by Alma Boykin
Completely baffled, and queasy from the sight and stench of the spirit, the general followed quickly, but at a healthy distance. “What did you say that is?” he asked his adjutant.
“An ifreet. It’s an evil spirit from the desert. Inhabits caves, or so the legends claim. You can tell its lair by the smell of the rotting bodies of its victims,” the Israeli told his commanding officer. “Most people think they’re imaginary, like the English bogey man.”
A commotion from outside sped their steps and the men emerged into the cold winter morning to find Na Gael leaning against a tree off to the side of the gravel entry path, lacing her boots and watching the remains of the monster as it screamed and writhed in apparent agony. The thing had shrunk, and as the officers and gathered soldiers stared it made one last, horrible noise, then collapsed into a pile of bones and tanned skin.
“What did you do to it?” ben David demanded of the pale woman.
She grinned. “Cymru doesn’t like illegal aliens. I used Sergeant St. John’s—ah, let’s call it a ‘talisman’—to form a circuit, so the energy from the ground would have a path to follow.” Rachel walked over, picked up a stick, and poked the remains with her walking cane, fishing something out of the mess with the stick. “Here Sergeant St. John. Many, many thanks.” She wiped her find on some clean snow, revealing a piece of carved wood, then tossed it to the relieved NCO. “Well, well, no wonder it collapsed so fast,” and Na Gael flipped something else out of the corpse. “Not a traditional Arabic artifact, is it, Captain ben David?”
The young officer crouched down to look at what proved to be a cluster of wires, resistors and circuit chips. “No ma’am,” he agreed.
“Sir, I think I know what this unholy conglomeration was, but I suggest we dispose of the explosives that were with this thing, for starters?” Na Gael sounded flip, but her expression was deadly serious. “And where did Mr. ben Adhem run off to?”
“And the birds, ma’am,” Lieutenant Eastman added, pointing over his shoulder to the now-empty trees.
A satisfied quork, drew everyone’s attention as a very large raven landed on General McKendrick’s extended hand. The human looked as ruffled as the bird was calm, and he glared at his troopers. “What are you staring at? Ben David, Eastman, Allende—get teams together and start searching this place—respectfully but thoroughly. Lee, secure the outside and grounds. No one leaves until we finish. And Eastman, call Ordinance Disposal if we confirm what Commander Na Gael claims to have located.” The soldiers scattered like chaff on the wind. Rachel stood up from her post-postmortem on the ifreet in time to see her boss gently stroking the bird and giving it a piece of something like her own dried meat, then launch it back into the air.
“Commander Na Gael, you have some explaining to do once we secure this building,” McKendrick warned his advisor. She looked confused, but the expression faded into a politely neutral mask. She nodded, silent as he continued, “When you finish with that . . . thing, go back inside and examine the mosque and that tower.”
“Yes, sir.” She resumed poking at the stinking remains that polluted the fresh snow. McKendrick shivered a little at the gory sight, then returned his own task.
Four hours later, the GDF soldiers reconvened in the foyer of the mosque. Rachel’s nose had been correct, and an ordinance disposal team was busy cataloguing the contents of the storeroom. The local constabulary had taken one look and evacuated the entire neighborhood, while taking Mr. ben Adhem in to the station house to explain what several hundred kilograms of fuses, detonators, explosives, and ammunition were doing in a storage closet. A further search of the mosque turned up weapons and a computer system that caused Rachel to hum in appreciation.
“Very nice, Lieutenant Eastman, very nice,” she agreed. Then she frowned and turned the system on, watching the prompts that appeared on the screen.
Captain ben David had come looking for her, and she waved him over. “Can you read this?”
“It’s not Arabic or Hebrew,” he told her, shaking his head.
“Not Welsh either, ma’am,” St. John added, peering over Rachel’s other shoulder.
The xenologist folded her arms and pursed her lips. She took her “PDA” out of its case, took a picture of the computer screen, then tapped away with her stylus. The little box worked its magic, and more symbols appeared on the hand-held computer’s display. They were gibberish to the humans, but Rachel’s mouth quirked on one side. Then she typed a command on the mosque computer’s keyboard. After a moment the strange words on the monitor vanished, replaced with a picture of the outside of the mosque.
The Israeli officer looked at the woman. “That’s a thermal image, but what’s this?” He pointed at the slight blurring that appeared here and there on the screen.
“The monitor is set for eyes that use both visible and ultraviolet light, Captain, so you’re seeing overlays from a U.V. sensitive security camera. All of which matches what I found in the minaret,” she explained, shutting down the equipment.
“We don’t see U.V.” Moshe half-asked, gesturing towards the other soldiers.
The pale-skinned brunette looked up as if asking for patience. “No, Captain, we don’t.” Then she limped to the foyer where McKendrick waited, nodding as he took Sergeant Lee’s report.
“Ah, Commander. What have you found?” the officer inquired after sending Lee back to his post.
“The jihadis are working with extraterrestrials, or at the very least with someone who has access to off-world technology and species,” she informed him, ignoring the presence of people without security clearance.
One of the local constables frowned, interrupting her. “Excuse me, ma’am, but these people are refugees, not jihadis. You need to watch your language, ma’am.” He’d apparently missed the important part of her statement, McKendrick noted. The policewoman present had an ‘oh-no-not-again’ expression that shifted into an apologetic look, suggesting that this was not the first time her colleague had put his foot in it.
Na Gael’s voice became deadly quiet. “I was at Portobello Road market when the suicide bombers struck, Sergeant. I am rather more familiar with jihad than most and I use the term with full knowledge of the meaning and of the current situation.” She turned back to McKendrick. “The computer terminal Lieutenant Eastman found is designed for something with eyes very different from yours or mine, sir, and the communications equipment and energy-gathering devices and other items in the minaret are definitely not local manufacture.”
James McKendrick was solid but not stupid. Keeping in mind the policemen and civilians wandering about, he looked over his glasses at his advisor, suggesting, “And these non-locals might be working with the, ah, organization responsible for the unusual items in the storage closet?”
“Affirmative.” He caught her hand sign for “more later” and nodded a little.
“Very well. Ben David,” the adjutant twitched, “go with Na Gael, take a squad, and strip whatever ‘imports’ she tells you to for future study. Commander, keep whatever you think worth keeping—beyond that, make certain no one can use the items again. Oh, and forward any data of, ah, ‘local interest’ to the appropriate parties.” She bowed a little, spun around and dragged the black-haired officer off to get assistance.
The police sergeant looked very unhappy. “General, I know you mean well, but this is all very rash! The local Islamic Council will be most upset with the disrespect your people are showing for their place of worship and the accusations being made about them. And your advisor seems rather touched, if I might say so, Brigadier General McKendrick.” His tone verged on a whine, and the Scottish officer frowned.
“I should think they should be more upset with our finding more than enough explosives in their broom closet to level this ‘place of worship,’ Sergeant,” he said mildly.
As they left the building a few hours later, Rachel noticed the police on duty giving the soldiers a wide berth. “Did I miss something, Sergeant St. John?”
> “Only the general picking up one of the police by the collar after the constable tried to argue that we shouldn’t be removing anything without having the regional Islamic Council and the current imam come and supervise. The constable was a little too, ah, I’d say vehement, ma’am.”
“Interesting. Thank you.” I’d love to have seen that. I wonder if someone got cell-phone footage?
As they drove away from Caernarfon, Rachel let Logres rummage through her memories of the day. It felt unsatisfied with what it found, as if the problem remained unresolved.
That night at supper, McKendrick listened to the reports from his officers and advisor. The latter was very quiet, seemingly preoccupied with something. In fact, he decided, Na Gael reminded him of nothing so much as a dog listening to sounds humans couldn’t hear. As usual she ate quickly and neatly, excusing herself as soon as she finished. “Before you go, Commander Na Gael.” She sat back down, and he continued, “What exactly did you do to that whatever it was in the mosque?”
She pursed her lips, thinking about how to explain as clearly as possible. “I completed what you might call an electric circuit. Captain ben David’s shot let me get an energy receiver into physical contact with the ifreet. When it followed me outside, it was as if it completed an electrical circuit, as you could see.”
Colonel Przilas, who had arrived that afternoon with the second group from Headquarters, leaned back in his chair. “Wait. How did you get the electricity into the thing? Was there a broken power line outside?”
“I said like electricity, Colonel, not actual electricity. It was a type of bioenergy.” Rachel bent over and fished around in the satchel resting beside her chair. “This is what was actually animating the ifreet, controlling the nervous system and muscles.” She slid the circuits and wires towards him. “I assume the creature also had something in it to convert bio-energy into electricity, but there isn’t enough left for a decent autopsy.” She sat back, “It wasn’t exactly an ifreet in the traditional sense, sir. But it certainly acted like one and whoever created it did a good job.” Rachel frowned, her eye narrowing, then shook off whatever thought had bothered her.
“So it wasn’t magic?” a disappointed Will Eastman asked. McKendrick went still, attention locked on his advisor.
“If you mean supernatural, like Merlin the Magician in ‘Sword in the Stone,’ no.” Rachel smiled around the rapt audience. “If you mean as in the Second Sight or telepathy, then it is magic.”
“You’re serious?” someone asked, a little incredulous.
Her smile broadened, grew mischievous, and she started humming, then singing “Over the Hills and Far Away.” All at once, a misty scene seemed to appear in the middle of the table, like a film projected on smoke, and everyone caught a glimpse of soldiers in Napoleonic-era uniforms gathered around a map. One of the soldiers in the vision glanced up and McKendrick could have sworn it was a much younger, unscarred version of Na Gael. A second trooper also looked vaguely familiar, and McKendrick leaned forward for a better look. As he did, the scene vanished as she stopped singing. “Yes, I’m serious.”
Tadeus Przilas crossed himself and McKendrick stared over his glasses at the brunette alien. “What did you just do?” Przilas demanded.
“My talents are medicine and emotional manipulation. I can use music to create pictures and emotions within people’s minds, or to sooth and calm. You would call it ‘empathy,’ as compared to telepathy with words.” Ben David and Eastman nodded their agreement, raising some eyebrows.
“You know what she’s talking about?” the American asked ben David.
Moshe’s dark eyes were very serious. “Yes, sir. We don’t call it the Second Sight, but there are a few people in my family who have special gifts. My Uncle Avram can stop bleeding by touching a person and praying.”
“And Brigadier Jonathon Eastman, my cousin, talks into people’s minds like Commander Na Gael does with feelings,” the lieutenant observed. “It’s rather spooky until you get used to it.”
The woman in question smothered a yawn. “And all of these take a great deal of energy to use, so if you will excuse me, sir?” He nodded, still rather nonplussed, and she departed. McKendrick had matters that needed his attention, and he left not long after his advisor.
February, 2010. Later that night, McKendrick stood up and stretched after finishing his initial report. The sky had cleared and a thin crescent moon cast faint blue snow shadows outside McKendrick’s window. The GDF soldiers were staying in an “abandoned” Army base outside Caernarfon, so the white blanket remained undisturbed for the most part. Something about the scene bothered the McKendrick, and he wondered what was wrong. Nothing seemed unusual and he started to turn away, then hesitated. One of the shadows moved, the edges crawling like heat shimmering off a macadam road. “What?” he breathed aloud, retreating to one side of the window, out of a direct line of sight. The shimmer grew thicker and took on a vaguely human shape, as if an invisible figure cast a shadow. McKendrick rubbed his eyes, but it was still there. “From ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night, the good Lord deliver us.”
Then he heard a faint melody and recognized Na Gael’s voice singing. He couldn’t quite make out the words at first, but once he did he risked opening the window. A flow of cold air swept into the room, followed by the tune “St. Patrick’s Breastplate”. “In Cymru at this fateful hour, I place all heaven with its power / And the sun with its brightness / And the snow with its whiteness . . .” McKendrick joined in a bass harmony beneath her melody, supporting the woman as she sang through to, “All these I place by God’s almighty help and grace / between myself and the powers of Darkness!” She stalked into view and the shimmering shadow faded away.
She kicked through the wet snow to where McKendrick leaned out the window. “Thank you, sir. You noticed it too?”
He stared past her, up at the thin moon. “The crescent moon is the symbol of Islam, isn’t it?”
“Among other things, yes sir.” She looked tired and McKendrick wondered if she’d been sleeping at all.
“What was that?” he asked, gesturing toward the spot where the strange shimmer had been.
She gave the warped grin that he was coming to recognize. “It was the effect of reflected light on the edges of a holoprojector field. Something, or someone, was sneaking around trying to be invisible, but the moonlight reflecting off the snow gave away the edges of the field’s energy projection.”
“Definitely extraterrestrial then,” and McKendrick shivered at more than the cold flowing into his quarters. “What about whoever’s on guard duty?”
“Extraterrestrial getting a little local help, I suspect. And I’m on my way to find out. Thank you for your help, sir. Good night,” and she slipped into shadows herself, vanishing around the corner of the building. As she did, a black shape ghosted in through the open window.
“Trust you to want to come in from the cold now,” the man growled to the feathery visitor. It shook to settle its plumage and nodded. Why me, McKendrick wondered again, then shut the window and the curtains and went to sleep.
He was up early the next day and met Commander Na Gael as he poured his first mug of tea in the temporary officers’ mess. “What did you find?”
“A carefully concealed hole in the fence, sir.” She added a touch of sweetener to the black tea. “With enough wire left to keep from breaking any electric circuits. Nice touch that—not many people bother with that detail.” The brunette drank some tea. “And footprints. Human shaped, but light for their apparent size.”
Her words didn’t improve McKendrick’s mood. In fact, as he thought about it, he realized what was very wrong. “Were you manipulating my feelings last night?”
“No sir. Why?” She cradled the thick china mug as if warming cold hands.
“Because I should have been very, very upset about intruders on this base! And you should have been as well.” His tone became accusatory.
Rachel stared off i
nto the distance. “Everything I did last night was aimed at the intruder, sir. The other effect on us . . . came from someone neutral who did not care to be disturbed as it worked. Or so I guess.”
That didn’t make McKendrick feel any better, but the arrival of Lieutenants Eastman and Allende terminated the conversation for the moment.
“I wonder what became of the bird-things?” Captain Edward O’Neil mused over his oatmeal half an hour later.
“I’ve not seen any more reports since yesterday morning,” Przilas said, adding extra cream to his own bowl. He ate, then stared at Rachel’s empty plate. “Good grief, Na Gael, where do you put it?” A large helping of eggs, three sausages, a rasher of bacon, two slices of toast, and two large spoons of kidneys had vanished.
“Fast metabolism.” She wiped her mouth. “The fats keep my pelt shiny. If you will please excuse me.” Rachel left the table.
A puzzled silence followed her departure and finally Moshe made the universal sign for “crazy,” twirling his finger at his temple.
“No argument here, sir,” Lieutenant Guadalupe Allende said around her coffee cup.
An hour later McKendrick, Przilas, Rachel, Sergeants St. John and Lee, Captains O’Neil and ben David, and Lieutenant Allende discussed the previous day’s events, and whether the threat had been eliminated.
“I wonder if discovering the operation in Caernarfon persuaded whoever brought the bird-things here to take them and leave, now that their allies have been neutralized.” Przilas had decided to play devil’s advocate by giving the best-case scenario.
His boss looked thoughtful. After whatever had happened late last night, he was tempted to agree, but something just didn’t feel right. He looked at his xenologist, who was studying an ordinance map of the region east of Caernarfon.