“How much for a room?” Patrick asked the hotel clerk.
“Twenty an hour,” the guy grated, never taking his eyes from the television broadcast. The sound was on too loud but that was good; the man probably wouldn’t remember his voice.
Patrick glanced at the screen and recognized the photographs showing there as the two women from the Watergate Hotel the other night. He smiled, then put sixty dollars on the counter. The man’s gaze flicked to the money and he reached out a grimy hand and snatched it up; an instant later he slid a set of keys toward Patrick and his date.
The old elevator screeched as it rose. Patrick and the woman climbed out of it on the fifth floor. This place was as seedy as they came, but it made no difference to Patrick as long as the key he held in his hand—Room 505—would open the right room and give him the privacy he needed with this prostitute. The room itself was dingy and probably not very clean, but Patrick didn’t bother to turn on the lights. This woman was taller than average with platinum-blond hair billowing around a square-jawed face. Her lips were full and pouty and she smiled as she grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the bed. “You look like someone I’ve seen on television,” she said. “This ought to be real good.”
Her hand was hot around his, but it felt . . . wrong. Patrick stiffened and backed up before the hooker could wrap her tanned arms around him. “Hey,” she said, but her voice had lost an edge of confidence it’d had only moments before. “What’s wrong, honey?”
He studied her, trying to fathom what was missing here. He felt no desire to touch her, no imperative to breed with her. He didn’t even—
Patrick’s eyes narrowed but he smiled as he extended his hand to touch that gorgeous head of white-blond hair. She returned the smile, obviously relieved, and leaned toward him so he could stroke her hair; when she was close enough, Patrick twined his fingers in it, then gave it a good, hard yank.
It came off in his hands.
A wig—
—and suddenly all sorts of explanations and protests were coming from the mouth of the man who’d duped him into coming up here. “Hey, come on now. You’re a handsome guy, and ain’t I a good-looking piece? I mean, fun’s fun, right? I’m as good as any girl—better even.” The guy reached for the clasp on Patrick’s slacks. “Just let me show you. We’ll start right here, and I promise you’ll forget about the whole man/woman thing inside of ten seconds, okay? It’s all just fun, right?”
“Fun,” Patrick agreed as he, too, reached out.
He didn’t care about the sixty bucks, he thought as he slipped out the back entrance of the hotel less than two minutes later. But it was a damned shame to lose a good three hours’ worth of privacy in that hotel room.
“I don’t like this,” Laura said. “And I don’t like not knowing what the hell it means.”
She was standing before the main monitoring system on the laboratory floor, staring across at the habitat and its occupant. Inside the glass-walled sleeping area, Eve was thrashing on her bed; her eyes were closed and she might or might not have been sleeping, but they couldn’t tell that from the equipment readouts. In fact, Laura thought they were lucky that the alien woman hadn’t unwittingly yanked every one of the electrodes off.
“See what I mean, Dr. Baker?” asked Brea. “It’s all in our reports. Every so often, all her signals go berserk. Heart rate, blood pressure, respiration—even her temperature.”
“You know,” Vikki began. “Ah, never mind.”
“What?” Laura asked.
The younger woman’s cheeks turned pink. “Never mind. It’s probably a stupid idea—no basis in fact whatsoever.”
“Let’s hear it anyway. I’m open to anything right now.”
Vikki’s face turned even redder. “Well, the way she’s moving, kind of bucking like that. It’s . . . it’s almost like she’s dreaming about having an orgasm.”
Laura considered this for a moment, then frowned and turned back to watch Eve. She’d quieted in these last few seconds and her vitals, although still high, were slowly sinking back to normal. An orgasm?
Yeah, that’s exactly what it had looked like.
Patrick watched the woman on the stage very carefully.
Another tall one—he seemed to prefer them that way, although he didn’t know why. This girl had long chestnut-colored hair, and the way she was tossing her head back and forth during her sexy dance around the silver pole in the center of the stage made him pretty sure it was all her own. Her outfit was gone as she stripped down to a red-satin G-string. Slender and lithe, the gal had generous breasts with big dark nipples, but Patrick wasn’t stupid; plenty of gays went for silicone implants nowadays. At least the fabric that dipped between the inviting vee of her legs was smooth and tight-fitting, but in this day and age, that didn’t mean anything either.
Just in case, Patrick leaned forward across the narrow bar that surrounded the round platform on which she danced. It wasn’t long before he caught her eye, and her gaze went quicker still to the hundred-dollar bill folded lengthwise in his fingers. He gestured with it and she did a slinky little triple-step that put her swaying hips only two feet from his face, twisting and turning like a snake to give him the best possible view of everything. He waited until her twisting had slowed and she was facing him, then reached forward and motioned with the money. She thrust out her pelvis obligingly and he slipped the hundred-dollar bill, along with his first two fingers, far down the front of the tiny piece of fabric she wore. She quivered and he pulled his hand away and looked up at her, feeling a hot surge of desire as she gazed at him and licked her lips, gave a little nod of her head that promised more when her dance was over.
No mistakes this time.
“Special agents, huh?” The room clerk looked at Press and Laura with keen interest. “Since when does some fag hooker getting hisself offed warrant a visit from bigwigs like you?”
“I’d just like to know if you saw the guy he went upstairs with,” Press said with exaggerated patience.
The look the clerk gave him said clearly that he thought Press was an idiot for even asking. “They come and go.” His dirty fingernails tapped the counter and he gave them a nasty grin showing teeth coated with the residue of what was probably a week’s worth of meals. The T-shirt and jeans he wore surely hadn’t seen a washing machine in a month. “All day long. Know what I mean?”
“I think we can figure it out,” Laura said dryly and glanced at Press. “Let’s go. There’s absolutely nothing here that will tell us anything about him.” She shot a withering look at the desk clerk, who just returned it with a sneer. “We’re better off out in the field.”
She waited until they were outside the ratty little hotel before she exhaled and gripped Press’s arm. “We’ve got to find him, Press. We’ve got to. We have no idea what’s he’s doing, what the maturity rate of the offspring is if he’s already mated, nothing. Because Anne Sampas was a woman, we can’t even use what happened to her as a reliable model for what Patrick might be doing, and obviously we killed the offspring from that birth. For God’s sake, Ross could be fathering twins or triplets or worse.
“Press, every hour that passes could put us closer to it just being too damned late.”
Another shallow grave in the darkness of the pasture beyond the old barn.
Patrick didn’t recall how many graves he’d dug back here—three or four, or perhaps it was ten—and he didn’t care. There were other graves, too, scattered around the property, but they and their numbers were also inconsequential. The only things that mattered were waiting for him in the barn right now. Beyond them was the soul-deep urge to mate, and beyond that . . .
Nothing.
He tamped the dirt in place with his foot, then picked up his flashlight and scanned the dense brush around him. After a minute, he found what he was looking for and held out his hand; the child, this one a girl, was already close to three human years old and she came to him eagerly, wanting nothing more in the world than to be clos
e to her father and protector. When Patrick led her to the barn and took her inside, his daughter joined her brothers and sisters—nearly a dozen of them—in waiting for the next wondrous stage in their lives. He’d brought them plenty of food and water, made sure they wanted for nothing. Now it was just a matter of time. Meanwhile—
—the rest of the world awaited.
15
“If what you told me the last time we were in this laboratory is true, Dr. Baker, then the people of this planet could already be in dire danger. That was two days ago and Lennox doesn’t even have a lead on Patrick Ross—no one has the first suggestion as to where to find this man, the body count is rising, and more women turn up missing every day. We’re wasting valuable time and Lennox hasn’t been able to make headway.”
I am not a violent woman, thought Laura Baker as she endured Colonel Carter Burgess’s speech, but if I could drop this man into a pond full of piranhas, I would. Him and his “Pentagon Three” cohorts, who had also decided to grace her lab with their presence this morning. Aloud she said, “Maybe that’s because you and your high-powered committee here won’t let him use the media to reach the public. If he could do that—”
Burgess’s cold gaze stopped her in mid-sentence. “We’ve had this conversation before. As I said, we’re wasting time.”
“Dr. Baker,” said one of the generals, “you mentioned during our previous visit that you believed Eve has telepathic abilities.” To Laura, the man’s round face looked innocent and bland, completely untrustworthy in a way she couldn’t really identify.
“Well . . . yes, there’s some indication of that.” Why did she suddenly have a very bad feeling about where this conversation was headed?
“Can we send her after Patrick Ross?” Of course the question came from the second of the group—these three strange men seemed to run in the same unspoken cycle. Maybe they were all connected somehow, little governmental cyborgs on the same transmission frequency.
Laura blinked at him, then turned her head and saw Eve watching them from her habitat. The outside walls of the alien woman’s living space were quartz glass and nearly thirty yards away from where she and Burgess’s nasty little entourage were talking, and all the intercoms were off. But was it possible Eve could hear what they were saying anyway?
Who knew?
Laura had no choice but to answer. “It would be complete foolishness to take Eve out of this controlled atmosphere. You must remember that before Colonel Burgess contaminated everything by coming in here with Press, Eve’s only knowledge of the outside world came from television. This included contact with males. From a psychological point of view, her human side would tend to view what she sees on the screen as a fantasy—that is, something that doesn’t really exist. Despite the unfortunate previous intrusion of Colonel Burgess and Press Lennox and the presence of yourselves in here today, Eve has never physically touched a man. To show her the rest of the world and therefore allow her to do so is potentially lethal.”
One of the men started to say something, but Laura cut him off. “There is also the very real danger of her escaping. If this were to happen, we would have two aliens to deal with instead of one. We already know that the aliens have a biological imperative to reproduce. You can bet that they’ll also have an inborn drive to find each other to do so.” She gestured at the data scrolling continuously along the monitor screens on the main console. “It’s quite clear that human DNA cannot and will not be the victor in any sort of cellular match against the alien DNA. An infant born as the result of Eve mating with Patrick Ross could very well end up with all the human DNA completely repressed—a ‘pure’ alien, if you will. The resulting offspring might be unstoppable.”
“I don’t believe you answered my question, Dr. Baker,” said the second general quietly. His eyes suddenly reminded her of a snake’s—small and flat, and completely devoid of warmth. “Can we send her after Patrick Ross?”
Laura gritted her teeth. “In so many words, sir, I believe I did. The answer to your question is no. We cannot ‘send’ Eve after Patrick Ross, because she cannot be allowed outside the walls of this laboratory. To release her would be so hazardous as to be utterly out of the question.”
Silence while they considered this, then Burgess asked the question that Laura had been dreading:
“Can she tell us where he is without leaving the facility?”
Laura bit her bottom lip, but she had to tell them the truth; any cursory glance at her notes on the computer would show a fabrication instantly. “We have seen a . . . spiking in her bio-rhythms that could possibly indicate the existence of a rudimentary connection to something we can’t identify,” she admitted. “There isn’t any way to tell for sure because half of her alien genes are dormant, intentionally repressed by genetic manipulation when we created her. Whatever connection she may have right now isn’t controllable or deliberate. Tracking another person—or another alien—would be out of her league.”
“Dormant is nothing but a technical term for asleep,” Colonel Burgess said levelly. “I suggest we simply wake them up. I assume you have the means to do so.”
A question, not a statement, and again Laura had no alternative but to be truthful. “We do have certain equipment,” she said with reluctance. “The lab cyclotron could be reprogrammed to bombard her with radiation. In all probability, this would stimulate the alien genes enough to revive them. But . . .”
“What?” The third general, right on cue.
“Well, for heaven’s sake,” she exploded. “Isn’t it obvious? Doing this will reawaken in Eve everything we’ve worked so hard to suppress—the alien side of her, incredible physical strength, her mating drive. We repressed all of these impulses so that we could maintain control over an alien life-form that is completely capable of besting us. Did any of you actually hear what I told you just a few seconds ago?” Laura gestured angrily at the female life-form still standing at the glass of her enclosure at the other end of the massive room, still watching them with extreme interest. “Colonel Burgess, have you ever stopped to think that when she ‘wakes up,’ as you so handily put it, she might just be a wee bit disturbed by the fact that we’ve kept her imprisoned in a damned glass box for her entire life?”
For a moment no one spoke; then Burgess and the first two men looked to the third member of their group. “We appreciate your concern, Dr. Baker,” said the third man. His voice was quiet, but suddenly Laura knew who truly had the say-so in this room. “But the results in this matter—the opportunity to locate and eliminate Patrick Ross—are worth the risk.” His sharp eyes scanned the laboratory, recording everything, no doubt already planning the upgrades. “We’ll tighten security, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Laura mimicked. She slammed her clipboard on the countertop. “You know this isn’t a laboratory animal we’re talking about here, and the process you’re demanding isn’t just an unpleasant little prick in the arm with a syringe. This process is irreversible. This life-form is half human and the radiation is going to hurt.” Frustration made her dig her fingers into her arms. “She has human feelings—”
“Please,” interrupted Colonel Burgess. “Spare us the ‘alien rights’ agenda, Dr. Baker. Use the . . . what did you call it? The cyclotron. Do whatever it takes.”
She glared at him, wanting very badly to slap that lop-eyed, power-happy leer right off his face. “And if I refuse?”
Burgess lifted his chin knowingly. “That is obviously your prerogative as a civilian employee, Dr. Baker. You know, of course, that there are other staff members in the facility who have skills more or less equivalent to yours.” The colonel spun and stepped into place behind his three colleagues, who were already headed for the exit. He didn’t bother to turn around to say his last words:
“Either way, Dr. Baker, it’s going to happen. It’s only a matter of who’s in charge of the procedure.”
Before Colonel Burgess and Press had come into the laboratory and corrupted the atmospher
e, there had been a certain innocence to Eve, a simplicity of thinking that was charming and unexpected in a fully grown woman. That quality had disappeared when Eve had gotten her first scent of a man, and if there was anything left of it at all, buried somewhere deep inside the lovely girl who stood before her now, Laura was convinced that what she was about to do would destroy it forever. What was worse, she, with her degrees and her education and all her damned science, didn’t know how to tell Eve what she was about to ask. All she could do was stand in front of Eve and stare at the floor, struggling to find the words.
“It’s all right, Laura. You don’t have to be afraid. I know . . . what they want.” Eve’s face was open and accepting. Resigned.
How had she known? There was no other way to explain it but that she must have heard every horrid word of that argument between Laura and Burgess and his cronies. “I-I’m sorry. This isn’t at all what I’d intended, but I have no choice.” She touched Eve’s arm, trying somehow to convey her emotions. The skin was warm and pleasant, the effects of whatever had caused her last “spell” long gone.
“I understand,” Eve said, but the words sounded rehearsed, or worse, like something she’d learned from a television soap opera. Her next statement just made that all the more likely. “You have to answer to your superiors.”
“You wouldn’t be agreeing so readily if you knew how painful this is going to be,” Laura said, more harshly than she’d intended. Eve said nothing, and Laura’s voice softened with defeat and regret. “But . . . you’ll save human lives. And I’ll be in charge of the procedure, so I’ll be as careful as possible.”
Species II Page 15