files myself, while I'm here."

  Reice sighed and backed away from the door, toward his chair by the wall. It was going to be a long, long session. He flipped out his communicator to cancel the kids' agenda for the rest of the day. If they were kids, and not aliens with conical skulls and physiologies that didn't quite fit into normal four-dimensional space.

  CHAPTER 3

  For Your Own Good

  In the soft, rainbow light of the modeler bay. Dini Forat-Cummings repeated implacably, "Assistant Secretary Remson, for your own good, heed what I say. In one hour's time, the Council of the Unity will provide a delegation out at the Ball to receive the UNE's answer to the Unity's message. The delegation win remain available for only a few of your hours. I suggest you end this session and concentrate on the matter at hand."

  She tapped the message she was carrying from the Unity on one knee. Beyond Remson's imposing bulk, she could see her husband's beloved person, trying to assist the technicians whom Remson had instructed to perform the entire modeling procedure over again because Remson had not liked the results.

  Results, Remson would find out, were not subject to change on a whim. Truth was not reinterpretable to suit convenience. Facts were not coinage, to be withheld and distributed for personal gain.

  Remson had not adjusted to such new realities, that was certain. His large bead with its craggy features inclined to her stiffly, an obligatory nod of respect, as he replied, "Once more. Ms. Forat-Cummings, I must remind you that what is happening here Is of critical importance to your safety and that of your husband." His pale eyes flickered toward Rick, who had his hands up before his face to fend off the modeler helmet, then back to her. "I thought you two had agreed with Secretary General Croft to cooperate."

  "We did. We are. We will." Time and tense was the problem, then. English was not her native tongue, and perhaps the confusion stemmed from that. But she knew better: UNE space was no longer her native spacetime. After so long away from this sequential reality, she was having difficulty separating things into their proper order. She must remember the teachings of her youth: forward, not back: noun to verb; past to present to future; from the beginning to the end. Humanity was still adamant about that, and about keeping its ever-present "now" central to its experience.

  "Well you're not cooperating. Not in my terms. If this message was so important, madam, why didn't you bring it up with Mickey—with the SecGen—during your meeting earlier?"

  Remson's frustration, his uncertainty, hit her like swells of ocean surf carrying stones in their froth. The shock and subsequent abrasion was nearly physical. She shrank back, then calmed herself. She stood up.

  Remson followed suit and towered over her.

  She had made an error. Earlier, that was the problem. The big man did not believe her because she had not spoken earlier. Tense. Sequentiality. She was not convincing because she had not ordered her priorities in a human fashion. She wished she had her pets here to help her, to make everything behave: t
ime, events, people. Mostly people.

  But the pets could not come to Threshold. Dark furry faces and bright eyes gleamed in her inner sight. They were waiting at home in Unity space, and she would be home soon enough. The council had promised. She and her husband did not have to stay here. The council would protect them. No harm would come to them—not at the hands of their human parents. Not from the Secretariat. Not from the combined might of the United Nations of Earth.

  "Answer me, Ms. Forat-Cummings. Your husband's father is determined to cause trouble. Don't underestimate him. With three psychologists, he can have Rick declared incompetent and remanded into his custody. I was told the two of you wanted to stay together. With less restrained measures, your father can have us knee-deep in assassins.

  We need—and I demand—your full cooperation, or the Secretariat cannot be responsible for your welfare." He glared at her through those pale blue eyes surrounded with red-veined whites. "Now, answer my question: if this message is so important, why didn't you give it to Mickey when you saw him?"

  "Why," she sighed, and the three-letter word tasted on her tongue like all of mankind's murderous obstinacy. This was her race, that was why. This was her price, paid for a new home and a new chance at happiness beyond the dreams of creatures such as Remson. "Let's go out of here, into the next room. We are disturbing your precious evaluation process."

  "Gladly," snapped the big man, full of his own power.

  She glanced back at Rick and saw for a moment her husband's distress and loneliness. On his lap, on his shoulders, with their little black hands wound in his hair, appeared the phantoms of their pets: the racoon-like Brows were as lonely as they, awaiting reunion.

  If she had had her Brow in her arms, communication with beings like Remson would have been so much easier. But she did not have it. The Unity had decreed that this was a human matter, and that she and Rick were the best qualified to broach it.

  In the outer chamber, the light was brighter, squeezed together into a soulless white that focused spacetime into a narrow band of sequentiality.

  Remson slammed his hand against a palm-plate that shut the door between the two bays. He turned to the white-coated technicians, saying, "Out! Now!"

  Two people in white scurried to obey. "If you'll take a seat," Remson ordered.

  She did not.

  Remson crossed his arms, spilling anger all over the room with his motion. The heat of it was a Shockwave of red that sped toward her so fast she barely had time to deflect the effect.

  "Let's have it," Remson said.

  "Have what?" she asked, confused.

  "An explanation. The message. I want to know why you're just getting around to telling us this now."

  "Why," she sighed again, trying to understand the fury she felt emanating from the man, the urgency, and the clear hostility. She must make herself understood. "You're finally ready to listen, now. Secretary General Croft was not ready to listen, then. The message is for the Secretary General, from the Interstitial Interpreter of the Council of the Unity. Will you deliver it, or shall we? An answer must be soon forthcoming."

  That should be clear enough. Even a child could understand such simple declarative sentences.

  Remson held out his big hand, pushing it through his envelope of now into hers. It was all she could do not to shrink back yet again.

  Remson said, "Give it to me. I'll take care of it. We need you here to finish the modeling, so we can placate Richard Cummings the Second before we have a lawsuit on our hands."

  She held out the message disk in her own hand, praying he wouldn't touch her flesh when he took it. Touching was so difficult with uncontrolled beings. So much spilled over into you. She'd been afraid she'd have to touch Croft, but Rick had shielded her.

  Big, blunt fingers with ridged nails took the message media from her. Remson stepped back.

  Released from her duty, so did Dini. She wanted to go home, back to the Unity. She'd been promised she wouldn't have to stay here. She was near tears and didn't know why. Rick was beyond a closed door, a thick wall, and she was all alone.

  "Can I go back in there now?" she asked. "I want to go back—"

  "You'll be better off here with me until they're done with him." Remson was already sitting at a console, fitting the disk into a reader. He didn't look at her. His hunched-over frame spewed conflicting emotions.

  And then she understood: the huge consular person was afraid of her. All the combative energy coming out of him was from fear, not annoyance. He was afraid of what he'd seen in the modeling bay. Afraid of the Unity. Afraid of ...

  She closed her eyes to avoid being distracted by the sight of him and his energies. Now she could only hear him, smell him, feel him....

  He was afraid of ... contamination.

  She opened her eyes and stared past Remson, through the double glass, at Rick. Her beloved's head was hidden by the modeling helmet. He had held back, to make sure he could save her if there were some awful trick of compulsion or mind control associated with the modeling bay. But the trick had been played on the modelers, not the subjects, when the results of her modeling were displayed.

  Contamination with what? Happiness? Love? Peace? Life?

  Were these people really living? She hadn't been, not on Medina, not even on Threshold. Not until she'd met Rick, and the furry, black-masked Brows that were his companions, and they'd fled for freedom among the stars.

  She missed her new home, opalescent rings among crimson clouds in violet skies, and the peaceful green hills dotted with homes like temples.... She missed Rick. She missed rubbing against him, their combined nature. She missed the surety that came from being an extended entity, more than one circumscribed person.

  She opened her eyes. Remson wasn't watching her. He was stabbing at his control panel as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it did. Perhaps all of these people's lives did.

  She moved through the intervening space without displacing an atom. No need to cause alarm. No reason to disturb the fetid, recycled air. No benefit to alerting this prisoner of four dimensions. The UNE understood the fifth force, if rudimentarily: it had a crude form of gravity control; it collected antimatter molecules and stored them, one by one, in electromagnetic bottles; it tapped the A-potential force of the energy sea as if it understood the consequences. So why were these people so slow to understand their place in spacetime and change it? Why did they wish to change everything but themselves? Why did they go to such extremes to force the universe to allow them to remain as they had been when they climbed out onto some primal shore from the muck of creation?

  She couldn't fathom Remson's fear of enlightenment, of metamorphosis, of evolution. Change was natural; only stasis was unnatural. People were creatures of evolution. Denying it was like denying the ordering principle itself—like denying God, her father would have said.

  She found the wall with the palm-plate, although it was difficult to identify a particular chunk of matter when you were moving through it, rather than around it. She slid with just a shimmer and a shiver through the door it marked with its electromagnetic glow.

  Then she reentered sequential spacetime with a shudder. She collapsed herself, petrified her every molecule, sucked up her being into arteries, capillaries, veins, organs, meat and bones.

  For a moment, the compression was more than she could bear. But Rick was here, in this space, and she immediately felt better, sharing the moment with him.

  His heart came into her. His emanations bathed her. His love surrounded her. His distress was ... unexpected.

  She looked through her human eyes and saw him, tense in the chair, his hands curled in black gloves with wires all over them; his head hidden in a black helmet with sensors deployed down to his jaw.

  He couldn't see her, but surely he could feel her. She wondered if he could hear her. She said, "Rick ..."

  And people jumped up. White-coated figures moved quickly in incomprehensible patterns.

  Then someone grabbe
d her from behind. The invasion of her personal space was nearly unendurable. The fingers on her arm seemed to sear her flesh with their heat.

  "Let go of me," she demanded, and focused on the owner of the hand: Remson again.

  "How did you do that?" Remson demanded.

  "Do what?" she asked innocently.

  "Get in here. Are you purposely trying to invalidate this evaluation? If you kids don't cooperate, we'll let your parents have you, and be damned."

  "Be damned yourself," she retorted, wrenching her arm free from his unbearable touch.

  Remson examined his hand, which had grabbed her, as if it belonged to someone else, or as if it had betrayed him. "End this session," he decreed, stone-faced.

  Around them, the light of the modeling bay began turning white, bright, sterile. The modeler technicians were chattering agitatedly.

  Her husband was letting the two white-coated people help him off with the helmet and the gloves.

  "Let's go, young lady. You can wait for your hubby outside."

  "I'll wait here," she said. "You promised not to separate us." She hoped her voice did not betray her.

  Rick was moving toward them. She could see him concentrating on covering every step in between, one at a time. Arduous, unnecessary process.

  Rick looked from her to Remson. "What's wrong now, Mr. Fixit? If you don't like what you see, maybe you'd better arrange to see what you like. These machines ought to be able to give you any fairy story you want." Rick motioned around the modeler bay.

  "It's not that, Rick—it's the message—"

  "Mr. Cummings, will you accompany us?" Remson interrupted.

  Had Remson read the message? she wondered.

  Beyond the bay doors, she realized that he must have. He took them straightaway to a secure lift, and up to the very top of the Stalk, without a word. The message disk was in his pocket. She could see it.

  But Rick was with her, so she needn't worry. His energies mixed with hers, mingling together. Shoulder to shoulder, they could face anything. They were not two separate beings anymore, but something more. Was that so terrible? To become more than the sum of your parts?