by Jean Kilczer
“Yeah! Who's this?”
“Never mind who. You want to see the kid and your comare alive? You give us what we want or you'll never see them again.”
I squeezed the comlink in a tight fist that dug the edges into my palm. “What do you want?” I asked hoarsely. “Don't hurt them. Please! Just tell me what you want.”
“That's easy, stronzo. You know the source planet of Blackroot. We trade you that info for the lives of the kid and your woman. By the way, cute kid.”
“OK! You got it. Just don't hurt them.” I pressed a hand against my stomach. I thought I was going to throw up. “Where do we meet?”
“Black Mesa. Five o'clock in the morning. Be there or start planning your kid's funeral.”
“No! I'll be there. Please don't scare her. This morning? Five o'clock?”
“That's what I friggin' said.”
“I'll be there.” I heard the click as he hung up.
I felt frozen, my hand clutched to my shirt at the throat. Beneath the anguish that kept my thoughts scrambled, a seething anger built. Someone on my own bio team had contacted mobsters for his or her profit, and told them about the secret cell structures of Blackroot and that I alone knew the source planet. I had never revealed that it was Halcyon.
My hand shook as I punched Joe's code on the comlink. My former father-in-law and Lisa's grandfather lived in Denver with his wife, Abby. He was still a good friend, the team leader on three missions, and the closest thing I'd ever had to a father, even though he didn't always approve of me. I needed him now as never before.
“Hello,” a familiar crusty voice said.
“Joe. It's Jules!” I began to shake and my throat tightened. I grasped the comlink. “It's Jules.”
Asil felt my anxiety and pranced sideways.
“I know. What's wrong?”
“They, they've got her, Joe.” I sobbed. “They –”
“Got who? Calm down and tell me what's going on.”
“I think it's the Mafia, Joe. They kidnapped Lisa and Sophia. They want to know where Blackroot comes from. He said if I didn't –” I began to sob and couldn't speak.
“Jules! Talk to me.”
“What am I going do? They've got my little girl. And Sophia. What the hell am I going to do?”
There was a pause.
“Joe?”
“I'm here.” His voice sounded hoarse. “Let's back up. You're saying that the Mafia kidnapped Lisa and Sophia and they want you to tell them the source planet of Blackroot? My God almighty! Is that what you're saying?”
I nodded. “Yes!”
“How do you know it's the Mafia?”
“They sound like the Mafia. What're we going to do, Joe? If I tell them, they'll go there and rip up every last root to export to Earth. Spirit – He won't let that happen.”
“I know.”
“Joe, can you fly down here? I need your help. I need you here.”
“I'll be there in three hours. Abby's –”
“Is Abby there?”
“No. Thank God, no. She's visiting Althea and Charles. I'll call her and say I decided to spend some time with you and Lisa and Sophia in Los Alamos.”
“You'd better text her, Joe. She'll hear it in your voice that something's wrong.”
“Where are you?”
“In the Jemez. But I'll meet you at the bio lab.” Suddenly I felt listless. I wanted to crawl into a hole and forget this unbearable reality. “Joe? Hurry up, OK?”
“I'll be there in three hours.”
“Do you have a pass? Maybe we should meet somewhere else. You need a pass to get into the Lab.”
“I've still got my Worlds CIA credentials. What did you tell the contact?”
“I said I'd meet him. What else can I do?”
“You can't meet him! They'll squeeze the information out of you, and then…”
“They'll kill us all,” I mumbled.
“Wait for me in bio.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Hurry up, Joe.”
“I'm on my way, kid. I'm…God almighty.” He cut the link.
I leaned over Asil and threw up.
Chapter Four
Joe rubbed his eyes and leaned back on a counter in the bio lab while I paced, unable to stand still. Through a window, I watched the afternoon light fade, giving a blue caste to swirling snow.
“We've got to get the police in on this,” he said. I'd never heard such weariness in his voice. “It's their only chance.”
“No!” I slammed my fist against the wall. “You know how the police work. These tags will see them coming a mile away. I've got to meet them. I've got to do whatever they say.”
“Listen to me! They'll squeeze the truth out of you so fast, you won't have time to take a last breath.”
I sat down heavily. “I've been thinking about it. I can't tell them the truth. You know that.”
“I know.”
“I'll lie and say it's a different world. One of the thousands that've been discovered and don't have intelligent lifeforms or civilizations, just numbers. I'll tell them that I was studying the flora when I found Blackroot.” I tried to sound convincing, but I knew my idea was lame.
“Think about it, Jules.” He came close. “What's that going to buy you?”
I felt sick to my stomach. “Maybe they'll believe me and let Lisa and Sophia go.”
“If they believe you, they'll kill the three of you. If they don't believe you, kid, ask yourself how long you'll hold out with the truth when they put a gun to Lisa's head.” He rubbed his eyes and I heard him sob.
“What are we going to do?” I got up and walked to the window. I clutched the windowsill with both hands. “I just want to see Lisa and Sophia safe. After that, I don't really care what happens.”
“They won't do it!” He followed me to the window. “These people are animals. Human life means nothing to them. For Christ's sake, they kill their own relatives. You think your life means anything?”
I strode to the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I don't have any other plan, Joe. I've got to meet them. These are the only cards I can play.”
He came to the door, put a hand on the doorknob, and held it closed. “I can't let you play them. You and my granddaughter will be dead, and when they invade Halcyon and start ripping up the Blackroot, Spirit will have no choice but to kill every Terran on the planet as he kills them. You know that better than I do.”
“I know. He calls it collateral damage.” I wiped tears that slid down my cheeks, and leaned against the door. “They've got my little girl,” I whispered. I pictured Sophia's broad smile. “My two girls.”
Joe's features hardened and his jaw tightened. “We've got to bring in the police. It's Lisa's only chance.”
“Joe?”
He looked at me.
“Do you think…”
“That she's still alive?” He lowered his head and pressed a fist to his mouth. “I don't know.”
I opened the door. “Well, thanks for all your help.”
He leaned against it, closed it, and took his comlink from an inner pocket. “This is Captain Joseph Hatch of WCIA,” he said grimly. “We have an emergency. Send security up here. Now!”
I backed away from the door. “What are you doing?”
With his jaw set, and the white stubble on his broad cheeks, he looked much older. “I can't let you meet them.”
“You can't stop me.” I went around a counter, knocking off a petri dish perched near the edge, to the other door. But I heard the lock click before I got there. They were shutting down the Lab.
Joe reached under his jacket. I knew he carried a mouse stingler in a shoulder holster.
I strode across the room, grabbed his wrist and yanked. The small gun clattered to the floor. I scooped it up, spun it to stun, and went to a window. “I wanted your help,” I told him and lifted the window. “Now I have to face this alone.”
The door was flung open. �
��What's the emergency, sir?” the captain of a four-man team asked Joe and looked around. They entered with their weapons drawn.
Joe pointed to me as I straddled the windowsill. “Watch out,” he told them. “He's armed. Don't kill him! He's not dangerous. But don't let him get away.”
I aimed the stingler, set on stun, but a guard zapped it with a hot beam and I dropped it and grabbed my hand.
“Don't hurt him,” Joe told the squad.
I went out the window and onto a narrow ledge. We were on the second floor. They wouldn't dare zap me on stun setting. I'd fall off the ledge. I heard the guards go out the door. Alarms wailed as I edged to the corner of the building, clung to a drain pipe, and eased myself around the corner and toward another window.
A security guard got there first and locked the window. They didn't want me to come back in and confront lab workers. And then I saw why. Two guards on the roof, three flights up, were harnessing themselves, preparing to rappel down to me. “Damn you, Joe!” I muttered. It was too late to create a coil of tel to influence the guards. They were on their way down, rappelling off the building. I moved along the ledge, back to the drain pipe, and yanked on it. It felt pretty secure. I began to climb down.
“Jules!” Joe shouted from the open window, “Don't do it! The pipe won't hold you.”
“We'll see!” I started down. Holder screws on the pipe's clamps scraped out of cement and clanged to the ground below me. But I was moving fast, sliding more than climbing down, and the pipe held.
I leaped to the ground as two guards rushed out the front door, stinglers drawn.
I threw myself around the building's corner and rolled. My ankles tingled as the wide beam hit, then I was up and running into the parking lot, using land and air vehicles for cover. The rappelling guards didn't stand a chance of targeting me at this distance. Not on the wide beam of a stun setting.
Los Alamos is a safe town and few people lock their vehicles. One owner would be sorry he didn't. I opened the door of a Cheetah sports hovair, climbed into the driver's seat, started it, and yanked back on the wheel. The Cheetah leaped into the air.
I was safe up here at three hundred feet, where they wouldn't shoot me down. I doubted if the craft had an OnStar system to shut off the engine and make it glide to the ground. Why would it if the door wasn't even kept locked?
I turned east, toward the sandstone cliffs with their myriad pockmarked holes, some big enough to be called caves.
I landed the craft on the highway, left it programmed to continue over the canyon, and jumped out.
Let them search for me, I thought bitterly and hunched down behind a small juniper tree as a ground car went by, then I ran across the road and climbed the sandy ridge to a ragged cave. I crawled inside, flattened myself and watched the Cheetah disappear over trees.
There's an old story in the town that a bank robber made his getaway on a bicycle and hid in one of these caves. They never found him. He probably watched police cars race back and forth on the road below, as I did now, and Lab security hovairs soar across the leaden sky as they chased the cheetah.
Damn you, Joe, I thought, I needed your help.
I rolled to my back and stared at the crumbly ceiling. Was he right, after all? Would I meet the crotefuckers only to get us all killed? And maybe take the town of Laurel on Halcyon with us?
Spirit? I sent. Are you out there… Spirit?
I am here.
I sighed. I don't know what to do.
I will tell you what not to do, Terran. Do not think to divulge the source planet of bristra, what you call Blackroot. I will not stand for more human ravagers desecrating my world.
I know. But my daughter…and Sophia.
You have a sample of the bristra root at your laboratory.
Is that what you call it? Bristra root?
Yes. Then contact the crotemuckers, as you call them, and insist that the only way you will divulge the source planet is if your offspring and your mate are released.
That's crotefuckers, Spirit. But they'll force me to tell them. They'll threaten Lisa and Sophia!
There are thousands of uncharted planets that hold no intelligent lifeforms, yet. Like islands in an uncharted sea.
Yes. So?
Tell them it is one of those worlds where you were studying the flora and happened upon bristra. Not even the Terran colony on my homeworld knows the true properties of this new lifeform.
I thought of that, but – Wait a minute. I'm not thinking too straight. Suppose I told them I'd have to take them there myself across that uncharted sea, with my tel power to home in on the right world! And they would need me to find their way back out to the trade lanes! But –
But, Terran?
There would be no Blackroot. No bristra. Unless…
Yes? he sent.
Unless Joe got there first and planted my Lab specimens.
And then you must manage to leave with him so I may do my work.
You'll kill them all, won't you?
I will destroy the crotedumbers, and the bristra plants on the planet.
Crotefuckers, Spirit, as we Terrans say.
Whatever, as you Terrans say. The hybrids are extreme opportunists. Few lifeforms can challenge the genus bristra.
Are they plant or animal, Spirit?
They have characteristics of both.
How is that possible?
How is it not possible in the myriad lifeforms that Great Mind creates?
Whatever they are, I sent, they can't be left to destroy the emerging lifeforms of an early planet, can they?
At times I believe there is still hope for you. Tell the Terran Joseph to plant them in a winter zone of the planet. There, the vines will not spread as fast and with –
With other lifeforms in hibernation, they'll be little for them to consume and destroy. Right?
You took the words right out of my mind.
Will you be there if things don't go as intended and I need more help?
Am I not always? What else do I have planned, human, besides directing the entire ecology of my homeworld?
Spirit? My sister Ginny. Is she still happy on the planet where she lives now?
She is content.
Does she have any memory of me, or how I got her killed in that…
That helicub crash over the mountains? No.
I wiped tears from my eyes. Spirit?
Yes, Terran. I could almost feel his sigh in my mind. You have taught me the meaning of patience with your constant demands. What more?
If I die trying to save Lisa and Sophia, will I have any memory of them when I reincarnate?
You will not.
Then death's a mindwipe.
A fair analogy.
It doesn't seem fair.
Would you like to argue with Great Mind? I can summon Him.
No! No, that's all right.
Do you mind if I return to tending my world now, or have you other work to entangle me in your constant webs?
It's not my fault.
There is a cephalopod with three sexes evolving in my ocean. What is it you humans say? This will be three for the cooks?
Uh. One for the books. Spirit?
Yes, Terran?
Thank you.
You are croteducking welcome!
Whatever.
The day was fading. Snowflakes swirled in the wind like white dust devils. I shivered and zippered my jacket. How was I going to get to Black Mesa, miles away on the road to Espanola? I could probably hitch a ride with someone. Hundreds of people would soon leave their Lab jobs and return home to Espanola. I rolled to my stomach and looked out. Yes, traffic was already thickening.
Wait a minute. Had I made the local news? I fished out my comlink, tapped on the screen, and checked the news.
Oh shit. It was like looking into a mirror. A reporter stood in the Biology Department and held up my Lab badge with the photo. “…six feet,” he was saying. “Blond hair and blue eyes. Slim. Twenty-six or
twenty-seven years old. Wearing black pants and jacket and a blue shirt.”
I sighed. “You forgot the black scarf, crote.” Damn them!
I punched in Joe's number and took a deep breath.
“Where are you, Jules?” Joe said tightly.
“Listen, Joe, I've got a plan.”
“You never had a plan in your whole damn –”
“Listen to me! Spirit is backing me up on this one.”
There was a pause, then, “Go ahead,” he said wearily.
I explained the story Spirit and I had concocted about having to guide the gangsters to a planet with tel power, then guiding them back to the trade lanes. “I checked out the astro charts,” I said. “Planet Equus in the 51 Pegasi System is newly discovered, Joe. It's an E-type world, suitable for human habitation. It's designated C for colonization, but it's on hold until Alpha approves their ecological studies.”
“What happens when you get there?”
“That's why you're in on this, and the team, if you can get them together. You have to plant the Lab specimens of Blackroot on the planet before we arrive. By the way, Spirit calls it bristra.”
“After we land,” he said, “you'll zero in on us with a telepathic send?”
“You got it.”
I heard Joe sigh. “They've just about destroyed the plants that got loose here on Earth. I'll talk to Chancey and Bat. We'll have to steal the Lab specimens. It's illegal to possess…bristra.”
“Joe, Spirit wants them planted in a winter zone of the planet to limit their destruction of the ecosystem.”
“I'll bring my woolen underwear. Where are you?”
I wouldn't put it past Joe to pretend to go along with my plan, and then bring the police down on me.
“Doesn't matter. I'm doing the best I can do.”
“Has Spirit agreed to help us if we need his help?”
“He has. He's not happy about it, but he'll help.”
“You intend to demand the release of Lisa and Sophia before you leave for Equus?”
“That's the only way I'll agree to take these crotefuckers there.”
“They just might kill you once they have the bristra and they're back in the trade lanes.”
“That's where you and the team come in, Joe. We have to get off-planet in the WCIA ship Sojourner, and then Spirit will destroy the bristra on Equus and the gangsters with it.”