Diana’s intercom chimed in the darkness of her cabin, where she reclined on her bunk. She touched the switch. “I gave orders that I was not to be disturbed.”
Lydia’s face appeared on the small bedside screen. “Our spies report that the two humans have completed phase two, as you commanded. I demand to know what phase two is, Diana.”
“You’re in no position to demand anything,” Diana said, her voice chilly.
“Does this have anything to do with the two human families you had kidnapped two weeks ago?”
Diana raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think that?” “The point of origin of this signal. It’s near the spot where the humans came from. Just what are you up to?”
“You’re dangerously close to insubordination, Lydia. I’d be very careful what I said next if I were you.”
The blond officer’s lips tightened as she clearly swallowed what she wanted to say. “What are your orders, Commander?” Diana smiled. “Contact the covert agents on Staten Island. Tell them to pick up the humans Cassidy and Bortelli.” “Are they to be brought to the Mother Ship?”
“No need to waste fuel and risk a shuttle landing in human-held territory. Tell our agents to kill Bortelli and Cassidy and dispose of their bodies any way they choose. Their families are already dead. . . .”
Chapter 8
Denise Daltrey braced herself against the dashboard as Randy Carter, her driver, careened their mobile broadcast van into the office building parking lot. Police barricades had already been set up at least a hundred yards away from the four-story structure, and Carter skidded to a stop.
Zipping her ski jacket, Denise vaulted out while her two-man crew of Carter on sound and Suzy Myama on camera swung open the van’s back and side doors and grabbed their equipment.
She wouldn’t have much time to pull the story together, so Denise took a deep breath of damp, frigid air and surveyed the scene. At least a dozen different police, fire, and emergency vehicles were parked inside the barriers, their rooftop lights strobing in chaotic, out-of-synch rhythm. Stretchers were strewn everywhere on the snow, with victims in a variety of conditions ranging from quiet and conscious to writhing in agony to dead. Medical people worked over bodies with respirator equipment where available, or basic mouth-to-mouth techniques and CPR where it wasn’t.
Denise glanced up at the building itself, noticing that plate-glass windows were smashed. When her gaze descended, she saw why.
Three corpses lay in grotesque positions on the grassy apron around the building. They had obviously broken the windows and jumped. But what were they trying to escape from?
Randy Carter came up beside Denise and handed her a double clip-on microphone. She held it in the palm of her glove. Randy pulled a woolen cap over his shaved scalp and slipped headphones on top of the hat.
“No smoke,” Denise mumbled.
Carter lifted the headset off one ear and stooped slightly. “Come again, Denise?”
“No smoke.”
“Why? Did they say this was a fire?”
She shook her head, then pointed to the crumpled forms of the three jumpers. “But something made them leap out those windows up there.” Her finger pointed up to the smashed glass.
“Oh, God,” said Suzy Myama, joining the other two. The camera operator and the soundman made quite an international Mutt-and-Jeff team. Randy was a tall, rail-thin black man who spoke with a Caribbean lilt, and Suzy was a tiny Japanese woman. He had no hair. Hers was waist length and shimmering black, bound in a braid to keep it out of her camera lens.
“Chemical fumes,” Carter suggested.
“But this is an office building, not a petrochemical plant,” said Denise. “By the look of the treatment being given, something definitely happened to the air in there.”
.“What do you want to do?” Suzy asked.
Years before the Visitors, Denise had covered disasters like this for local TV news. She’d always hated that aspect of the job, having to rush headlong into other people’s tragedies, picking through the carnage for faces and words that would tell the story close up and in less than a minute. Those situations just didn’t come up when you covered the State Department or conducted deliberate interviews within the safe confines of the network morning news set.
But these days she had to be ready for anything. Even being a vulture again. She squared her shoulders. “Come on.”
The trio of news people walked briskly to the wooden sawhorses marked NYPD as Denise scanned the confusion for good pictures and for someone not involved in saving a life who might be able to give her solid information. Then she saw a familiar head of curly blond hair. Peter Forsythe was sitting in the doorway of a police van, slumped forward, sipping from a steaming Styrofoam cup. Denise twisted between two barricades and jogged over to Forsythe. Her crew followed as best they could. Portable video gear was still heavier than no gear at all.
“Pete!”
He slowly looked up. His down parka had blood smears on it, and his face was raw and cracked from the cold.
“What happened here?” she asked.
It took a moment for him to reply. When he did, his voice was dull. “Don’t know yet. Something spread through the building and people started gagging and choking.”
Denise shifted back to professional behavior and took a small notebook and pen out of her coat pocket. She pulled her right glove off and started scribbling. “Fatalities?”
Pete shook his head. “Not from the fumes.”
“But I saw people who looked dead lying on the grass.” “They were the ones who jumped from the top floors before the fire trucks could get ladders up to ’em.”
“How many?” Denise fought the impulse to feel sorrow and forced herself to remain businesslike.
“Dead? Five or six. I—I’m not sure. At the risk of sounding callous, this looks worse than it is,” he said, waving a hand about the parking lot.
Denise was startled. “It looks like a war zone, or a terrorist bombing without the bomb.”
“Most people got out of the building under their own power once they realized what was going on. Whatever got into the ventilation system affected people at different rates.”
“Is that usual?”
“Medically? Sure. In a fire not everybody keels over from smoke inhalation at the same instant. If they’d make these damned buildings with windows that open, the workers inside could’ve gotten some fresh air in to dissipate the fumes. We think the people who were overcome will be okay. They’ll be held in hospitals at least overnight for observation.”
Denise finished writing and clasped her hands in front of her face. “I didn’t know what to think when we drove up.” “Neither did I. I got here before the fire engines. I tried to get into the place, but people were pouring out every door. I took four steps inside and felt like vomiting. I got out fast. When my eyes stopped tearing, the first thing I saw was a guy on the fourth floor smashing a window out with a chair. He just kind of hung there on the ledge, clinging to the window frame. I yelled to him to hold on—the fire trucks were on their way. ” Pete paused and shook his head sadly. “I’ll see him in my mind till the day I die. But I’ll never be sure if he just slipped or if he meant to jump. You know, when you see somebody falling like that, you get the craziest urge to run over and try to catch him, like catching a pop-up in a ball game.”
Denise touched his shoulder. “Oh, Peter. ...”
“I’m okay. I mean, I did my time in the ER. But I’ve never done anything like this, until this war. I feel like I stepped into a never-ending episode of M*A*S*H*. And they were right. You never get used to it.”
The same thing happened at a shopping mall later that day, leading Mayor Alison Stein to call together a crisis committee for a dinner evaluation session in her City Hall conference room. As both a doctor and resistance stalwart, Pete was one of the first summoned. Joining him were Lauren Stewart; Fire Chief Bud Brinkerhoff, who’d been at both disaster sites that day; resistance membe
r and city cop Sam Yeager, who’d also helped at the day’s toxic emergencies; and Denise Daltrey, who’d covered both.
The mayor sent out for sandwiches and drinks and cut right to the heart of the matter. “Is it possible these two incidents were coincidental?”
The fire chief, a beefy man with red hair and jug ears, rubbed his stubbly chin. He’d had no time for amenities like shaving on this day. “Possible, or likely, Mayor Stein, ma’am?”
Stein managed a brief smile. “Stop adding to my title. First-name basis here, okay? And you tell me.”
“Possible, sure—likely, no,” Brinkerhoff said.
Yeager looked at the fireman, then turned his stolid, hawk-nosed profile toward Stein. “I’d go along with Bud.” Swallowing a bite of turkey on pumpernickel, Stein nodded.
“I take it everyone agrees with me that the Visitors may have had something to do with this?”
After murmurs of concurrence, Denise looked troubled. “But what and how?”
“There you go talking like a reporter again,” Pete joshed. Everyone smiled at the kidding, but Mayor Stein turned immediately serious again. “That’s why 1 wanted you here, Denise. You know how to organize an investigation, how to string seemingly unrelated facts together to form a workable premise. Would you do that for me?”
“Well, sure, Alison, but why not make it a government or police investigation?”
Stein leaned forward, her tone dropping confidentially. “I want this to be secret for now, just between the people in this room. If the Visitors did cause this, they had to have cooperation from human collaborators, I would think. We’re inside the red-dust protection zone. They can’t send their own troops and agents in, so they get humans to do their dirty work for them. That’s pretty well known. I’m afraid they may have spies inside city government agencies, even the police and fire departments. That’s why I want this investigation conducted by someone like you, Denise, a person whose job is to ask questions. No one will think anything’s out of the ordinary. Still want to do it?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Good. I thought I could count on you. You’ll report directly to me, and only in person.”
“Uh, Alison,” Pete said, “can I suggest bringing one more person in on this?”
“Who’ve you got in mind?”
“Hannah Donnenfeld. She’s the best damn scientist I know of, and we may need someone like her to make sense of the data we get from samples taken from the sites.”
Mayor Stein nodded. “That sounds reasonable. Stress to her the secret nature of this investigation.”
“Right. I’ll get her in on it right away and get the air and heating-oil samples out to her tomorrow morning.”
“Well, I’d like to thank you for coming here tonight,” the mayor said, leaning back in her chair. “I’ll be counting on all of you to find out what you can in your own areas of expertise Keep your ears to the ground and all that Denise it's up to you to collect all the pertinent data and see what it adds up to. ” She lifted her soda can in a toast. “Here’s hoping we have no more emergencies to analyze.”
Six aluminum cans clinked together in agreement.
But the next day two more places were filled with noxious, invisible fumes—another office building and a hospital. Pete Forsythe drove Dr. Donnenfeld to the sites to collect whatever samples she felt she’d need to find some answers. Before returning to her Long Island lab to start work, she asked Pete to stop at Alison Stein’s office.
“Mayor Stein, I have every reason to believe these incidents are linked by heating fuel,” she announced when they arrived. “You’ve got some test results back?”
The old woman shook her head. “Haven’t even started testing. But all four places were heated by oil. I think it’d be a dandy idea for you to order all buildings, public or private, that are heated by oil to shut their boilers off and leave them off until we’ve got some facts to sink our teeth into.”
Alison chewed on the idea for a moment. “Hmmm—the sun’s finally out for the first time in two weeks. Temperature’s almost back to normal. So whatever the Visitors were doing to mess up the weather seems to be over, for the time being anyway. Okay, I think I can go along with that. But I can’t ban oil heat forever. It is going to be cold again pretty soon. Can you get me some facts in a hurry?”
“We’ll do the best we can. Now, if you and Peter’ll stop settin’ around jawing, I’ll get to work. Let’s hit the road, driver.” With a sly grin, Donnenfeld reached across the desk and shook Alison’s hand. “Have to keep these men in line,” she said conspiratorially.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
The Brook Cove Lab was a place Pete would never tire of. He’d concluded that on his very first visit. Set on Long Island’s north shore, where the neon and blacktop of suburban sprawl hadn’t yet encroached, the lab perched on a breezy bluff overlooking Long Island Sound and Oyster Bay Harbor, not far from where Teddy Roosevelt once lived.
Hidden behind a tangle of bushes and trees, the lab’s main house was a weathered Tudor mansion. A dozen other buildings and cottages were clustered to one side, where the scientists of Brook Cove had lived and worked before the alien invasion. But now the heart of the facility was the underground complex buried for security reasons by the eccentric who’d founded the lab in the midst of cold war saber-rattling in 1950. When he’d died, Walter Leiber’s fortune saw to it that the lab would always have the resources to draw the best minds in science and provide them with the tools and time to pursue whatever ideas struck their fancy.
Hannah Donnenfeld, as lab director for the past twenty-odd years, had preserved that sane atmosphere. Brook Cove had prospered—a number of the fruits borne of scientific curiosity there had proven commercially attractive. It wasn’t uncommon for the lab to sell the rights to its discoveries, continuing to collect a percentage as long as their finds remained commercially useful. The lab split the royalties with the responsible scientist or group of researchers, adding another incentive for people to remain there.
This carefully protected haven had been forced to change its role somewhat after the Visitors invaded, then returned for a second try at overrunning Earth. Much more of lab personnel time was devoted directly either to fighting the aliens or to helping the planet’s human population cope with life under radically altered circumstances.
Donnenfeld and her team had a report on the suspect heating fuel ready by midafternoon.
“It’s just preliminary,” she cautioned Pete in her subterranean office. “But there’s no doubt this stuff’s been tainted by an alien substance.”
“When you say ‘alien,’ do you mean alien or”—he jerked a thumb skyward, indicating outer space—“alien.”
“I mean alien, as in Visitors.”
“That’s what I thought. What do we do next?”
“We have to trace this heating oil back to where it came from—as far back as we’ve got to go to determine when and where the contamination took place.”
Pete gulped. “That means there could he ;i lot more of this poisoned oil making its way around the area.”
“Or around the world, my young friend.”
Hannah reached for her desk phone and punched the intercom button. The phone responded with a shrill electronic whine, and she promptly slammed the receiver back onto the cradle. “Damned newfangled gadgets,” she hissed.
“Some scientist,” Pete kidded.
“Hey, if the crank phone was good enough for me when I was growing up in Boston, it should still be good enough now. But can you get a crank phone nowadays? Not on your life.” “How about just a crank.”
Hannah rolled her chair back, swiveled, and stood, playfully smacking Pete across both cheeks. “A little respect, Peter.” “I can’t believe you’re resisting progress.”
“Hell, I barely even use the computer. That’s what I get all these young experts for.” She leaned out the office door and bellowed down the hallway, “Mitchell, Neville, Sari—get in
here on the double!”
She stood, arms folded, foot tapping. Leading with his belly, Mitchell Loomis skittered around the door frame and stood at a semblence of attention.
“Hello, Peter,” he said, jowls quivering.
Pete nodded his greeting, then glanced at Mitchell’s feet. “Do you always wear bedroom slippers?”
“Hannah never lets me go outside,” Mitchell frowned. “Poor sweet baby,” Donnenfeld cooed.
A moment later Neville More and Sari entered, their fingertips lightly entwined. The old lab director glared at them.
“Mitchell Loomis, the man who does the world’s best stuffed-amoeba impression, beat you two in here. You’d best move more quickly when I call you—clear?”
Now that he knew something about More, Pete wondered how this self-proclaimed genius would take to Hannah Don-nenfeld’s good-natured dictatorship. But he saw no bridling in the Englishman’s expression. Sari batted her blond eyelashes in apology.
“Now then,” Hannah continued, “I have some fact finding to do the rest of today. Might not even get back tonight, if Peter doesn’t mind a roomie in New York for the night.”
“Red Sox fans no longer welcome,” Forsythe stage-mumbled.
“As I was saying, you three are on your own this afternoon. Mitchell and Neville, rev up those computers. I want a total chemical analysis of the tainted oil from the four buildings. When I come back, I expect to have samples from whence the stuff cameth. If you’ve done your homework by then, we should know what we’re looking for and should be able to see in a jiffy whether it’s in the oil from the source. Sari, you make sure these two remember their molecular biology. Now, off you go.”
She shooed them out with both hands waving. Sari and More left, but Mitchell lingered, waiting until the other two had gone. “I see your feet aren’t moving, Mitchell.”
“Hannah, why are you making me work with him?” Donnenfeld sighed. “Oh, Mitchell, give me a break. I’m a crotchety old lady.”
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