"Aah, right. Come in and sit down."
She sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair next to his desk and fixed her gaze on him.
He fidgeted a little nervously. "I suppose Ephram told you this project was pretty hush-hush."
"Not in so many words, but from the way everyone was acting, I assumed it was a classified government project."
"Not the government." He shook his head, ruefully amused. "I don't think the government would appreciate what we're doing." Her mouth fell open at that; he rushed to reassure her. "Sorry, bad joke. We sometimes work with the government; now isn't one of those times. I just meant we weren't getting a lot of cooperation from them. I'm sure you know how that can be."
She didn't. "I've worked on classified projects before. It's considered normal to brief the people involved. I can't help if I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing."
He paused awkwardly, as if searching for the right words. "Well, today I thought you could just get settled in . . . and then we'd talk about the project."
"I'm already settled in," she replied quickly. "Let's talk about the project."
He gazed out the window for an instant and cleared his throat. "Okay ... um, you already know Norton's role in all this—"
"To analyze radio transmissions from deep space," Suzanne answered, a bit impatiently. "Searching for intelligent life."
He looked at her with those penetrating blue eyes of his and nodded. "Problem is, there's a whole lot of space to cover. A bunch of wasted space, practically speaking, since the universe is maybe ten million billion trillion times as much empty space as it is stellar material. I need you to narrow our focus."
She frowned, unable to understand what he was driving at. "I'll bite. How am I supposed to do that?"
"Simple." His eyes widened innocently—a little too innocently, Suzanne decided. "By daydreaming."
Confused, she blinked at him. "By daydreaming ... ? You want to run that by me again?"
"Daydream about other worlds." He meshed his fingers, put his hands behind his neck, and leaned back comfortably in his chair. "About the life-forms they might support. Give me probables, possibles. Give me what-ifs."
She stared disbelievingly at him for a full half-minute before she found her voice. "Excuse me, Dr. Blackwood, but I know when my leg is being pulled. You can't be serious—"
"What's so unbelievable about it? You give me a what-if life-form, and I can design a model atmosphere that can support it. Then Norton can limit his intercepts to star systems containing compatible atmospheres."
"But it's ridiculously random—" Harrison shrugged. "It would allow us to narrow our search from billions of possibilities to, oh, maybe only a few hundred thousand."
She stood up, frustrated that he would toy with her this way, furious that she had quite obviously been misled, that neither Jacobi nor Blackwood had been honest with her about the nature of the project. "Doctor Blackwood," she said, struggling to keep her tone cool and professional, "you and I both know that I wasn't hired to daydream. If you refuse to tell me why I've been hired, then I must assume that it was to do biowarfare research, in which case I am going straight to Dr. Jacobi's office to resign. I made it quite clear from the start that I will not participate in research of that nature—"
Harrison sat forward and sighed, his expression and tone of voice all seriousness. "I'm sorry, Suzanne." He gestured at her chair. "Please sit. I'll level with you."
She folded her arms and sat. He looked down at his hands and fidgeted uncomfortably under her steady gaze. "We haven't deceived you, Suzanne. If I've put off telling you about the project, it's because I wanted you to feel at home before we discussed it. The nature of the project has nothing to do with biowarfare—but it's not exactly a pleasant topic of conversation, either." He looked up at her and hesitated.
"I'd like you to analyze some . . . blood and tissue samples. A thorough analysis." She started to speak, but he raised his hand. "Before you protest—I'm afraid I lied about your resume. I remember it very well. Just trying to get you to talk about yourself a little. I know you were a certified medical technician, that you worked as one while getting your graduate degrees. I also know you minored in anatomy as an undergrad. You're qualified—more qualified than anyone else who applied for this job—who could apply for this job. That's why I asked Ephram to hire you."
He was complimenting her to try to soften the blow. Good God, what was so horrible about this job that he couldn't even bring himself to tell her what it was?
"That's very flattering," she replied evenly, "but I still don't understand. An analysis of what sort of blood? Human? A specific individual's?"
He watched her carefully. "I've gotten hold of a sample of alien blood and tissue samples from 1953. A thorough analysis was never done. Not to mention that with the tools and techniques available to us now, our analysis can be much more exhaustive."
She stared at him for a while before finding her voice. No one had ever spoken to her about the alien invasion in years . . . since she was a girl back in Iowa. Her parents had shielded her as best they could from any real information about it, but there was no restraining a child's imagination. It didn't matter how many times her mother told her it was all over, they were all dead, they weren't ever going to come to Iowa. Suzanne used to lie shivering under the covers at night, expecting them to come for her the way they did for Uncle Matthew.
She'd never even been able to talk to Deb about it. After all, what was the point in frightening the child over something that could never happen again? Even now adults almost never spoke about it if the subject could be avoided. It had been briefly discussed in one or two of her college classes with that peculiar dread otherwise reserved for nuclear annihilation. Always, always with the qualification that Earth's microbial life was too deadly for the aliens, and there was no chance of their return.
"I—I thought," she stammered, "that all that had been done before. That they had been analyzed to death. From a scientific standpoint, there's not much point in rehashing that again."
"No," Harrison answered, still looking hard at her. "Any samples PIT had were destroyed by looters when people were evacuating the West Coast. And as soon as the invasion was over, the government confiscated any samples researchers had. We have only minimal information about the aliens. Not enough."
"But how did you get these samples?"
He smiled. "Want ads. There are some government workers out there willing to take some pretty big risks for the right amount of cash."
"But those samples are thirty-five years old. They've no doubt deteriorated so badly by now, there's probably very little information we could get from them."
"Whatever we can get would be useful." He rolled his chair up to the desk and leaned forward. "It's a real scientific opportunity."
"I'm not sure. It doesn't sound like much of a project. Once I've analyzed these samples, then what?"
"I want to know how the bacteria killed them . . . whether or not they could possibly learn to adapt, to develop defenses against our microbes."
She almost stood up. "Frankly, Dr. Blackwood, all this smacks of paranoia."
He sat back in the chair. "Maybe. But consider what might happen." He paused, seemed to struggle with something, then continued. "I thought your attitude might be different, considering . .."
"Considering what?"
"Your uncle, Matthew Van Buren. One of the first to die in the alien attack .. . along with my parents."
She did stand up now. "What a cruel thing to say."
Harrison tilted his head, confused. "It was cruel. That's why I'm here. That's why Norton's here: he lost his entire family in an alien attack. That's why I thought you'd be interested in helping out. After all, we have something in common: Matthew Van Buren's niece—your second cousin, Sylvia—was my adoptive father's fiancee." A glint of humor shone in his eyes. "Just think . . . we're practically related." The humor faded quickly. "After the invasion, he saw to it that Sy
lvia was well cared for."
Her cheeks burned, even though he hadn't added in a mental institution. Cousin Sylvia had gone mad after the invasion and been locked away, forgotten by the family, an embarrassment which was mentioned only rarely, and then in hushed tones. Suzanne had met her only once, when she was four and Sylvia had already suffered her first of many breakdowns; Suzanne remembered little of her cousin, except that Sylvia had been quiet and withdrawn.
Harrison noticed her reaction. "Maybe I was wrong. The Midwest was safe, and you were born just a few years before the invasion. Maybe you don't care because you never experienced it yourself." His expression hardened. "You have an eleven-year-old daughter, Suzanne. Don't you want to learn something about these—these creatures, before it happens again?"
"Quite honestly, Dr. Blackwood, I think that's a sick attitude to take," she said. "The aliens can never return. Even a schoolkid knows that. They're dead the instant they're exposed to our microbes."
Harrison emphasized each word. "You don't know that. We've got to learn more about them. The more we know, the better off we are."
"Maybe I should have stayed in Ohio." She didn't really intend to say it, but there it was.
He rose. She could tell that under his civil veneer he was very angry. "I'm sorry. I thought because, well, never mind. If you really want to go back to Ohio, I'm sure PIT will cover your expenses."
"That's what Norton's really looking for, isn't it?" she said as it occurred to her. "Not just extraterrestrial life in general. He's looking for them."
"That's right," Harrison answered, with a the-hell-with-you-if-you-don't-like-it expression. "He's looking for them. Now, are you going to work with us or not?"
They glared at each other for a while. She actually
considered packing it all up again, but she couldn't face that right now, not just yet. Maybe if she played along with Blackwood for a while, looked at his precious samples, she could find another project to work on at PITS.
"All right," she said finally. "I'll do it—sheerly out of scientific curiosity. But frankly, I think it's a waste of time and money, and the minute I can link up with another project here, I'm gone."
He sighed, relieved, and smiled, but she detected the obsession in his eyes. It frightened her. The man's not right. Well, what do you care so long as you have a job and Deb doesn't go hungry?
"You won't regret it," Blackwood told her. "And after all, we are paying you well."
She stiffened. "This may be hard for you to understand, Dr. Blackwood, but money isn't the most important thing I derive from my job. I like to feel that what I'm doing is . . . meaningful. Now, if you'll excuse me . . ."
His expression became serious for the first time since she'd met him. "Believe me, Suzanne, it's the most important work you've ever done, the most important work you'll ever do."
But she was already walking out of his office, and pretended not to hear. She always tried to be honest with herself, and she knew she hadn't been totally up front with Blackwood. It wasn't just that she thought the project redundant. . .
It was that she had never seen one of Them, except in her childish nightmares . . . and she wasn't sure she could stand to look at one in the flesh, even now.
FIVE
An observer stumbling upon the Jericho Valley site would have witnessed an eerie phenomenon: six humans—two in white technician's jump suits, four in black—standing shoulder-to-shoulder in three-person triangles. Around their bodies, the air crackled faintly with energy. A meditation ritual, perhaps; a communion of consciousness.
Renewed by the energy drawn up from the planet's magnetic core, Xashron stirred from his trance to peer through new eyes at his comrades. Beside him, Konar and Xeera shielded their faces and squinted at the brilliant alien sun. Their host bodies were already beginning to decay. Xeera's host bore a red gash on his forehead; the pale flesh had split open when Xeera struck him with a blunt weapon. There were still bruises circling the neck of Konar's host. Xashron's host bore similar marks, but despite its limitations, this
human male body was lean and young. He flexed the unfamiliar muscles, testing them. Combined with Xashron's own strength, this body would serve adequately.
Nearby, the three who formed the Advocacy broke off their communion. Xashron looked at them and felt deep hatred for those hidden inside their hosts: Xana, Horek, Oshar. Strategists from the ruling class who spouted theory, who knew nothing themselves of war, but who planned the battles, decided who would live and who would die. To Xashron, they represented the idiocy of the ruling class; their carelessness, their impatience, caused the invasion to fail at the moment victory seemed surest. Over the protests of the lower-class scientists who feared not enough was known about the new planet, the government ordered the invasion. It was Xashron's duty to prepare the planet for his people, so they might leave their dying world to start anew. .. Only, he told himself bitterly, so the ruling class can allow this planet as well to be poisoned by our technology.
And so Xashron, member of the military class, was obliged to forsake mate, carrier, children, and home, to come to this strange world. He was no lower-class servant. He was Supreme Commander, a member of the elite, in charge of an entire hemisphere's invasion . .. only to see all his soldiers perish from sickness until at last he, too, succumbed.
He wondered now how many of his people had survived.. . and how many of them had expired, torn and mangled beyond all awakening when they lost consciousness at the controls and their ships plunged
from the sky. Two of the metal containers he had opened contained the decayed, mortally wounded remnants of such soldiers. Even now he mourned.
The Advocate had, of course, survived without scars, having always been protected like a carrier from all violence.
The three of the Advocate moved and opened their eyes—small, strange eyes. It would have been far more just, Xashron reflected, for them to have died instead of his soldiers.
Xana, the lone female member of the Advocate, stared at Xashron with multicolored eyes: black in the middle, ringed with blue, then white. The body she had chosen was softer, as delicate and pampered as a carrier's. He began to speak to her in his native tongue, but she interrupted, displeased. "Speak as the body you occupy would speak."
"Yes, Advocate." The strange sensation of forming unknown words, hearing them with another's ears, yet somehow understanding. "How long have we been inert?"
"Unknown at this time." She, Horek, and Oshar frowned up at the harsh yellow sun adrift in a strange blue sky.
Horek, the member of the Advocacy Xashron despised the most for his lack of intelligence, spoke. His host body was male, slightly older than the others, and his control of it was inept. He articulated the words thickly, clumsily. "But many revolutions around their sun."
"These bodies are weak," Xashron challenged, "and contaminated by negative thoughts." The brain of his human host was disturbingly disorganized and undisciplined, making control of the body more difficult. The Council was correct in its judgment that the Earth inhabitants were of limited, fitful intelligence, and therefore could be exterminated without compunction. "We would more easily accomplish our mission in our natural state."
The three stared at him, then closed their eyes to consider. After a moment they simultaneously opened them again. "The consensus is," Horek said, "yours is not an accurate statement. These bodies protect us from detection."
"Until we know more," Xana added, "we will use the resources available to us."
Xashron exchanged a dissatisfied look with Konar and Xeera. These two were soldiers, like himself, although lower ranking; he knew they shared his hatred of the upper-class advisers. But they seemed unwilling to stage a rebellion at the moment.
"We surrender to your judgment as always, Advocate," Konar responded, but his tone was slightly grudging.
"Do you wish us to release the others so that our battle can continue?" Xashron asked with false helpfulness. The more soldiers revived
and free, the better his chances of overpowering the Advocacy.
Xana nodded—a foreign gesture, yet Xashron understood it, just as he understood the humans' language. "Yes . . . however, the Advocacy has concluded there is no timefor transmutation now, "she said. "Collect our people as they are, in the metal containers."
So .. . she had detected his motive. Xana was by far
the shrewdest member of the Advocacy. Doing his best to conceal his disappointment, Xashron bowed and moved off with Xeera and Konar to do so.
Xana stood watching them for a moment; she had correctly guessed the extent of Xashron's bitterness, even before defeat and the long slumber had overtaken them. Xashron's quick mind made him a useful ally and a formidable enemy . . . and Xana preferred to keep him the former. Surely there was some way to dispel his anger before harm came to him—or to the Advocacy.
She turned back to her peers in their pale, hideous bodies, and spoke urgently. "Without the guidance of the Council, we are nothing."
"What can be done?" Horek whined. Even the human eyes of his host body managed to reflect the depths of his stupidity.
But Oshar, his new flesh white against the black clothing he wore, understood. "Once the Council is aware of our plight, it will know what to do."
"Yes," Xana replied, grateful that Oshar's mind, at least, was nearly adequate for the high office he held. "We must contact our home base. They have rather primitive equipment." She pointed with the thick, clumsy arm; the three walked over to examine the transmitter equipment.
Oshar picked up the dish and examined it. "It will be adequate if properly refined."
They set to work.
Harrison adjusted the strap on his helmet and started pedaling through the expansive parking lot.
Normally, he was in a great mood by the end of the workday; a day at the Institute left him exhilarated, ready to enjoy the rest of the evening. He realized he was one of the lucky few who got paid for doing what he loved best. But today his mood was particularly sour, thanks to Suzanne McCullough: if she quit the project, he doubted he'd find anyone else qualified to do it. The minute anyone found out what the work was all about, they turned it down. Mass denial. .. the whole world wanted to forget what had happened thirty-five years ago, and that frightened him.
J.M. Dillard - War of Worlds: The Resurrection Page 6