by D. F. Jones
All this had been spelled out to the ICARUS Committee, and Freedman had added that roughly seventy-five of these creatures had probably escaped. Admittedly, no trace of them had been found, but there was still every reason to be on guard. The biologist opined that this weird creature might well have considerable difficulty in adapting to conditions on Earth. In all probability, a relatively complex creature like this could not survive for long.
The committee clutched at his idea: He had to be right. Nothing had been seen of the creatures — they could have been eaten by birds or cats or any predatory animal. It was the ostrich syndrome all over again. But as the weeks passed the committee and the biologist felt a growing confidence in the theory. They were military men and politicians, lacking background knowledge or the time to acquire it, and few wanted to dig deeply. Erwin Lord was an exception. He didn’t believe that if they ignored this particular problem it would go away. Arcasso was another.
But of all the ICARUS group, Freedman was best qualified to evaluate the Xeno. In background, experience, and general knowledge, he was in a unique position. Most importantly, he had the mental toughness to face it.
As soon as he was strong enough, he made the first of many searches of the hospital area, disregarding Scott’s plea to wear protective clothing on the grounds that it would cause comment. The search he’d ordered on the first day had been unproductive, but he had a shrewd suspicion that after seeing Xeno’s photograph — and knowing its lethal power — the FBI men weren’t trying all that hard.
His own searches were a very different matter. Using a long stick and wearing wraparound dental glasses, he poked around the areas of high probability — under stones and fallen branches, in hollow trees — but he found nothing. But he hardly expected to. Forty creatures were estimated to have escaped in the vicinity of the hospital; the chances of finding one in the surrounding countryside were astronomically remote. But his failure to find even the slightest evidence did not weaken his conviction. They were out there, somewhere — alive.
*
Freedman glimpsed the car as it headed into his parking lot. Tatyana. The car had FBI written all over it; he could spot one a block away. He stayed behind his desk; she’d be in soon enough, and these days he conserved his energy. It would be a very long time before he fully recovered from his brush with Xeno — if ever.
Tatyana was escorted by a large middle-aged man with iron-gray hair, steady eyes, a face made sinister by a puckered scar on one cheek, and a certain air of curiosity. Freedman figured he was FBI, even if he’d never seen one so badly dressed.
Tatyana enveloped Mark in her arms and a cloud of cheap scent. The greeting over, she held him at arm’s length and surveyed his face.
“Mark Freedman, comrade! You have been through much! You are still not strong.” She peered intently at the small pit in his forehead, half hidden by an eyebrow. “So lucky — so lucky!” she murmured, shaking her head slowly. “You must rest. Sit down.” Her powerful arms steered him into his chair. Only then did she remember her companion. She pointed dramatically at him, in a manner worthy of the Kirov Ballet. “Mark, my friend — this is Brigadier Arcasso” — she rolled the name — “United States Air Force and a member of the ICARUS committee.”
“My God, you did that well,” said Arcasso, smiling at Tatyana. “I wish I could bring you with me everywhere.” He walked to Freedman, holding out his hand. “Glad to know you, doctor. Please call me Frank.” The awkward way he produced his ID card alerted Mark to his artificial arm, the hand buried deep in a sagging pocket. “Alvin Malin has told me a lot about you. He’s tied up, so I came along as Tatyana’s escort.” He grinned again. “Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
Freedman smiled back. He liked this big man, his easy style; from the way Tatyana was beaming, he saw that she felt the same way.
While his secretary fixed coffee, they stuck to trivia; but for all the good humor, tension lay close to the surface. The coffee served and the secretary gone, Tatyana got down to business.
She’d seen his photographs, read Scott’s report, Mark’s description of the birth of the Xeno, and the biologist’s report on the creature’s anatomy. She had come from Moscow, she said, to clear up some points and to solicit Mark’s views as the most experienced Xeno man in the world.
Freedman dug out a file from his safe — a present from Malin — and handed around some enlargements of Xeno. Arcasso was not put off, as Malin had been, by the horrific pictures. He listened intently while the doctors discussed anatomy; but when they moved to survival probability, he joined in. Did Xeno’s makeup give any idea of its likely range of temperature toleration? “After all, doc, it looks like a scorpion’s half-brother, and they don’t go crazy over snow and ice.” He looked at Tatyana for support.
“Possible,” she said, kicking off her shoes. The action reminded Mark; he produced whiskey and three glasses.
“And you’ve had one damn cold night up here.”
Freedman glanced at him sharply. “You monitor our weather?”
“Yes, sir. The USAF Weather Center runs me a daily report.”
“Well, I agree with Tatyana that it’s possible, but although I can’t point to any hard evidence, I wouldn’t bank on Xeno folding.”
“Me neither.”
The gloomy confidence in Arcasso’s voice surprised Mark. “What’s your reading?”
“It’s these goddam holes. If the eggs got in that way, then I guess the parent had to be outside the plane. And, baby, at Papa Kilo’s altitude it’s cold outside!”
“No.” Freedman shook his head. “Guesswork. The plane must have gone out of space and time into unknowable conditions. Okay, so that’s guesswork, too, but I prefer it to yours. Particularly as I don’t go along with the implantation from outside idea.”
“But goddammit, doc — the holes have got to mean something!”
“Agreed, but how do they fit in? Okay, assume the parent bored the holes with its ovipositor — that’s standard procedure, except it drilled through metal, not wood. It inserts its ovipositor, seeks and finds all the passengers — just the way the ichneumon fly hunts grubs hidden in a tree — and implants them. If that’s the case, we’re stuck with two questions. Although the aircraft was sealed, the Xeno knew suitable hosts existed inside. I find that a tough proposition to believe. And secondly, the scale’s completely out of whack.”
“What scale, Mark?”
He looked at Tatyana. “Xeno’s horrible and terribly dangerous, but its features are not all that abnormal. In general, it conforms to the laws of nature as we know them. It doesn’t have X-ray eyes, or a laser beam as a weapon, and there’s nothing outlandish about its general proportions — admittedly, twelve legs strikes one as pretty strange, but I’m not so sure there isn’t a looper caterpillar with twelve, and there’s the centipede. To me, in very general terms, it looks highly practical — do you follow?”
Arcasso nodded.
“Proportions.” Freedman emphasized the word. “Take the Xeno egg. It must be very small, almost microscopic. In nature there is a very rough ratio between mother and egg. A robin’s egg is smaller than a chicken’s, whose egg is smaller than that of a goose — and that hardly compares with an ostrich’s.”
“What has this got to do with Xeno?” asked Tatyana, faintly impatient.
“If the parent implanted the Jumbo passengers from outside,” Freedman said, “all you have to do is measure the distance between the nearest hole and the furthest passenger and you have a rough estimate of the ovipositor’s length.” He looked at Arcasso. “None of those holes was aft of the midship section, right?”
“Affirmative,” said Arcasso.
“I’ve made that measurement,” Freedman continued. “Assuming the body to be twice as long as the ovipositor — a fair average for earthly insects — I wind up with the parent Xeno just a smidgen smaller than the aircraft.”
“But that is not possible!” Tatyana glared at him. “You cannot
believe that!”
“No, I don’t. Two reasons, both proportional. The ovipositor would have to be fantastically thin and fine compared with the body, and the idea of such a vast creature producing pinhead-sized eggs is too much for me.”
Arcasso helped himself to the whiskey with some urgency. “Okay, so you toss away the outside theory. You reckon the bastards bored their way in?”
“It makes more sense,” conceded Mark, “but it creates new problems. Assume they went in and out the holes; it’s strange that not one got trapped. And another, bigger problem: the Xeno we captured has no boring equipment; the mouth’s adapted for sucking, but it sure as hell couldn’t suck or blow a hole in an airplane! So my guess is that the parent Xeno was smaller and has at least two capabilities ours doesn’t have.”
“Hold it there for a moment.” Frank marshaled his thoughts. “You say the parents could have been smaller — small enough, maybe, to get in or out of the holes?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“How about this, then? Suppose they didn’t get in that way, only out?”
Both Mark and Tatyana waited for him to go on.
“Okay, so I’m stuck with a big problem — how did they get in in the first place? Someone once said that if you could solve the space-time dimension you could turn a tennis ball inside-out without cutting it. Well now, whoever or whatever could pull this trick with our aircraft wouldn’t have much trouble with the tennis ball! Suppose the plane was opened up, accidentally letting in the Xenos? They lay their eggs and go someplace else — except those trapped when the ICARUS figure activated the cosmic regurgitator and put the plane together again. I guess eleven Xenos were trapped in the Jumbo, and smartly blasted their way out. How about that?”
Tatyana toyed nervously with a ring and waited for Mark to speak.
Freedman pushed his glasses up on his head and pinched his nose. “That’s a very ingenious answer, Frank. I don’t know a damned thing about the fourth dimension, but the rest fits better than most ideas.”
“Glad I came along, doctor. I’ve spent whole nights trying to come up with something better.” He lit another cigar, then remembered. “Aw, doc — I’m sorry! I interrupted you. You were saying the parent had capabilities ours hasn’t?”
“Yes,” said Freedman. “Ours has no blasting equipment, and even more significant, no sex organs.” He added cautiously, “No identified sex organs, that is.”
Arcasso looked at the statement from several angles before replying. “Well, that has to be a comfort — doesn’t it? But isn’t that new to earth? I mean you can have a neutered man or cat, but someone has to cut his balls off.” He remembered Tatyana. “Sorry, ma’am.”
She placed a hand on his, shaking it gently, looking at him with amusement. “Frank — I’ve heard about balls.”
Mark regarded them thoughtfully. “Sex is the missing link here,” he said ambiguously, pushing the bottle towards Tatyana, who was looking somewhat longer at Frank Arcasso than was strictly necessary. “Nature has tried everything, but at some stage, sex has to be in there in some form. And that’s what I’m really afraid of — with no sex capability in our specimen, plus that lack of blasting equipment, I fear we’re only looking at one stage of Xeno’s development. If it follows the insect pattern of egg, larva, pupa, and adult, then what we have is the larval form. Sex seldom appears until the final, adult stage.”
Arcasso stared again at the enlarged photograph. “Jesus! You think that’s the second stage. What’ll the adult look like?”
Mark gave an exaggerated shrug.
“Jesus!” repeated Arcasso, turning to Tatyana. “What d’you think?”
“My view is worthless. If Mark says so, that is enough for me.” She downed her drink in one gulp and banged the glass down, her manner suddenly different. Lighting another black cigarette, she eyed both men with an openly calculating expression. “Mark, here we are all friends. Officially” — she tapped the Order of Lenin on her breast — “I came for this talk, but … ” She shook her head as she refilled her glass.
Freedman could tell she was struggling with something.
“Of course, I’m pleased to see you, Tatyana,” he said, “but I had been wondering why you came.” He tapped the file before him. “You could have worked all this out.”
She gave him a swift glance. “Yes.” She tapped her glass. “Don’t think it is this — but it helps.” She paused again, smiling faintly. “Mark, Frank, six months ago I was a good Communist, a dedicated party member, certain of where we were going, confident of the soundness of Marxist-Leninist principles.” She drained her glass and stared at it pensively.
Arcasso shifted uneasily in his chair.
“Don’t hurry me, Frank. I’m on a lonely and dangerous road” — her voice increased in intensity — “a road the party teaches me does not exist! I cannot talk about it with anyone — even now there are only seven of us in ICARUS, all staunch party members. I am not in on the discussions. I only report and answer questions. But I can see in my comrades’ faces that they, too, have those same questions which cannot be asked.”
Freedman and Arcasso exchanged glances, both trying to understand her problem.
“Until your photographs arrived, we ignored the wider implications of ICARUS. Until that moment no real evidence of extraterrestrial life existed. Now it does.
“No longer can we talk about ‘power storms.’ ” She spat the term out contemptuously. “Incredibly, the planes were lost in time and space. That was bad enough — but now, Xeno!” Her haunted eyes stared at Freedman. “Never mind what Xeno is to us — what is it to whatever exists out there?”
Freedman broke the strained silence, speaking softly. “Who knows — who can know? In our human arrogance we immediately think this thing comes straight from God — ”
“But God does not exist!” cried Tatyana desperately. “For us he cannot exist!”
“Let me finish,” Freedman cut in sharply. “To me, it’s plain that somewhere in time and space another world — call it what you like — exists. Clearly, Xeno is not God, for it is a parasite and must live on something else. It does not follow that Xeno’s host is God — in fact the argument is unsatisfying. By definition, God must be perfect, and by human standard cannot possibly be infested with vermin.” His voice sank. “But there may be one or a hundred stages before one reaches that perfection.”
“Mark,” said Arcasso, not looking at Tatyana, “I’ve given a lot of time to this. We’re working with mighty little evidence — ”
Freedman nodded. “Sure — but even a reasonably intelligent person could work out the existence of aircraft from an airline ticket.”
“Right.” Frank smiled at Tatyana, trying to ease her tension. “So you figure — and I’ve gotten that far myself — that there’s something up there?”
Mark shrugged helplessly. “Could be Xeno’s host is a cosmic version of John the Baptist, or Francis of Assisi. Xeno may live off a saint — or maybe the saint’s dog.”
Tatyana burst out. “But this is madness! This is the late twentieth century! God does not exist!”
“Call it what you like. It, Them, God, or whatever,” said Frank stolidly, “but something out there supports Xeno. And that something has powers we can only guess at. From where I stand, that something looks very much like God. It may not be the sort of God we’re used to contemplating, but it’s there! If you deny that something’s existence, then you, lady, and your comrades, have got problems!”
XXV.
By Western standards the conference room bordered on the archaic. Deep, claret-colored brocade lined the walls, enlivened by ornate gilded mirrors, spotty with age. Doors, windows, and baseboards were white, the carpet gold and cream; the curtains matched the brocade. The two pictures were on opposing walls: Karl Marx stared at Lenin, who was too busy orating to look back.
From across the center table, covered with a deep red chenille cloth, Tatyana looked at the two most powerful men in her
vast country: the president and the premier — also general secretary of the Communist Party. Although her expression remained impassive, her heart beat that much faster. The president, formal and polite, smiled and offered her a cigarette.
She nodded her thanks, taking in the two men, both clad in dark blue suits and white shirts. On the president’s left lapel were three small medals; the premier had two. Tatyana drew comfort from her own Order of Lenin. It had been awarded to her for her work and was proof of her loyalty as a good party member and patriot.
She launched into her report, hesitantly at first, but gaining confidence as she progressed. The men sat quite still, listening intently, showing no emotion. When her factual account ended, they asked the predictable questions regarding the nature of the insect. Both men were interested, but not, it seemed, to the degree she had expected. She replied in the same matter-of-fact manner, waiting for the bigger, more important questions.
As she answered, she felt the pressure growing within her; she fought a mad impulse to break out of the confines their manner imposed. But no — these were top party members, heirs to the portraits on the wall.
Finally the inevitable question. “Comrade Marinskaya,” asked the Russian premier, “what are your own thoughts on the origins of Xeno?”
“Comrade President,” she began, her heart pounding, “that is difficult for me to answer. Rightly, our ICARUS security is very tight; there are only seven or eight who know the secret. I am your only medical member — and I became involved because this was thought to be a problem in my field, cytology. It is not. My qualifications for ICARUS/Xeno are not good.”
The general secretary frowned. She was not answering the question.