“I wouldn’t bet on that,” I warned. No sense letting her fantasize any more.
After a calculated pause for flare, she turned and led Gracie and Tad out of the chamber.
We were alone. Us intruders.
“Sit here, Rory.” Bonnie opened a folding chair that Pocket handed her. “I’ll bandage that.”
“Strip out of that suit,” Pocket told me.
Like a gang of personal assistants, they plucked and pulled until the supersuit was a lump on the floor, with its sensitive science and its torn leg. I pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants that Pocket conjured up—now, that was a good bosun, able to come up with merchandise in a completely foreign environment. He had a touch, for sure. Suddenly I was a lot more comfortable and for some reason felt very vulnerable.
Clark stuffed me into the folding chair—I hadn’t even noticed that they had chairs at all—and I hung my arm over the back and sat sideways so Bonnie to could clean up my leg. I had no idea when the injury had happened, no idea whether it was from a tail slash or a shard of red glass. Didn’t care.
Clark sat down nearby. MacCormac and his two Marines tried to get comfortable without exactly relaxing.
“She didn’t ask,” I uttered.
“Who didn’t ask what?” Pocket knelt beside Bonnie and helped her clean my wounded thigh.
“My mother,” I said. “She didn’t even ask what happened to Rusty. She just said he wasn’t cautious enough. She wasn’t interested in what actually happened to get him killed.”
“You think she doesn’t care?”
“I think she already knew.”
MacCormac leaned closer, suddenly interested. He waved back the two younger Marines, who were clearly spooked and out of their element.
Clark shook his head. “Don’t get paranoid on us, Rory. You know they can see a lot with those installations of video feeds. She probably already knew because it was fed through on a camera. Keep your head.”
“Keep my head? I’m trapped here with a bunch of eco-terrorist bug-huggers. This is her dream? To be out there in the middle of those things? My mother actually thinks that if she learns enough, she can live among those things? This isn’t an expedition! It’s a cult!”
“Bonnie, what do you think?” Clark asked. “You’re a doctor and you know a lot about animals . . . have you ever heard of something like what we saw out there?”
We all looked at her, which caused Bonnie to flush with self-consciousness. “I’m not the expert . . . Mrs. Malvaux might be right . . . but . . . ”
“Go ahead,” I said. “You’re as smart as she is.”
She smiled in a small way. “Oh, wow . . . thanks.”
“Was she right?” Clark prodded. “Could this period of change, whatever the change is, when they leave us alone and go after each other, could it last for years?”
“Are you asking me about precedents in nature?”
“Whatever you think.”
She dabbed antiseptic on my wound, which I have to say was finally waking up and starting to hurt, and took her time formulating an answer. “It might last,” she finally ventured, “but violent behavior within the same species doesn’t usually represent a norm. Doesn’t usually last protracted lengths of time.”
“In other words,” Pocket finished, “we’re not all that safe.”
“We’re not safe at all,” I told them. “Clark, you have to stick to your original mission. Evac this planet and release the PPs to eradicate the aliens. We have to save these people. There must be more like Rusty, who want to go home but are afraid to speak up. You have to take charge, you and the colonel here. She’s got this Kum-Bah-Ya thing going with these people she pretends to care about, but whenever they die, somehow it’s their fault. It’s never her fault or the fact that they’re here, and it’s certainly never the aliens’ fault. These laws don’t fit the situation anymore. You have to make a decision, Clark, maybe one that’s beyond the letter of the law. You have to be a captain and not just one of the drones.”
“Sucks,” Pocket commented. “No mission, no bonuses.”
“Oh, there’ll be bonuses,” MacCormac spoke up. “For the next ship.”
“What next ship?” Bonnie asked.
“The one that comes after we go home, and releases the PPs that we didn’t release. You don’t think this is a done deal, do you?”
Clark twisted to look up at the colonel.
“That’s right!” Pocket exclaimed. “It’ll get done anyway, and nobody’ll ever trust the Vinza crew for another mission! We’ll be space dust!”
“You’ll retire, all right, Clark,” I said, “and some other guy’ll come out here and do to those aliens what they do to everything in their way.”
Clark put his hand out to calm the storm. “I’m not releasing a hundred thousand robotic hunter killers until I think this out, bonus or no bonus, retire or not. I don’t want to break the law.”
“This is bigger than the law,” I said. “The Alien Species Act is fiction. It was made up before any of the details were known, before anybody really knew anything. There was one rumor of one ship fifty-odd years ago, and one expedition from which I don’t think anybody survived. It’s based on nothing. On my mother’s imagination. A rosy picture, I might add, and with money and influence she pushed it through. Let me ask you this—can you believe that, after we get back and tell this story, that the Alien Species Act won’t see a lot of amendments and refinements?”
Clark shrugged. “True . . . ”
“Then how can you suffer over obeying it? It’s a hollow law, Clark.”
“Yeah . . . ” He seemed to be accepting my argument. I knew his only real doubts were about himself, and not really about what I was saying. Being the captain, he wanted to make sure he wasn’t being influenced by friendship. If I’d had the time, I’d have respected that. “I just want the time to think for a few minutes.”
“Well, think fast,” I said, “because somebody around here is working against us. And I don’t mean spreading rumors.”
Clark moaned and mumbled, “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
I twisted around, pulling my leg out of Pocket’s grip and messing up the bandaging process. Turning to face them all, I motioned Bonnie to leave my leg alone for now. “Conclusions? Let me give you some meat for conclusions. What happened to Donahue and Brand? How did they get killed by aliens if they were inside the ship’s protection grid?”
“We found Donahue on the edge of the grid,” MacCormac reminded. “I can’t be sure he wasn’t over the line.”
“Or maybe he was killed inside the line and dumped at the edge, so you wouldn’t be sure.”
Clark parted his lips to argue, then paused and waited to hear me out.
“And when we found him,” I went on, “there was no acid anywhere around him. Not on his uniform, not on the ground, his hands weren’t burned . . . the tail spike that killed him would’ve been full of acid if he’d blown it off the animal himself. Maybe you haven’t had the tour in here. Just a few steps away is a museum of alien parts, all cleaned out and mounted.”
“Rory . . . ” Clark murmured. “Tail spikes used as weapons? Come on . . . who’d think of that?”
“I just did. I wouldn’t put it past a few blood relations to think of it too. Or passionate cultists. They thought of a few other creative things, like using those huts as incubation chambers. Can you imagine those poor people? Able to see out, watching each other’s chests explode and the little larvae racing out, knowing what was coming to them? No wonder Diego’s wife hanged herself before it happened.”
Bonnie shuddered and let out a gush of sorrow. “Horrible . . . ”
“What about Brand?” MacCormac asked. “You don’t think they used those . . . ”
“That maybe he was strangled by one of those parasites that was already dead?” I said. “Yeah, I might be enticed to entertain that idea, Colonel, since there were no scratches on his hands or face.” I allowed a pause while they all tr
aveled back in their minds to see that I was right about that. “There are a handful of us on the planet and the first ones to die are our Colonial Marines? Think about military tactics. The first advantages you want to take away from your enemy are his guards.”
“Your mother, that little woman?” Clark wondered. “She overwhelmed three Marines?”
“Or Tad, or somebody in her thrall.”
“You’d better make the direct charge,” MacCormac said, “if you’re going to. I need to know exactly what you’re saying.”
With a wince at the freshening pain in my leg, I fixed my gaze on him and gave him what he wanted.
“Monsters do exist,” I told him. “But they’re human.”
10
Life goes on day by day in the universe, and every once in a millennium pauses for the truly surreal.
All the rest of us shrank back into the blind, unable to read the situation, knowing things were changing too fast to predict. Scientists want to be able to predict everything. It’s their lives’ work. They were uneasy, I could tell.
What made us even more uneasy was my mother’s behavior. Not only was she Jocasta Malvaux, but she was “into” being Jocasta Malvaux, as if it were a title and not just an identity. She proved this to us in the most poetic illustration possible . . . she went out of the blind alone.
We huddled inside, watching through the projector curtain as she walked out farther and farther, as far as she could and still be seen. Being seen was important.
There were adult aliens all around us now, though they hadn’t been tipped off to the location of the blind. Even my mother wasn’t quite that enraptured yet, to give away our only hiding place.
“What’s she doing?” Clark asked as we stood side by side, with Pocket and MacCormac. Around us were a few researchers—Paul, the microbiologist, Chantal, the vet, Neil, the camp director, and Ethan, the crowd dynamics guy. Their presence made me wonder where the others were, and why they weren’t here watching the “show.”
It was nearly dark, but the big green-striped moon provided a conveniently bright glow across the landscape and we were able to make out everything. The moon was big, bigger than Earth’s moon, or closer or something, so the glow was luminous and the shadows sharp.
I motioned Clark to silence, and we watched as my mother walked out to meet the aliens. Of those which were wandering by in seeming aimlessness—not like before, when they had moved in one direction with purpose—two noticed my mother. Then, a third.
“They’ve got her,” MacCormac announced. I think he was warning me that my mother was very likely to die right now, before my eyes, in case I wanted to look away.
I didn’t. In fact, I disgusted myself by wondering if that wouldn’t make things a lot simpler for all of us. She was a lightning rod. Without her, the club would crumble. Would it help if the aliens took the struggle away?
My own mother . . . what was I thinking? What had I turned into?
My soul was saved by a strong desire to rush out there and drag her back. I was stopped by the fascinating sight as she raised her hands to them the way she might to beloved horses in a stable.
Morbid curiosity took over as the three aliens undulated closer to her. They were snakelike in their movements, never quite still, though not quite advancing. Even standing over her, touching her with their tail tips and moving their toothy jaws along her sides and upraised arm, they continually shifted and coiled, uncoiled and flexed. One by one they lowered their snouts into her palms as if she were feeding them by hand. This was her dream, her quest, to walk among them.
I knew the other researchers were somewhere in the complex, eyes fixed to monitor screens, watching the prophecy come true. This could only make things worse. These people had to be evacuated before the spell was broken.
I bit my lip and shook my head. “I swear she’s scarier than those things.”
* * *
I sat by myself in the museum chamber, mostly twitching and trying to think clearly. Sudden decisions could have tragic consequences and I had to make sure we were acting with good sense and not just acting. The hardest part would be figuring out who among the campers was working with us and who was working against us, whom we would have to drag, and who would happily run to the ship once they were freed from the spell of the Wicked Jocasta of the West.
The museum chamber seemed to be my favorite place, with its giant creature staring—or whatever it did—down at me. In here, I was able to look my enemy in the face, if not the eyes, and try to measure him up. And there wasn’t usually anybody else in here, so the chance to be alone was a factor.
Which was why I flinched when somebody came into the chamber. I looked up and discovered the visitor was Carmichael, the boy Marine.
“Hello, sir. Sorry if I disturbed you.”
He had a slight squeak in his voice, as if puberty weren’t quite finished.
“Private,” I greeted. “Resting up?”
“Patrol, sir. Interior.”
“Guarding something from coming in here or us from go-ing out?”
“Don’t really know, sir.” He sniffed and muttered, “Sure wish I did.”
“You’ve been pretty quiet this whole mission.”
“Not much to say, sir. Gonna have a lot of stories to tell, though, assuming I get back, that is. Wait till my folks hear about all this.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Waukesha, Wisconsin.”
“Hey, I’m from Milwaukee.”
“That’s what I heard, sir.”
“Have a seat.”
“I . . . I don’t think I should.”
“You deserve it.” I patted the folding chair next to mine.
He sat down beside me, but kept his pulse rifle right against his chest.
“How old are you?” I asked.
“Twenty-two, sir.”
“You can call me Rory. I’m not much into the ‘sir’ thing. What’s your first name?”
He made a face. “Mike.”
“Mike?”
“Yeah.”
“Michael Carmichael?”
“Yeah . . . ”
I rewarded him with a cranky laugh. “Mothers can be such turkeys.”
“Yeah!”
“What would you rather have had?” I asked. “If you could choose your own name.”
“I . . . I always . . . my grandfather’s always been great to me. He was a war veteran, like. He’s why I joined the Corps. I always admired him. He’s got this real strong first name . . . ”
“Go ahead.”
“Aw, no. It’s dumb.”
“Nah, go ahead. What is it?”
“Kensington. Shit, I shouldn’t have said it! Sounds so dumb . . . ”
“Kensington Carmichael?”
“No—his name is O’Keefe. His last name.”
“Kensington O’Keefe,” I tested. “I like that. You’re right, it’s great sounding. Has a lot of character.”
“Yeah, yeah, it sure does. Sure does.”
I slapped my knees. “Well, let’s just do it.”
“Do what?”
“Change your name.”
“Come on . . . ”
“People do it all the time.”
“No kidding? Just like that?”
“Yup. On your feet.”
He bounded to his feet and twitched with anticipation, adjusting his uniform, and finally shouldered his weapon.
I stood up too and squared off in front of him. “Ready?”
He whipped his hat off. “Ready.”
I looked around and picked up a drinking straw left behind on a desk, and tapped him on the shoulder. “I, Detective Rory Theodore Malvaux, Duke of Earl, do dub thee Private Kensington Carmichael, Colonial Marine Corps, Esquire.”
Carmichael beamed and gasped, “Oh, man!”
We shook hands vigorously, enjoying the moment.
“Can I call you ‘Ken’?” I asked.
His grin could’ve lit up Broadway.
“Ken . . . Thanks!”
I offered a sort of goofy salute, and he responded.
“Better get on with your patrol,” I said. “You’re a whole new man now.”
“Yeah, thanks!”
When he left, I didn’t sit down again. Somehow the conversation with him had relaxed my brain and given me some focus. I knew what I had to do.
I went looking for my sister again. She was fanatical and devoted, but there had to be some line of communication that would work. We’d protected each other a lot when we were kids. She’d grown up knowing our mother wasn’t exactly like the other girls’ mothers, or anybody’s for that matter, and I’d grown up knowing I didn’t count for much. There had to be some of that lingering inside her hardened survivalist exterior. Right?
What the heck, I was desperate. Clinging to delusions actually helped somehow. Or at least maybe I would eliminate some dead ends.
The chambers were mostly darkened, lit only by tiny red lights that allowed us to move around without stumbling, but caused no glow or sharp shadows. Like a ship’s bridge in red alert, we could function almost in the dark.
I passed by several people, hunched over screens, watching the delirious scene of my mother in communion with her subjects. Others muttered to each other and tried to distill the tons of new information they’d picked up. To me, it was one or two interesting episodes. To them, it was a flood of data. Scientists who looked at things in micro-slivers were pulling apart the fabric of our day and trying to reassemble it into something they could sift for patterns. People who devoted their entire lives to translating one page of manuscript had stumbled upon a whole library.
The hideout was really an ant colony of pockets joined by tunnels. Until now, I’d only been in a few of the chambers, but now I toured quietly, by myself, deliberately not disturbing anyone else, whether they were working or trying to sleep. The darkness helped.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 41