Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent

by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  “Of course,” Melgil said. “He has great love and respect for you. But he also respects the Overseers. He is third generation, and the flames of hate do not burn in him as they did in us at his age.” Melgil reached out his one good hand imploringly. “I told you, Moodri, this has been the flaw in the plan from the beginning. Only we lived on Tencton. We know what was taken from us, and so we alone are willing to risk everything to win it back. But our children’s children know only this ship.” His voice echoed against the pipes and cables of the intersection. “And to those who are in the Watcher Youth, the Overseers are a source of rewards, not punishment.” Melgil shook his head. “Moodri, when I told Finiksa about the plan he said it was not for the good of the ship. He intends to report us all to his Watch Leader.”

  Vondmac, who had been listening quietly, started in alarm at Melgil’s words. Her watchful gaze fell on Moodri.

  Moodri closed his eyes in silent prayer. He had seen that possibility in Buck’s nature. The ship was his world. The Overseers brought order to it. Not knowing what had been stolen from him, he could not regret its absence. But still Moodri had seen the spark of the goddess in the boy. He had not been wrong about that. Buck was the key to the plan’s success and had been ever since Moodri had gently guided him to say and do the things that would bring him to the Overseers’ attention as a possible recruit for the Watcher Youth.

  For the plan to succeed, the rebels needed access to one of the most highly secured areas of the ship. Overseers alone performed bridge functions. The maintenance workers who were allowed past the security precautions were either lobotomized or drugged. Only the children in a Watcher Youth Brigade could get through without difficulty. So the oldest among the captive Tenctonese had created a plan that relied on the youngest.

  “What have you done with him?” Moodri asked, knowing full well that Melgil could not have left Buck without ensuring that the child would not make his report to the Overseers.

  “He sleeps,” Melgil said. “In order to be rid of me, Gelana, the cargo specialist, gave him drugs as I requested. Coolock had already agreed to have Finiksa excused for three shifts. He will not be missed for another cycle.”

  “I will go to him before that,” Moodri said. He knew that if he had a chance to talk with Buck, the boy would understand why the Overseers could not be informed. Why the plan was necessary.

  “Too dangerous,” Melgil protested. Yondmac nodded agreement. “The Overseers are looking for anyone with spots remotely resembling Family: Heroes of Soren’tzahh and Family: Third Moon’s Ocean. Your nephew, Stangya, has already been interrogated.”

  Moodri was surprised that Melgil had not added and executed. “He survived the interrogation?”

  “They checked his blood for traces of eemikken. They found none.”

  Moodri took a moment to smile wryly at the predictably lockstep blindness of the Overseers. The tattoo around their wrists had long been suspected of cutting the flow of blood to their brains.

  “What about Ruhtra?” Moodri asked.

  Melgil looked at Vondmac for the answer to that question. “No word,” she said tensely. “The Overseers have been to his dormitory, but he was not present. You realize what that means, don’t you?”

  Moodri did. “Two workers were seen calling to Finiksa in the water hub. That means they recognized him, implying that they knew the pattern of his spots, suggesting that they were of the same family. And now two of that same family are missing from their dormitories.” Moodri sighed because the situation, no matter how personally dangerous, could be of no importance so close to the culmination of their plan. “The Overseers have therefore concluded that Ruhtra and I were the observers in the water hub.”

  “If we had allowed Stangya to operate within a cell as I urged, he would have known about the importance of staying away from the water hubs,” Melgil said.

  “And if the revolt had been compromised, then an entire family line would have been eliminated,” Moodri said. “You know the rules we set for ourselves. At least one from every family involved must remain untainted.”

  Vondmac cleared her throat and adjusted her position on the pipes she sat upon. Moodri knew her well enough to simply wait for her to say what she felt she had to.

  “Moodri, it distresses me to have to relay this,” she began.

  “As I can see,” Moodri said kindly.

  “But there are those on the council who suggest that it is no accident that Finiksa does not appear capable of using the key. Especially in light of the Overseers’ sudden interest in those who share your spots.”

  Moodri felt a sudden flare of temper rise up in him, and he quickly squelched it. “Does the council accuse me of cowardice?” he asked blandly, though he could feel his spots darken at the implied insult.

  “Can you find fault with them if they do?” Vondmac asked in return. “We all know what the plan’s success will mean to you.”

  “Freedom for our people,” Moodri said, no longer bothering to maintain the essence of the goddess in his words.

  “And certain death for you.”

  Moodri gazed at the curved and mechanistic walls of the intersection. They did remind him of his youth, in the first years of his people’s captivity, when the fires of Tencton’s clearly remembered sun had burned within all of them and they had sworn to give their lives for the defeat of their enemies.

  “Have you forgotten the vows of our youth?” Moodri asked. “Made here, in these same tunnels?”

  “Our people’s hearts were full of passion then,” Vondmac said sadly. “But as our wisdom has grown that passion has faded. I feel it. I know you feel it, too.”

  “Perhaps that is the nature of things,” Melgil added. “Thus the old pass on their wisdom to help those generations who follow, those in whom the passion has not yet been extinguished.”

  Moodri studied his two friends closely. “Is this what the peace of Ionia has brought to you? Acceptance of one’s own fate may well be the key to inner peace, but how can you accept the fate of all our people?” He stood unsteadily on the bundled wires and cables beneath his feet. “If we do not act now, there will be no children to follow us. I can accept my own death—at my age it is just a matter of time. But I cannot accept that my race will die. And shame on those who think that I do.”

  Melgil looked embarrassed. “It is not so much your death as it is the nature of your death.” He turned away so he would not meet Moodri’s gaze. “We do not even know if you will die. Ever.”

  “So it has come to this,” Moodri said, letting them hear the anger and the disappointment that he felt. “The spots of the council have grown so pale that they cannot believe that any of us still believes in the ideals of our youth. Well, you tell them this: I will not consign my race to the extinction of Terminus. Finiksa will be on the bridge at the appointed time. He will insert the circuitry override key at the proper moment.” Moodri’s eyes seemed to blaze in the dim light of the intersection. “The superluminal drive will activate improperly. The cargo disk will be jettisoned. And when the drive translates into superluminal space in an uncontrolled trajectory, I will be on board to transmit the messages the rest of the cursed fleet will need to hear to know that this ship has apparently been lost in an unforeseen accident, never to be found again.” Moodri sat down again, voice trembling. “And if it is my fate to be drawn into a never-ending spiral deep into the gravity well of the star we approach, then so be it. Eternity will be but a single, relativistic instant to me, and eventually even the stars will fade and the universe will collapse, and when time ends I shall return to the Mother knowing I have done what I must do.”

  Melgil and Vondmac looked at each other as if each wanted the other to speak. Vondmac was first. “We do not doubt you, old friend,” she said. “We only relate the concerns that were raised in the council.”

  There was something more to what she had said, but Moodri knew it would come out in time, when she was ready. He looked at her sharply. “I trust
you will relate back to them that their concerns are unfounded.”

  “For you, yes,” Melgil said with difficulty. “But for Finiksa . . .”

  “I will talk with him,” Moodri said through clenched teeth. “He will know his duty as clearly as I know mine. What other choice do we have?”

  Unexpectedly Vondmac spoke. “There is another plan.”

  Moodri felt his hearts trade beats. “And I have not been told?”

  “Keer’chatlas,” Melgil whispered.

  “A plan kept from me?” Moodri asked in amazement.

  “A precaution,” Vondmac said. “There are those who have never trusted the involvement of a child. It was a backup plan. Merely a contingency.”

  Moodri twisted the hem of his skirt in his fists. “How does this new plan get the circuitry key to the bridge?”

  “Among the stores of eemikken we have accumulated over the years,” Vondmac said, “we have also . . . another drug.”

  Instantly Moodri understood. Instantly he was appalled. Vondmac could only mean jabroka—the miner’s drug. A narcotic that affected the mind as well as the body’s genetic structure. “You would turn our people into monsters,” he said in horror.

  “An assault squad of twenty only,” Melgil said. “Enough to storm the bridge by force.”

  Moodri shook his head. “There are five pressure doors between the cargo section and the bridge.”

  “The miner’s drug unlocks the unexpressed genes that make our species so adaptable,” Vondmac said. “Under its influence the assault squad will draw on the hidden strength. They will be able to move fast enough.”

  “But not fast enough to prevent the Overseers from sending a distress signal indicating a revolt,” Moodri snapped. “What good will it do to find freedom on a new world if we know that in less than a Tencton year a new ship will arrive to reclaim us?”

  “It is a technologically developed world,” Melgil said. “We will teach them, help them create defenses.”

  “Defenses? Against ships? From a world that has only developed radio in the past hundred years?” If it was not so pathetic and desperate an idea, Moodri would have laughed.

  “We have no other choice,” Melgil said.

  “We have Finiksa!”

  Melgil and Vondmac both bowed their heads. “The council has already decided. We cannot trust the fate of our people to a child in the sway of the Overseers.”

  Moodri lifted his head defiantly. “I refuse to accept the council’s decision.”

  “As you wish,” Melgil said. Then he stroked his withered arm with his good hand. “But you forget that I control the key. And I shall give it to the assault squad, not to your great-nephew.”

  “Then you will doom us all,” Moodri said. “Even if the assault squad reaches the bridge, even if the key survives the battle and is used on time, more ships will come for us.”

  “I am sorry, Moodri,” Vondmac said. “But it is our last opportunity. We must choose to pursue the plan that will give us the best chance for success. And we have chosen.”

  Moodri now understood the betrayal that Vondmac had concealed in her words. “You voted against me, didn’t you?”

  Both Melgil and Vondmac nodded. “I am sorry, too, Moodri,” Melgil said.

  The female and the binnaum stood. “We have arranged for a supply of vegrowth and water to be hidden in the third intersection by the inner food chambers,” Vondmac said. “You will be safe there until we begin our descent. After that, we doubt if the Overseers will have much interest in trying to find you.” She smiled briefly. “All other aspects of the plan will proceed as before—the search for the beacons, the capture of the Overseers.”

  “If a distress call goes out,” Moodri said, “the beacons will not be necessary.”

  “We will still need your help then,” Vondmac said. “We hope you will give it.”

  “Then,” Moodri repeated grimly. “But not now.”

  “You are no longer needed by the council,” Melgil said. “Rest for the next four days. You deserve it.”

  They left Moodri then, alone in the intersection and the tunnels he had not traversed in years. Had he not had the goddess within him, he would have begun ranting in the empty intersection, listening to his words resound down darkened tunnels built by unknown intelligences unknown ages ago. But that was not his way. Despite what the council had voted, despite the well-intentioned betrayal by his friends, Moodri knew his options were not at an end.

  “An assault squad,” he whispered, and he knew it was two generations of brutality that had led the council to adopt the very same measures that the Overseers would.

  But force was not the answer here. It could not be. Whoever, whatever had built the ship had known more about force than the peaceful Tenctonese ever would, and safeguards against its use were built in at every key point.

  Moodri straightened his skirt and hobbled off down the corridor, scanning each set of alien signs beneath each light, searching for the tunnel that would lead him toward the hull. If the council had abandoned him, then he would have no chance to tell them how important it was that they place their trust in the original plan and Finiksa. His only choice was to show them.

  And he set out to do exactly that.

  C H A P T E R 8

  ON THE FOURTH DAY of his first homicide investigation, Sikes arrived at the station house to find a stuffed E.T. the Extraterrestrial doll handcuffed to his chair. There was a handwritten confession stapled to the doll’s chest, asking for a four-billion-dollar phone chit so he could call his lawyer back home. It was signed Commander BozoNuts of the Fourth Galaxy, but Sikes recognized the handwriting. He was impressed. He had never known Theo Miles to get up this early before.

  Angie Perez came in a minute after Sikes, carrying a takeout coffee cup from which a tea bag tag fluttered. She looked over her sunglasses to squint at the doll as Sikes unthreaded its arm from one half of the cuffs.

  “Since Grazer has the sense of humor God gave a dead frog,” Angie said, “I’d have to say, as a detective, that you’ve been talking to someone else about your case.” Then she waited for Sikes to come clean.

  Sikes knew he had broken protocol by going to Theo about his concerns before he went to Angie, but now that the Petty case seemed to be under some kind of control he didn’t see what harm could come of it. “Well, yeah,” he admitted as he held the doll in his hands, wondering if it was too babyish for Kirby, “I sort of ran into my old partner and told him about it.”

  “Theo Miles?” Angie asked. Sikes nodded. “He’s undercover Vice now, isn’t he?” Sikes nodded again. “So you were hanging out someplace real nice where you just happened to run into an undercover vice cop? Sikes, what would your daughter think?”

  “Okay, okay,” Sikes confessed. “I went looking for him. I got spooked when Amy Stewart mentioned the possibility that the government might be involved. Theo’s dealt with a couple of cases like that.”

  Angie shook her head and dropped her silver-lensed sunglasses into place again. “And what did good old Theo tell you?”

  Sikes dangled E.T. by his upward-pointing finger. “That the government has better things to do these days than whack civilians. And that there ain’t no such thing as little green men.”

  “Ah, not even in Vice?” Angie asked sarcastically.

  Sikes ignored her. “And that Amy probably had taken a photograph of a secret airplane or something. Maybe got caught up in industrial espionage. Something like that.”

  Angie cocked her head to one side. “That’s an interesting take on it. Industrial espionage. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “But it fits in with what you did think of,” Sikes pointed out. “One of them stole something from the other. I suppose it doesn’t matter if it’s astronomical or industrial research. The motive’s still the same.”

  Angie nodded. “Have you found out what Petty and Stewart were actually working on at the university?”

  “Hey, I just got in. Gimme
a chance.”

  “I’ll give you one more day,” Angie said. “But then you really do have to help me out on a couple of shootings on Robertson. Back of a restaurant stuff. Looks like two partners went for each other’s throats, but it could have been a third-party setup.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Sikes said noncommittally as he plunked E.T. on the corner of his desk.

  Before Angie could get settled at her own desk next to Sikes’s, a young khaki officer came into the ready room and handed her an interdepartmental document envelope. Inside was the photograph she had taken from Amy Stewart’s office and copies of the APB flyer that the Documents Division had made from it. The khaki told her that Public Affairs would have the photograph to the television stations in time for the noon news and the newspapers in time for the afternoon editions.

  Angie tossed the flyers onto Sikes’s desk. “Note that I put your phone number on the bottom of it,” she said with a cruel grin. “As soon as it shows up on the TV screen you’re going to be hearing from every wacko in the city. You’ll probably even get a couple of Black Dahlia confessions. I always do.”

  Sikes thanked her profusely and began to write out a list of the phone calls he had to make before that happened. Grazer walked in a few moments later carrying a briefcase and two newspapers and dressed in a three-piece pinstripe suit as if he were a bank manager on his way to a board meeting. He stopped to take a puzzled look at the E.T. doll, then saw the APB fliers and the framed color photograph.

  “So that’s Amy Stewart,” he said grandly.

  Sikes and Angie exchanged a glance of mutual forbearance. “That’s what it says in the fine print,” Angie agreed.

  Sikes had an idea. “Hey, Bryon, you know everything. Come on over here.”

  Grazer straightened his collar in an attempt to act embarrassed and didn’t fool anyone.

  “Take a look at this guy beside her.” Sikes pointed to the mystery man in the framed photograph. “He look familiar to you or what?”

  Grazer gave the photograph careful scrutiny. “Well, yes. He does look like someone I’ve seen before.”