Infiltration

by Angela Hunt

  “Clearwater Beach,” he said. “I think you’ll like the view. Anyway, we’ll talk, I’ll hypnotize you, and then I’ll let you enjoy the rest of your afternoon. Oh—and you’ll get to meet my mother. Lucky you.”

  I relaxed at the mention of his mom. “I’ll be there in half an hour. Thanks.”

  I couldn’t help smiling as I drove north to Clearwater Beach. Though my sleeping hours had been filled with nightmares, the bright sunshine and wide blue sky evaporated my feelings of dread. The doctor was staying in a condo at Sand Key, a nice development that appealed to tourists and snowbirds.

  I parked the car and smiled at several sunburned and sandaled tourists as I got into the elevator and rode up to the fifteenth floor.

  When Dr. Drummond answered the door, I entered a bit timidly. I knew the professor would have a fit if he knew I was meeting the doctor in his condo, but when I followed Drummond from the foyer into a living room, I was relieved to see an older woman—his mother, I presumed—seated on the sofa. She was reading the newspaper, but after welcoming me and apologizing for her casual appearance, she gathered up the pages and headed into the kitchen.

  “My mother,” Dr. Drummond said, watching her go. “She loves Florida, so I insisted she come along on this trip. She’s going to hate going back to Edinburgh.”

  I smiled and moved into the middle of the living room. “Does it matter where I sit?”

  “Sit anywhere you like.” Dr. Drummond waited until I sat at the end of the sofa, then he took the nearest chair. “Have you been writing in your journal?”

  “I have. Every day.”

  “Did you write about your feelings after the latest nightmare? Are you recording all the details?”

  “As many as I can remember.”

  “Good.” He gave me an approving smile. “All right. What we are going to do now is play a game of ‘let’s pretend.’ You are going to pretend to follow my instructions and fall into a trance. You are going to let your mind go as blank as possible, and you’re going to let your face relax. Don’t react to anything I say or do, but listen to my suggestions and focus on my voice. Take a deep breath in and slowly release it. That’s right. Do it again—inhale and exhale, deeper and deeper. You’re going to go deeper and deeper, you’re going to become more and more still. Watch me. Look into my eyes.”

  I listened. I watched until my head grew heavy and I felt like I was staring through Hamish Drummond, like I could almost tumble forward and fall through the man into another dimension. Or one of the professor’s multiverses.

  “When I count to five,” Drummond went on, his voice flat and steady, “you will become more and more aware of the room around you. I am going to count, and by the time I reach five, you will look up and feel refreshed, alert, and fantastic. You will not have that dream tonight. You will not hear voices in your head. Never again. Ready? One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five.”

  I lifted my head and looked around. Hamish sat on a chair in front of me, smiling expectantly, and from the kitchen I heard the sounds of clanging pots and pans. “So?” I asked. “Are we going to do the hypnosis now?”

  His smile broadened. “My dear girl. We’ve already finished.”

  I looked at my hands, the room, and the clock—I had left the rental house at 10:00 a.m., but the clock had moved to 11:15. The drive must have taken longer than I realized.

  I smiled in a flood of relief. “It didn’t work, did it?”

  “But it did.”

  “What? I don’t feel any different. I mean—I feel fine, but I’m nearly always fine when I’m awake. The nightmares begin after I go to sleep.”

  I waited for his response, but he had lowered his gaze and seemed to be smiling on a spot on the carpet. “Hamish?” I tried again. “Did you hear me?”

  He lifted his head, then he reached out and took my hand. “What did you just call me?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to say Dr. Drummond, but my spoken words were still vibrating on the air. I’d called him Hamish. And I never, ever called professionals by their first names.

  My jaw dropped, and the doctor squeezed my hand. “Nice to meet you, too, Andi. I hope you wilna mind being on a first-name basis.”

  “How—why—how did you do that?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I simply made the hypnotic suggestion that we call each other by our Christian names. Your subconscious agreed that it was a good idea.”

  “But—but—”

  He held up a restraining hand. “Don’t worry about it; you can call me anything you like. But how do you feel? How do you feel about your nightmares?”

  I halted, then closed my eyes to evaluate the feelings of dread and anxiety that had been simmering in my brain over the past several days. I felt nothing . . . but clarity. The anxiety and fear had vanished.

  I opened my eyes and gave him the first genuine smile I’d mustered in days. “Hamish—Dr. Drummond—right now I think I could kiss you.”

  He grinned, then stood. “I’d better let you go. I’m sure your friends are wondering where you are.”

  I stood, too. “The professor gave us the morning off. Something about all work and no play—”

  “Why don’t you stay for lunch? I’m supposed to barbecue a stack of spare ribs or some such thing, and Mother’s made a clootie dumpling for dessert. We’d love the company.”

  I laughed. “A clootie what?”

  “Stay . . . and you’ll see.”

  I looked away and bit my lip, wondering if he’d done any hypnotic hocus pocus to evoke the glorious feeling of happiness that was bubbling up inside me. But even if he had, why should I mind?

  I turned to face him, then hugged my arms and nodded. “I’d love to stay for lunch.”

  I didn’t return to Ghostbusters Central until midafternoon. My bright mood dimmed when I came through the door and found Tank scowling at me. “We’ve been worried sick,” he said, flushing. “Where have you been?”

  I lifted both brows, then glanced around the room to see if any of the others were as upset as Tank. The professor was peering at me from above his readers, and Brenda had stopped reading a press clipping to look at me with a question on her face. But Daniel was deep into his Battleship Megadeath game and didn’t even look up.

  “I went to my appointment,” I said, forcing myself to remain calm. “And then Hamish—Dr. Drummond—invited me to have lunch with him and his mother. We ate. We talked. And that was it.”

  I tossed my purse onto the coffee table and strode to the dining room, where the orb waited under the dishtowel. Tank could stew if he wanted to, but I’d done nothing wrong, and I refused to get caught up in his fears. I hadn’t asked him to worry about me, and I wouldn’t. Ever.

  Dear Journal:

  After coming in from lunch, I sat down, took my equipment from the cardboard box, then pulled the dishcloth from the orb. The sphere had taken on a pink tone, and seemed to be vibrating slightly. I placed my fingertips on it and closed my eyes, trying to discern whether the humming sound came from the orb or some other mechanism in the house . . .

  The sound faded, and I felt no vibration under my fingertips. I pulled out the tape measure and wrapped it around the widest part of the sphere: eighteen inches.

  I whistled and made a note on my tablet. Heat caused objects to expand, but I hadn’t noticed a significant elevation in temperature. Had the dishcloth trapped heat beneath its surface? Or had direct window light fallen on the orb during the early afternoon?

  I picked up my digital scale and set it on the table. I then slid my hand beneath the base of the orb and prepared to gently roll it onto the scale. But no sooner had I lifted the orb than it floated out of my hand, hovering above my palm.

  I couldn’t move. Had the orb floated because the momentum of my hand propelled it upward? Or had it risen under its own power?

  “Professor,” I called, making every effort to keep calm. “Can you come over here?”

  I heard the crea
k of his easy chair, then he appeared in the doorway. “What—ah!”

  He stared, too, and a moment later Tank, Brenda, and Daniel joined him in the opening to the dining room. The orb had not moved—it remained about two inches above my palm, not spinning, not vibrating, just . . . waiting.

  Obeying an impulse, I lowered my open hand and the orb descended with it, but maintained that two-inch distance. I lifted my hand, moved it left, right, and with each movement, the orb traveled with me.

  “Fascinating,” the professor whispered, crossing one arm over his chest. “Like a baby bird that’s imprinted on its mother.”

  I snorted. “I hardly think that’s the case. It’s not alive. It lacks even the potential for life—”

  Without warning, the orb left my palm and flew toward my face, astounding me with its speed and forcefulness. I threw up my hands and ducked reflexively, but the orb stopped short of striking me. It hung in the empty air in front of my eyes, then zipped off toward the professor, where it hung before him, almost as though it were taunting him . . .

  Perhaps the orb was more than I thought.

  Tank sputtered in amazement, and the orb flew to him, hovering a half inch in front of his nose. When Brenda laughed, the orb flew toward her, then remained tantalizingly out of reach when she tried to catch it. It zipped left and right, up and down, making a game of her spirited attempts to touch the thing.

  Meanwhile, the professor kept his gazed fixed to it, his eyes narrow with calculation.

  Tank and Brenda had made a game of it, an odd sort of chase through the living room, with the orb spinning high and low. It hovered near the ceiling, then it ducked beneath a shelf in the bookcase. Daniel put down his phone as they played, and though his eyes followed Tank’s and Brenda’s clumsy moves, he did not smile.

  “What do you think?” the professor said, coming toward me. “Benign or malevolent?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t tell. But considering where it originated, I don’t think I’d leave that thing out at night.”

  “So where do we put it?”

  I glanced around the kitchen. We had a basic supply of pots and pans, a grill on the back porch, and three or four closets. I didn’t know what to do with the orb, but I didn’t want it to fly away. . . .

  “Ah!” I ran through the utility room and stepped onto a shabby little patio where the previous owner had left a pile of odds and ends. One of those was a rusty birdcage, and it would be perfect for the orb.

  I carried the old birdcage into the house, then removed the plastic bottom, leaving the cage open at the base. “All right, Tank, Brenda,” I called. “Unless you want to sleep with that thing hovering overhead tonight, you’d better help me capture it.”

  Until that moment they’d been playing with it, then Tank got serious. He grabbed Brenda’s sweater from the back of a chair and held it open, then chased the orb until it hovered over the dining room table. I could have sworn it was looking at me when Tank crept up from behind and threw the sweater over it. Together, we transferred it to the bottom of the birdcage, then I snapped the wire section into place.

  We stood back, and I suddenly realized how silly we looked—four adults and a kid staring at a shiny pink ball in a rusty birdcage. The orb did not hover or fly or protest, but simply sat on the plastic floor amid traces of old paint and bird droppings.

  But it wouldn’t buzz around our heads tonight.

  I woke at 2:00 a.m., not because I’d had a bad dream, but because the boys in the basement were pounding on the plumbing, desperate to give me a new idea. I padded through and into the dining room, then clicked on the light. The orb sat motionless in the bottom of the birdcage, but I had plans for it. . . .

  I pulled out my tools—measuring tape, drill, protective eyewear. Then I let myself out of the house and went out to my car, quietly opening the trunk and removing the case I’d tossed in on a hunch—the microscope I’d used for a science fair in high school. It wasn’t the most powerful model, but it might be strong enough to verify the new hypothesis.

  Back inside the house, I set up the microscope and removed the wire portion of the birdcage. Then I slipped a clean sheet of paper beneath the orb. Keeping my left hand on the sphere lest it try to zip away, I picked up the drill and turned it on, scraping the bit over the orb’s surface as I had before. The drill bit made only a slight indentation, but I didn’t care about marking it—any scratch would soon disappear, anyway.

  I set the drill down and quickly brought the wire cage back over the orb, then slipped my left hand free. Once the orb was secure, I used a pair of kitchen tongs to slide the sheet of paper through the bottom opening and onto the table.

  Working quickly, I put a drop of water on an empty slide, then sprinkled the water droplet with tiny metallic shavings from the orb.

  “What on earth are you doing? I thought you were a burglar.”

  I startled, then glanced over my shoulder at the professor, who stood in the open doorway with a pistol in his hand.

  “Where did you get that? And why are you pointing it at me?”

  “I’m not pointing it at you. And I picked it up two days ago because I thought it might prove useful in saving our collective bacon.”

  The professor set the weapon on the counter, then came forward to watch me work. I dropped the coverslip onto the shavings in water, then set the slide on the stage and dialed in the magnification. Then I focused.

  I had expected to see metallic strands, bars, whatever—but I saw patterns. Clear, unmistakable, and organized. Cells. Not the typical cells with a nucleus, a cell membrane, and cytoplasm, but cells nonetheless. Even with my puny home microscope I could make out cell walls and a dot that might be a nucleus or other mechanism for controlling cell development. Furthermore, I saw the sort of asymmetry that was common in living cells . . .

  Goose bumps pebbled my flesh as I looked at the professor. “It’s not a machine,” I whispered. “It’s alive.”

  Lightbulbs were going off in my head, and I wanted to shout. The real me was back. For the first time in weeks I felt excitement sparking in my veins. I was seeing patterns, putting ideas together, and hearing that satisfying click that meant my instincts were right.

  “Impossible.” The professor sat and pulled the microscope toward him, straining the power cord. “All life is carbon-based. This is metal and wire and circuits—”

  “It may contain metal and wires and circuits,” I said, my words coming out in double time, “but it’s not expanding and contracting, it’s growing. It’s healing itself. It’s replicating and repairing damaged cells. It’s organized. It uses energy. It responds to its environment. All we have left to determine—”

  The professor lifted his head from the eyepiece. “Is what?”

  “If it can reproduce.”

  The professor leaned back in his chair and thrust his hands into the pockets of his robe. “Impossible.”

  “You can say that all night long,” I told him, “but it doesn’t change what you see in that microscope. What we’ve seen over the last few days. Whoever made this orb—”

  “The Gate?”

  “Whoever made it has access to technology far beyond conventional research. This thing, this living metal, could be derived from an alien culture. It could have come from another galaxy. It could be so advanced that not even our government knows about it—”

  “But we do? This makes no sense.” He leaned forward and touched my arm. “I know you’re flush with excitement right now, but reality’s going to hit you in the morning. As far as I know, no one has ever found a non-carbon-based life form. In the entire universe, Andi. No one. Nowhere.”

  He stood, nodded, and turned toward the hallway. “I’m going back to bed now. And in the morning I’m going to come in here and tell you that I had the oddest dream. And you’re going to laugh and give me a cup of coffee, and we’re going to go back to reading and searching for needles in haystacks. So good night.”

  “Fine. Just tak
e the gun with you.”

  I watched him pick up the pistol and shuffle away, and I knew his mind needed time to accept the impossible, the improbable, and the nonexistent. But by tomorrow, the boys in the basement would have done their work, and he’d come around.

  He always did.

  CHAPTER

  8

  I slept late the next morning, and might have slept even longer if not for the noise coming from the living room. I threw on a robe and stumbled down the hallway, then went instantly awake when I saw who stood next to Brenda: Dr. Hamish Drummond, and he was anything but calm. His face was red from exertion, his forehead was damp with sweat, and he was leaning over the coffee table, eye to eye with the professor.

  “What’s going on?” I pushed a tangle of curls away from my face to better see them.

  Tank, who’d been blocked from view by a wall, stepped into my field of vision. “Your doctor friend says he’s been visited by one of the orbs.”

  “What?” Ghost spiders danced over my spine. “Why?” I stepped around Tank to see the doctor. “Why would the orbs visit you?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s why I’m here.” Hamish looked from me to the professor. “Tell me what you know about the people controlling those things.”

  “We don’t know anything.” The professor crossed his arms. “We aren’t even sure what the orbs are used for.”

  I knew better—we knew the orbs were used for spying and for destroying the green fungus when it got out of control. I knew the orbs were made of living metal. But apparently the professor didn’t want to share what we had learned.

  I pressed my lips together as another thought made my stomach twist. Did Hamish know the professor was lying? He might, if I had told him what we’d learned about the orbs. I had no idea what I’d said under hypnosis.

  Hamish regarded the professor with a skeptical gaze, then nodded. “I see,” he said, a cryptic response that could have meant anything.

  Brenda leaned against the wall. “Why don’t you tell us what you saw?” she suggested, an easy smile playing on her lips.