Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The

by Molstad, Stephen

  “No. We are reading its mind,” Tye said. “Aren’t we?”

  “Don’t kill it!” Edward demanded. “There’s no need. It’s not going to hurt us, and we need its help.”

  “Not going to hurt us?” Yossi asked. “What about your hand?”

  Edward had his mangled left hand tucked under his right arm to staunch the bleeding, but kept his flamethrower in the ready position. He and the alien answered Yossi’s question simultaneously, one silently, the other aloud. “It’s the others ones who shot me,” Edward insisted, “the ones in the suits of armor. This one is different. Can’t you feel what it’s telling us?”

  “I think he’s right,” Tye said. “Maybe it knows where the biological weapons are.”

  Reg tightened his grip on his .357 Magnum, walked forward until he was standing within an arm’s length of the five-foot-tall ghostlike figure, and pointed the gun at its forehead. The alien didn’t flinch, but everyone sensed its panic level rising. As calmly as he could manage, Reg spoke to it. “I’m going to put a big, messy hole through your ugly face unless you help us. Understand?”

  It understood.

  “We’re looking for a silver case. It’s full of little glass test tubes, and we want you to…” Reg didn’t need to finish putting the idea into words. The alien was already answering. It pointed one of its hands, a set of banana-sized pincers, toward the horizon of the ceiling, then “spoke” once more. In one mental stroke, it told them, in no particular order: that the silver case would be found on the floor immediately above; that it would gladly lead them to the spot; and that the biological poisons were still safely inside their sealed tubes. There was no question about what the alien wanted. It was trying to exchange cooperation for survival.

  “I don’t like it,” Ali grumbled after listening to the alien. He turned and swept the darkened exit bay with his flashlight. “I’ve got a bad feeling. He wants to trap us. Why are the weapons upstairs? Why aren’t they over there?” He pointed the flashlight in the direction of the distant taproot. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why don’t we ask him,” Fadeela said. She walked angrily to where Reg was standing, gave the alien a sharp thump on the chest with the warm tip of her flamethrower, and spoke to it in heated Arabic. She wanted to know what the taproot was for.

  The Tall One was remarkably forthcoming in its reply. Without words or images, it answered Fadeela’s question in surprising detail: The massive root, nearly two miles long from end to end, customarily served as a food source for the aliens and had been grown from a tiny seed; the one growing down the side of the tower had been altered to grow in such a way that it would serve as a powerful pump; the tip of the plant had already penetrated to the level of the groundwater; the test tubes were to have been snugged into a specially designed insertion, a cartridge chamber, and then forced downward under explosive pressure; the first anthrax deaths in the northern population centers would have occurred within seventy-two hours. The alien understood, and began to explain, the geometric progression of infection among the human population. The lethal efficiency of the plan seemed to please the creature.

  “That’s enough!” Fadeela shouted. She felt like punching the balloon-headed creature right between its bulging chrome-colored eyes. Before she could, Reg made a decision.

  “This is our best bet,” he announced. “We’ll follow our little friend upstairs. If he leads us to the silver case, we’ll let him live. If not, he’s vapor, and we’ll come down here and destroy that big root.” He started the alien marching with a shove.

  He knew Ali was probably right. Chances were good that it was leading them into an ambush. There was no way to know for sure. Even though the individual they’d captured seemed to be cooperating, Reg knew the aliens worked together as seamlessly as bees from the same hive and that they had descended on Earth intent on exterminating humanity. They were colonizers, and cold-blooded killers. It made sense that there would be a trap waiting for them on the floor above, and that’s exactly what Reg was hoping for. If the silver case was the bait, there was always a chance of getting away with it before the trap was sprung.

  As they walked, Yossi tore off his shirt and used it to make bandages and a tourniquet for Edward’s wound. “Listen, I know you don’t like to take advice from Jews,” he told Edward, “but next time, don’t try to catch the bullet. Try getting out of the way.”

  Tye took off his belt, looped it, and slipped it over the alien’s head to create a choker leash, which he promptly handed to Reg. The alien’s head bobbed heavily atop its thin neck as it shuffled across the floor. Its movements were stiff and wobbly at the same time, somewhat like an old man’s.

  Very quickly, they came to a trellis of diagonal bars like the one they’d found earlier. Reg kept the alien tightly tethered with the belt leash as they began to climb. Ali and Yossi helped Edward up the bars. Fadeela shot ahead and reached the new level first. By the time the others caught up to her, she had already wandered beyond the short entrance hall and out into the open, exposing herself to the danger of being picked off by a sniper’s pulse blast.

  She was standing in a room that was as wide as a prairie and of incredible height. It had once been full of tall crystalline spires, towers within towers, most of which were now reduced to a jagged rubble. The architecture was stark and utilitarian. In many places, the spires were still connected to one another by horizontal footbridges. There were plenty of places left to hide; enough to hold a small army. But it would only take a sniper or two to finish the team off. They stopped at the end of the low hallway and crouched at the threshold.

  “Woman,” Ali hissed at her quietly, “come back here before you get all of us killed.”

  “Quiet, dog breath,” Fadeela answered at normal volume. She was staring straight up, lost in contemplation of the vast ceiling, which was composed of thousands of diamond-shaped panes of the light-amplifying, telescoping glass. Light from the outside world poured in through the panes as if it were midday, but only through a few at a time. Circular clusters of them lit up to create a moving pattern across the ceiling, like a half dozen spotlights sliding across the skies over a destroyed city. Reg leaned out of the hallway far enough to follow Fadeela’s gaze. He looked up at the hazy blob of light she seemed to be following as it traveled, a few panes at a time, across the ceiling. The moment he focused his eyes on it, it began to change. Suddenly, the windows showed him a fighter jet streaking silently through the predawn sky at a high altitude. A moment later, the image magnified and refocused until he could see that it was an American-built F-15. The image magnified again, and he could read the serial numbers stenciled onto the undersides of the plane’s wings. He blinked and looked away, slightly disoriented.

  Tye stared out into the open space ahead with a combination of awe and dread. “What drives such small creatures,” he asked, “to build on such a gigantic scale?” As if the proportions of the room were too grand to contemplate, he turned his attention to something small. The floor was covered with pieces of debris, some of which looked like tools or machine pieces. Tye stretched one of his long arms through the doorway and picked one of them up. It looked like an ordinary ball bearing, but stung his fingertips when he squeezed it. An inspection under his flashlight showed him that it was covered with bristles, a stiff metallic fuzz. He put it in his pocket and was about to back away from the opening when the alien spoke again.

  This time, no one could feel the thoughts except Tye. It “suggested” that he pick up one more, and it forcibly steered his attention to something that looked like a half-melted black pen. The alien told him it was a medical tool that could be used to treat Edward’s wounds. When Tye retrieved it, the alien communicated to the rest of the group what the wand could do: stem Edward’s bleeding; repair the shattered bone; clear and cauterize the wound; and accelerate the regrowth of the skin.

  “It could be a weapon,” Tye pointed out, looking down at the lightweight object. One end of it flattened out into
a dull blade.

  “Give it to him. Let him try,” Edward said urgently. The bandages Yossi had made for him were already saturated and dripping with blood. If the bleeding didn’t stop soon, he wouldn’t be able to keep pace with the others.

  After a nod from Reg, Tye held the instrument out and let the alien’s thick awkward fingers take it from him. The creature fumbled with the tool for only a moment, then tossed it aside before Edward could finish unbandaging his mutilated hand. By the time he did, the bleeding had already stopped. A moment later, he realized the pain was gone, too.

  “That’s a good start,” he said. “But can you grow my fingers back?” The alien no longer seemed interested. It turned away and began walking toward the open room. It stopped when it came to the end of the leash and felt the belt tug at his throat. After a moment of hesitation, Reg followed the alien out of the hallway.

  The dimly lit space around them was quadruple the size of the largest domed sports arena on Earth and was filled with softly pulsating light. In addition to the spotlights of false daylight coming from the ceiling, there was a strobing, flashing light coming off the floor. As they walked farther into the room, they discovered the source of this strange light.

  Huge slabs of the same amber-colored substance had been set into the sloping, bowl-shaped floor in the shape of a flower. Each petal was the size of a soccer field and was glowing a warm orange color through the darkness. A few strides brought them to the end of the nearest petal. It was cracked and broken. In places, large chunks were missing after being damaged during the ship’s crash. There was evidence that something or someone had been collecting the missing sections and setting them back into place like the pieces of a mammoth jigsaw puzzle. As with the plate of the same material Tye had found in the back of the jeeps, the glassy “petals” were emitting a shifting pattern of light. Blurred, fast-moving images streaked across the surface, but were unintelligible to the humans. A long walk from where they were standing, down at the eye of the flower, there was an amber lump that stood on a pedestal several inches above the floor.

  “Okay, we’re here,” Reg told the alien. “Where’s the box?”

  Still eager to help, the creature communicated another cluster of associated ideas. The box, it told them, lay open on top of a worktable in one of the laboratory rooms at the far side of the tower; it gave them the exact location and showed them the best path to take. The instructions were so clear that any one of the humans could have drawn a map. The alien began to shuffle its feet, prepared to lead them to the spot.

  “We don’t need that thing anymore,” Ali said, gesturing toward their alien guide with his weapon. He was more convinced than ever that they were being led into a trap. Telepathic assurances aside, the crumbling spires that rose on both sides of the path they would take offered the perfect hiding places for snipers. “We know where we’re headed. We can go by ourselves. Edward and Yossi, you come with me. The rest of you wait here for us. We’ll be back soon. I hope.”

  The three men jogged off without any further discussion and quickly began to fade from view behind the screen of eerily pulsating light. Reg pulled the Tall One back toward the shelter of the entrance hall and maintained a watchful attitude, while Tye and Fadeela moved deeper into the room and explored the erratically flashing light of the flower.

  “It’s the mother of all medallions,” Tye said, “the heart of their tracking system.” He pulled one of the small medallions out of his pocket and felt it drawn toward the floor, like iron to a magnet. When the small disk touched his skin and activated, the pattern it showed was a representation of the huge flower-shape that lay stretched out below him. “Hmmm. I wonder what happened to all those little diamond shapes.”

  “I think I know,” Fadeela told him, pointing toward the amber blob at the center of the flower. “There they are.”

  Cautiously, the two of them walked down toward the spot where the petals came together and examined the glowing lump set on the pedestal. It seemed to be made of the same material as the broken amber slabs around them, but it was definitely alive. It was a foot-tall mass of semiliquid biomatter contained within thin membrane walls. Its body produced a phosphorescent light from within, except on one side, where the skin was black.

  “Looks like an octopus,” Fadeela said, her lip curling in disgust.

  “Looks like a big brain to me.”

  “A brain with legs?”

  A series of thin arms grew from the bottom of the transparent blob and reached out to connect with each of the eight gigantic petals. Where they attached to the blob, these arms looked as moist and frail as a snail’s body, but solidified as they fused with the surface of the amber material. Beads of an oily liquid ran down the organism’s sides like sap leaking from a tree.

  “There are your diamonds,” Fadeela said, pointing toward the black spot on the blob’s flank.

  Tye squatted for a closer look and realized she was right. Except for a very few strays, all of the tiny diamonds had clustered in one spot on the side of the bloblike body. He thought it over for a minute before asking a question. “At-Ta‘if is to the north, isn’t it?”

  “The northwest. Why?”

  Tye glanced around the interior of the tower to get his bearings. “So northwest is that direction,” he said, pointing. Fadeela understood what he was getting at. The dark diamonds had all clustered on the northwest wall of the gelatinous body.

  “So, this octopus is keeping track of where all the aliens are. And Edward was right about the radio reports. They’re attacking At-Ta‘if.” They noticed that the petal extending in the direction of the battle was flashing and pulsing much more rapidly than the others.

  “That must be how it works,” Tye said. “Now, if each of these petals functions like a giant medallion, they won’t work unless they’re being touched by some living thing. We could royally screw the alien army by killing this brain-thing. Their whole tracking and guidance system would shut down.” Tye pulled a knife from the leg pocket of his uniform and was about to plunge it into the soft body when the alien “spoke” urgently from the distance, offering some insights into the flower-shaped apparatus.

  This time, the interconnected telepathic ideas were embedded in a background sensation of painful loss. Although it was not a human emotion, both Tye and Fadeela winced with sadness the moment they felt it. It was a deep feeling of separation and the aching wish to be reunited. They quickly realized that these feelings were coming from the lump of biomatter that sat sweating on the pedestal. Somehow, the alien was making it possible for them to feel what the simple organism was feeling: an intense chronic sadness, the same traumatic sense of loss a mother feels for her stolen children.

  The emotion suddenly vanished and the Tall One explained to them: that every piece of the amber material, down to the tiniest sliver, knew where all the other pieces were; that the magnetic attraction between the fragments was a result of a desire to be rejoined; and that the amber-oozing creature at the center of the device was, in many respects, like a human—filthy with excrement, semi-intelligent, and wallowing in base emotions.

  When the explanation was over, Tye backed away from the blob remorsefully. “I can’t do it,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his last two medallions. “Go on, be free,” he said to the disks, as he tossed them toward their parent. “Go keep Big Mama company.”

  “Michael, you were right!” Fadeela said. “We have to kill this thing. Their whole navigation system will crash.”

  Tye knew she was right, but hesitated and stared down at his shoes. The Tall One had left him with a deep sympathy for the tortured creature, which the aliens had been holding as a prisoner for who-knew-how-long. He turned the knife over and over in his hand, trying to gather the strength to murder the poor animal, when he noticed something moving between his feet. Something was on the story below, on the floor of the exit bay.

  He dropped to his knees, pressed his face close to the semitransparent floorin
g material, and cupped his hands around his eyes to block out the strobing light. He saw what looked like a trio of small manta rays swimming through murky water, but quickly realized they were three alien skulls seen from above. They were making their way toward the taproot, and one of them was holding a square silver object in its arms.

  “What are you doing, praying?” Fadeela asked. When Tye didn’t answer, she turned away to deal with the blob animal herself.

  As carefully and quietly as possible, Tye stood up and began to walk back toward the spot where Reg was standing guard over the captive alien. He realized that the Tall One had deceived them. Instead of luring them into a trap, it had led them up here on a wild-goose chase in order to give the others time to complete their plan of poisoning the region’s water supply.

  “Where are you going now?” Fadeela demanded.

  “Back in a minute,” he answered as casually as he could manage. He thought he could hide his thoughts from the alien. “Just need to talk to Reg for a moment.” To distract himself from what he’d learned, he began to whistle as he walked. But he was too nervous to carry a tune. The closer he came to Reg, the stronger became his desire to turn around and walk the other way. He didn’t realize what was happening at first and pushed himself forward. His pace grew slower and slower, as a paralysis fell over his limbs. Then he stopped moving altogether. Only then did he realize that the Tall One, standing beside Reg like a docile house pet, was exerting a form of telepathic control over him. He opened his mouth to shout out a warning, but found he couldn’t speak. He tried to turn around, but his feet were rooted to the floor. Trapped inside his uncooperative body, he waited in the darkness for Reg or Fadeela to notice that something was wrong. Then a strange idea infiltrated his consciousness: The way to solve this problem is to kill myself. He looked down and realized he was still holding the knife. The blade slowly tilted upward. Tye, knowing what was about to happen, struggled desperately to regain control of his arm, but couldn’t. The knife jerked upward and stabbed into his left shoulder, where it lodged deep in the muscle and ligament. As if in a dream, he worked the blade free, then immediately plunged it into the softer tissue of his stomach. Although stupefied by what he was doing to himself, he felt no pain and was unable to make any sound. He pulled the knife free once more and prepared to stab into his heart when a shot rang out.