by Gini Koch
Thusly reassured, headed out of the closet to see that the atlas was on the floor. Which was not where I’d left it. And it was opened to one of the bookmarked pages. But not one that we’d looked at already.
Took a look. The page was one for part of the Middle East. And there was a faint triangle drawn on it.
Picked up the atlas and took a closer look. “Huh.”
“What are you doing?” Jeff asked, as he came out fixing his tie.
“Studying places to go.” Realized I needed to have a chat with whichever Powers That Be I could reach, meaning I needed to be alone. Leaned up and gave Jeff a kiss. “I’m sure this isn’t your preferred plan, but are you okay going down ahead of me?”
His eyebrow raised. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Sure. I have a Secret Boyfriend I want to hook up with. He’s been waiting patiently and, since we’re all done here for now, it’s his turn.”
Jeff snorted. “Got it, I’ll mind my own business.”
Hugged him. “I just want to make sure I don’t lose this thought. It relates to my fun FLOTUS World Tour and, as I’m sure you can tell, I’m nervous about doing a good job.”
He kissed me deeply. “You’ll be great, baby, you always are.”
“Thanks and right back atcha, especially when it comes to sex. I promise not to take too long to join you and the others in the Fun House.”
“That’s a good name for the Large Situation Room, as long as you mean it sarcastically, and I know you do.”
Jeff left, and I waited for a few moments, just to be sure he hadn’t forgotten something. My coast apparently clear, took the atlas and headed into the closet. Stood in front of the hamper. “Thanks for all the help today.”
Waited. Nothing.
“Um, I’d love to ask a couple of questions, starting with the page the atlas was opened to. If you have time and all that.”
More nothing.
Heaved a sigh. “Look, I’m about to head out around the world trying to ease everyone into a ‘most aliens are good’ mindset while at the same time prepping the world for galactic war, along with trying to find and stop Stephanie, Cliff, and you and ACE alone know who else. I’m also not sure if I should be supporting Muddy with the idea that Jeff should come with me, or supporting Mom with the idea that Jeff should stay here, and I have literally no idea which option is better in the short or long run.”
Nada.
Heaved another sigh. “Okay. Well, um, thanks for the goggles and such. You know I’m aware that you won’t always come when I call, right?” Turned around. “I’ll check my iPod and phone for more musical clues. Maybe ACE will be feeling chatty tonight, should Jamie actually slumber at Pierre’s slumber party.”
“Except that I usually do come when you call.”
Turned around to see a handsome, rakish dwarf with tousled dark hair and eyes that were just a little too green to be natural for Earth sitting cross-legged on top of the hamper.
“So, were you in the shower or something?”
“No. There are just times I enjoy seeing what approach you’re going to use.”
Rolled my eyes. “I’d say ugh and something else unpleasant, but I’m sure that would mean you disappeared, so I’ll just laugh hollowly and play along.”
“I also always find it interesting that you’re worried that you’ll manage to overcome the obstacles in your path.”
“Dude, seriously, I don’t know why that’s a shock to you.”
“You beat a great white shark away from helpless sea slugs.”
“You mean I slammed my fists into a shark’s snout until the shapeshifter noticed I was being stupid and then saved me and the others.”
Algar cocked his head at me. “Why would you think being a protector, in any way, is stupid?”
“John was right there.”
“John was distracted.”
“He’d have noticed how close the shark was before I got there.”
“Would he have?” Algar shrugged. “Maybe he would have. Maybe he wouldn’t have, and another universe would create because of the fact that he was eaten by a great white shark.”
“Is that how they create? One incident? And, if that’s the case, did another universe create because I stayed on the boat instead of going back into the water or because I considered staying or whatever?”
Algar raised his eyebrow. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about, the multiverse?”
“Well, no, not so much. Not that I’m against that talk, but I kind of have a lot going on in this particular part of this particular universe. And I could really use some advice or suggestions or even just a playlist with answers.”
Algar chuckled. “You know you don’t really need my help.”
“Oh my God, not this again. I need something. Earth and the galaxy need something. I have no idea how to handle what’s coming. I’m not sure what to focus on, and I know I’m totally out of my depth.”
He sighed. “What would you do if I told you that it would be impossible for you to handle things incorrectly?”
“I’d say you were lying like a wet rug. I’ve heard the whole ‘you can’t make a wrong choice because your choice is right at that time’ thing. That’s fantastic in terms of choosing what job to take, or what dress to wear, or what city to move to, but it’s not quite as easy when you’re dealing with a galactic issue that involves multiple races, including some who, point-blank, want to eat us.”
“There is that, yes.”
“Is Muddy correct in terms of what he told us about the Aicirtap?”
“He is, as a matter of fact. The Turleens travel all over the galaxy, sometimes openly, sometimes stealthily.”
“In other words, ask Muddy some more questions about what’s going on.”
“I always recommend being curious.”
“I’m curious about why the atlas was opened to a page showing the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Complete with a triangle drawn around an area where the points of said triangle are, I believe, the three tallest structures in the Middle East.”
“Why would you think that was significant?”
“In addition to the fact that the book was opened to that page? Because apparently the Bermuda Triangle and the triangle formed by the three peaks that the Planetary Council landed on right before my wedding are both landing strips for alien spacecraft. And I want to know if there are others, where they are, and how they will or won’t affect what’s heading to us from space.”
Locked eyes with Algar. Did not figure I had a chance in hell of winning a stare-down competition with him, but still felt up to giving it a try because I really wanted some answers.
Algar smiled at me, blinked slowly, and suddenly I saw things in his eyes. Triangles all over the world, each one marking a safe place to land for a variety of different aliens. Some no longer used, some used all the time.
The images flashed through his eyes, just as images had flashed through Jamie’s newborn eyes during Operation Confusion, when I had to find her father and everyone else in order to save them and the day. I’d thought ACE had done that, possibly even Jamie herself, but now it was obvious that Algar had been the one to give me those vital clues.
The triangle that connected the three tallest structures in the Middle East had something unusual in the exact middle, which happened to be in the Persian Gulf—it had a structure deep under the water. And that structure didn’t look manmade, at least not by any man from Earth. It resembled a gigantic block that was made up of a bunch of inverted tentacles, only not really. But that was the closest I could get. Really hoped that it wasn’t where Cthulhu and his pals hung out, because that was possibly the very last thing we needed.
There were also other images that flashed through Algar’s eyes, including the tallest structure in the world and one of the
Middle Eastern Triangle Points—the Burj Khalifa.
Algar blinked again and the images were gone. I was looking back into his normal eyes, if they could ever be considered normal.
“Wow. Um. That was . . . intense. Oh, and thanks, by the way, for helping me save everyone when Jamie was born.”
He smiled. “I don’t do it for your thanks, you know.”
“I know. But for whatever reason you do do it, I appreciate your support.” Considered all I’d seen. “Paris wasn’t ‘there.’ Nowhere that looked like France was.”
Algar shot me a very innocent smile.
“Huh. You don’t want me wasting time on Cliff’s lame ‘go capture Stephanie’ clue. Why not? Siler’s pretty much confirmed that she’s there.”
“Benjamin is rarely wrong, and he’s not wrong now. However, I know you know how to prioritize.”
“Yeah, well, stopping the bad guys feels like a priority. And you know I’m going to have to hit Paris, London, Sydney, and any number of other major cities.”
Algar sighed. “You asked for help. I give it to you, and you discount and ignore it.”
He had a point. Pondered it while I looked through the rest of the bookmarked pages. Most of them related to the area in the Middle East that the atlas had been opened to. Clearly Algar felt that a lot of action was going to take place in this area.
Thought some more. “The triangular areas are actually landing sites, right?”
“So Muddy told you, yes.”
“I’m asking for your confirmation, please and thank you.”
“Fine. Yes.”
“Wow. A straight answer. I may faint. Later, when there’s time for it.”
Actively chose not to mention that he was being far less obscure in his helpful hints than normal—why push my luck? Also actively chose not to wonder if Algar was being more clearly helpful than usual because what was coming was so horrendous that he felt he had to give us more of a fighting chance, mostly because I had a horrible feeling that this was indeed his reason for being a Helpy Helper.
Instead, ran over everything that had happened so far during the Kitty’s Current Big Day Show. “What was Casey, the Casey in the police department, the thing that blew up? Android, robot, something else?”
“Ah, and now you ask the right question.” Algar sounded pleased but in no way ready to actually, you know, answer the right question.
Resisted the urge to sigh and roll my eyes. “Okay, so she’s the key to whatever it is you want me focused on, right?”
Algar nodded.
“Argh, you’re killing me, Smalls. Okay, so there has to be something significant or off or extra-weird about her or you wouldn’t be having so much fun with this. So, lemme ponder some more, since I know you love making me work for it.”
“This is how you learn.”
“Thanks, Professor Algar.” Considered why Casey had looked so bad. “So, here’s a thought. Androids are so well made they can pass for humans, both externally and emotionally. But Casey looked flat-out awful. We stopped Stephanie’s androidization of Joe and Randy mid-process. They’re changed internally, but they still look the same.”
“And?” Algar asked leadingly.
“And that means that Casey wasn’t an android, unless said android was made to look awful, and I kind of doubt it. Though, it’s a great excuse for why she wanted to ‘turn’ on Cliff.”
“Go on.”
“Okay, Fem-Bots are made, currently, to look like specific people. And neither Cliff nor Stephanie are involved in their creation or manufacture. Or, rather, if the Mastermind Complex started the Fem-Bots, someone else finished them. Meaning that Casey was not a Fem-Bot gone wrong.”
Received yet another nod. Once again had to actively choose not to make a smartass comment. Just tried to channel Chuckie and look at this as a cool way of exercising my mind.
“Therefore we can rule out Casey being a Fem-Bot, and she probably wasn’t an android, either. But she smelled human, or human enough, to the dogs, and she didn’t register as non-human to Tito’s tests, though she did register as ‘off.’ Sure, he didn’t use the OVS, but Tito made a point of saying that she registered as distinctly different from any android or Fem-Bot we’ve seen.”
“And?” Algar was definitely in Teacher Mode. Lucky me.
Focused back on things that had bothered me about Casey at the police station. And thought about what I knew about her. “I can’t believe that Casey signed on for a suicide mission. I mean, seriously, she’s a survivor. And I also can’t believe that Cliff did some weird test on her and then let her go. The testing as punishment I could believe, but not that they allowed her to escape. Them allowing her to escape I could believe if she didn’t know she was wired to explode. But it was clear that she did.”
“What else was unusual about her or the situation?”
“She looked awful, and it was real, not makeup. Whatever was done to her was a real thing.”
“So, what might all that mean?” Algar asked.
“Will you answer a question first?”
“If you insist.”
“I really do, because I can’t answer the Big Question without this confirmation. Was whatever that Casey Thing was sent to us by Cliff and/or someone acting on his direction?”
Algar shook his head. “The things you waste your specific questions on amaze me.”
“Amaze me and give me the answer, please and thank you.”
“Yes.”
It was amazing what some simple confirmations could do, though, regardless of whether or not Algar approved of my specific questions.
“I know what that Casey Thing was.”
CHAPTER 43
ALGAR COCKED HIS HEAD at me. “And just what was she?”
“Please tell me if I’m wrong, but I think she’s a clone. A badly done clone, but a clone nonetheless.”
“Why do you think that?”
Well, it wasn’t a flat-out “you’re wrong” so held onto the idea that I was right. “Because the Mastermind Collective has perfected cloning. Or, at least, they had perfected it. I know we destroyed their main cloning facility during Operation Infiltration, and we also stole all their manuals. Maybe Cliff’s brilliant enough to have all that memorized, but I’d wager that LaRue added at least fifty percent of whatever the process was, and I don’t think the LaRue Clone is going to be as on the ball as the Original Model. Based on The Clarence Clone and Ronaldo Two-Point-O, the clones have a strong degradation from copy to copy, at least the ones hastily created do. And these days, I’m betting every clone has been hastily made, whether due to lack of proper equipment or a safe place to complete the cloning process.”
“What do you perceive as wrong with those two clones?”
“TCC is simple. Not stupid, but he wasn’t given the memory dump. Two-Point-O got memories, which is why he’s a better cloned version. But he wasn’t given enough, in that sense, because he knew the memories weren’t his own and so rejected them. But Casey seemed like Casey, only she looked horrible.”
“How well do you know Casey?”
“Not well at all. Okay, all she had to be was unpleasant and spout whatever Cliff told her to and I’d believe it was her. Cliff knows us well—far better than Stephanie does, in that sense—and he has our playbook memorized.”
“Well done.”
“So, I’m right? She was a clone?”
“Yes. Now, what does that tell you?”
Considered why Algar felt that focusing me on an area in the Middle East would be important. We were all pretty sure that Cliff was in the Middle East, so his new hideout could conceivably be within the triangle. In fact, based on my seeing the Burj Khalifa more than once, it was a safe bet he was somewhere in the UAE, probably close to Dubai.
My brain nudged. The real thing that Algar wanted me to note was that
Cliff was cloning again. Sure, the Casey Clone had looked horrific, but if I took that to its most logical conclusion, then it showed that the process wasn’t working well.
But it worked well enough to get her into the D.C.P.D. station so she could blow it up and get the DUI Dudes into one of our facilities. It probably hadn’t mattered to them which one. Wherever we’d gone, they’d have had us pinpointed and Club 51 True Believers had plenty of supporters all over the country. Even if we’d gone to the White House, my playbook said that I’d flip the prisoners onto my side and therefore take them along with me. Which was exactly what I’d done.
“I hate being so transparent.”
“It’s worse to be evil. Just saying.”
“Thanks for that. Okay, so Cliff is back in the cloning business.”
Algar nodded. “His form of uplift.”
That was absolutely a clue so I didn’t speak. Instead I thought about why Algar had said the words he just had.
Algar felt that Muddy was giving us good and accurate intel, meaning that whatever Muddy had said I could take as gospel, at least for the moment. He’d described how the Z’porrah’s current version of uplift—sold as making an already sentient race “higher” on the evolutionary scale and extending their lifespans—had backfired on the Aicirtap. And the Q’vox were terrified of what might happen to them if they were uplifted in this manner.
In point of fact, I’d noted to myself so many hours ago that we wanted to keep the Q’vox far, far away from Cliff and Stephanie, because cloning minotaurs that were billed as unstoppable when enraged sounded like a really bad idea that the League of Evil Geniuses would undoubtedly embrace.
“Wow. You’re right. I actually had the answer already.”
“And yet you persist in demanding my time and attention.”
“I like feeling special. You’re worried that Cliff will get his heinous mitts on the new aliens, the Q’vox in particular, and that will spell the end of this planet and, most likely, this galaxy.” Thought some more, specifically about what Algar had shown to be hidden at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. “Crap.”