V 16 - Symphony of Terror

by Somtow Sucharitkul (UC) (epub)

  “Oh, it’s so horrible,” Tomoko said. He did not look her in the eyes, but he knew that she must be weeping. He felt her head on his shoulder; felt the kid’s hands too, lightly resting on his neck from the back seat; he drew comfort from the closeness of his strange family.

  “Easy,” he said, “easy. We’re leaving all this behind for good.”

  In the rear view mirror he saw that CB was gazing, almost hypnotized, at the lump of papinium Julie had given them. Foreboding touched him, but he tried to shrug it off.

  “Three, four days to freedom,” he said softly. “Freedom!” Tomoko said. And she began to sob now, and he felt her warm tears in his hair, and he wanted to cry too; but he was too angry at what the aliens had done to all of them.

  “Arizona soon,” he said. “In a few more hours.” CB slept.

  The young converted recruit trembled in the presence of the Visitor, his superior officer. “But they told me—”

  “Nonsense!” said the Visitor furiously as the recruit slipped in beside him in the front seat of the vehicle. “The reports clearly indicate that no vehicle like theirs was sent out in pursuit of . . . unless they’re resistance fighters! Describe them!”

  “One was an oriental woman; then there was this blond kid with sort of a punk haircut. But they were wearing Visitor uniforms!”

  “1 suspect ... I don’t know what. Where are they heading?”

  “Eastward on Route 10.”

  “Ha! Toward Arizona!” said the Visitor. “1 think-—”

  “Shall I file a report, sir?”

  “No, you idiot! Have you no idea how things work among us Visitors? If we file, it’ll be out of our hands and there’ll be no room for advancement. I think I’ll just send word ahead to . . . one of the Arizona officers. We’ll meet in the middle, catch them, and get all the credit between us; there’s no point in alerting any higher authority* Besides, it may well be nothing.”

  “Yes, sir. Shall I put through a call to the Phoenix control center, sir?”

  “At once!”

  “Whom shall I address it to?”

  “Let me see . . . oh, yes, Phoenix . . . that would be Medea. She was demoted to a mere city commander after her disastrous failure with that Florida project. She’ll be delighted at chance to look good in Diana’s eyes. We’ll all benefit from this . . . if it’s not a false alarm. If it is . . . well, you see why we shouldn’t get excited. It’d be our heads if Diana got involved and it turned out to be something stupid.”

  “Yes, sir. Medea, sir. At once, sir,” said the young recruit, relieved that he had been at least temporarily reprieved from gracing his superior officer’s dinner table, and he reached for the communication device that depended from the dashboard of the Visitor vehicle.

  He fiddled with the controls for a moment; then, after a burst of video static, the face of a beautiful woman appeared on the two-inch screen of the communicator.

  “Medea,” the woman said. To the recruit’s horror, she appeared very, very displeased indeed. But as he told her his tale, her expression gradually shifted into one of deponiac glee.

  Chapter 2

  Phoenix, Arizona, was too insignificant a city to have a Mother Ship hovering over it. Instead, the Visitors had taken over the famed Phoenix Hilton hotel and transformed it into a control center. The huge sundeck of the hotel, where once tourists had lazed and swum and relaxed in the capacious Jacuzzi, was now the takeoff de,ck for the center’s one skyfighter-— a deficient model at that, with only one of its laser cannon working.

  At least it’s dry and hot, like the home planet, thought Medea, the center’s commander, as she shut off the video receiver in her command chamber, a glass-walled room that overlooked the makeshift skyport. It’s bleak and searing . . . just the way I like it! But she was just trying to convince herself. She didn’t believe it for a moment. She really wanted to return to the lap of luxury, to being one of Diana’s favorites once more. If only that Florida project hadn’t been such an unmitigated disaster! It had almost killed her. And her present position was worse than death: to be commander of a hardship garrison, ill-equipped and low in status. Why, it

  was little better than being a common recruit!

  That was why it was so good that that stupid officer and his recruit had called her. What fools! Didn’t they realize who their three escapees were, who they had to be?

  The Jones family!

  The notorious family of martial arts experts who had wrought such utter havoc in Tokyo that another fine plan had had to be abandoned: the plan of creating an entire army of soulless converts who could kill with their bare hands. And Murasaki dead now, and Wu Piao, and that double-crossing Fieh Chan disappeared no one knew where.

  It had to be Matt and Tomoko Jones and their runt of a son.

  Now was Medea’s chance.

  Forget that officer who hoped to move up a mere rung or two in the hierarchy . . . Medea had a chance at the dizzying heights of supreme commanderhood.

  Diana will listen to me now, she thought. She’ll have to. And I’ll be reassigned to some decent Mother Ship as commander, instead of ruling over this miserable hellhole.

  She stared out over the sundeck beneath her window. Across the street was a skyscraper made of glass, like a gigantic mirror: cloud reflections scudded slowly across it, and the sun’s glare seemed to bore into her artificial human eyes. If only she could remove this ape suit and appear in the full glory of her squamose beauty!

  A plate of raw human hands rested at her elbow. She reached forward, took one, munched on it purposefully as she leaned back on the divan upon which she sat. She sucked the marrow and spat out the bones one by one. Delicious! She took a long draft of chilled blood from a frosted goblet, and replenished the cup from a large pitcher beside it. It’s boredom that makes me want to eat all the time, she thought. I thank the supreme saurian that something exciting is finally happening! It will help me watch my weight. This world is just too full of rich, luxurious foods. She threw away the hand and selected another, gnawing greedily at it.

  No use putting it off any further! she told herself at last, and reached over to the console on her coffee table. On the far wall, a monitor beeped and a test signal became visible. “Get me the Los Angeles Mother Ship,” she said. “I want a direct line to Diana herselfl”

  After a pause, she found herself looking into the face of the supreme commander. Beautiful and utterly deadly, Medea thought.

  “So,” Diana said, her eyes darting scornfully over her colleague’s surroundings. “Eating again! Don’t bother me. We’ve important business here, what with the riots over the death of Nathan Bates. I haven’t any time to talk to you.”

  “You’ve plenty of time for that Lydia,” Medea said, allowing a twinge of jealousy to show through. “Tell me what you want. I haven’t got all day.” “I’ve news . . . news that will stir even you to action, Diana. The Jones family happens to be fleeing into my jurisdiction.”

  “If this is some sort of hoax—”

  “Nothing of the kind!” Medea began to describe what the officer had told her.

  “It sounds plausible,” said Diana.

  “Why would they do that?” Medea said. “It’s certain death, after all. Isn’t it?”

  “Medea darling,” Diana said, with more than a hint of menace in her voice, “you never seem to learn about these humans, do you? They love to die. Especially when there’s some principle involved: truth, or justice, or whatever. Rather amusing, really.”

  Medea was used to being the butt of Diana’s humor. She stiffened, but suffered in silence, for Diana was the key to her reinstatement. And perhaps, one day, she would even be able to manipulate the powers on the home planet . . . and get herself made Diana’s replacement! Better to go along with things for now. Until a chance to strike back. Which would be very soon, Medea thought, chuckling inwardly.

  “You don’t say anything?” Diana said. “I suppose you’re just waiting for me to send out a fleet of s
kyfighters to bail you out. You’re afraid to take on a mere three human beings. You are a complete failure, Medea dear. You should have stayed home and joined that dreadful preta-na-ma sect.”

  “Come now! Humor’s one thing, but you don’t have to be vulgar. Besides, I intend to capture the creatures myself. You will have their heads. My word on it!”

  Diana cackled hideously. “That’s the old Medea,” she said. “Perhaps, if you succeed, we may . . . reconsider your position,” she added with much-belabored casualness.

  “You might want to send me a properly functional skyfighter,” Medea said, pressing her luck.

  “No! We need them all here. You’ll just have to use what you’ve got. Now go! There’s a limit to my patience. I told you I was busy.”

  Diana’s image vanished from the viewscreen.

  Medea looked at the plate. She’d finished off all the food without even noticing it. She hated Diana with all her heart; not least because, in exchange for appointing Medea as a commander, she had taken advantage of her position as superior officer to inflict her loathsome caresses on her junior. Not that Medea was above using sex herself for political ends. But she preferred cleaner, more classical methods. Like assassination. Or even promotion by combat. Sex was too devious. It was almost as bad as thinking. She remembered what had happened to that Fieh Chan, her classmate at the military academy on the homeworld, when he had started to think too much. He’d gone crazy, gotten hoodwinked by that preta-na-ma garbage . . . and now he was dead.

  A fate which Medea did not intend to befall herself.

  She wondered whether she should call in the steward, a loyal convert, and have him go down into the kitchens for more food. But no. It was time for business.

  Rousing herself from her lethargy, she summoned a technician to ready the skyfighter into at least manageable condition. I won’t fly it myself, she thought. It’s just too rickety. I’ll make some underling take all the risks.

  After all, I wouldn’t want to Injure a being who might one day become supreme commander of this planet!

  Chapter 3

  Endless desert, desolate, uninhabited. But, Tomoko thought, there was a kind of bleak beauty to it. The sun was setting over distant mountains, and the sky was streaked with brooding crimson. “Can we stop?” she said. They had changed drivers; she had been going for about five hours now, and was getting tired.

  “Can I drive?” CB piped up from the back.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tomoko said.

  “Let him,” said Matt. “There’s nobody on the road. Who gives a damn anymore? You think the traffic cops are going to stop an official lizard vehicle?”

  “1 guess not,” Tomoko said. “But—”

  “C’mon, Mom,” CB said. On the rare occasions when he called her that she never knew what to think; it confused her. Abruptly, she brought the car to a halt beside an embankment of sand dotted with monstrous cacti, their twisty shapes dark against the sunset. They seemed like prehistoric monsters, like nightmares. CB said, “I can drive good, Tomoko.”

  Why not? she thought. After all, Matt had taught him all he knew of ninjitsu and other martial arts; surely driving a car couldn’t require any more coordination than one of those complicated moves! She looked at Matt; Matt shrugged and said, “You’re the boss.”

  “No, you are,” she said.

  “You are.”

  “You are.”

  They kissed for a long moment. Was this what freedom was all about? she thought. Desperately she clung to him. “Oh, it’s so desolate here,” she said, “we’re alone together, just us against ... so much ... so many more miles to go.” And she kissed him again and again.

  At long last she felt a sharp prod in her back. “Hey, dudes, cut it out, huh? Like, if we don’t blow we’ll get totally boned.”

  They broke apart. “Sure,” Tomoko said, “let the kid drive. We’ll just get in the back seat.”

  “Thanks a million,” CB said sarcastically, “for letting me drive just so you two can get it on! Just call me Mr. Chauffeur.” He slid the van door open and started to clamber out.

  “I hope you’ve still got that papinium nugget,” Tomoko said, panicking a little.

  “Oh, that blue shiny lump? I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. It’s, like, totally malleable, you know? Look at this!” He pulled a flat sheet out of his pocket. “That used to be a lump and now it’s square. I did it with my bare hands. But it’s hard as shit at the same time.”

  Tomoko said, taking it and feeling its oddly slippery texture, “Weird. You know, I remember back when I did physics in college, they talked about how one day they might be able to synthesize super-heavy elements with really high atomic numbers, and how they’d be much more stable than the radioactive ones around 100, 101 .. . and have bizarre properties like supermalleability. . .

  “What are you talking about?” said Matt, who had always had this problem with her college degrees.

  “I think she means,” said CB, “that this stuff will stretch and stretch into a covering maybe one or two molecules thick, but it’ll be, like, totally impermeable to the red dust, because a bacterium is a whole lot bigger than one or two molecules, so it won’t be able to penetrate the mesh of particles. Kind of like a mosquito net.”

  “I see,” said Matt. “Thank you for putting it into terms even an airhead like me can understand.”

  “Such self-awareness!” Tomoko kidded. They embraced again. Tomoko had not felt such love for him since the days of their courtship. Was it the loneliness of the desert? Or was it the terrible feeling that this happiness could never last? She could not tell. I have to accept this love as a gift, she thought, and ask no questions. That was what her mother would have told her, she was sure, her mother who had endured so much abuse from the macho, all-American husband. But then, that was why she had married Matt; she saw in him a little of her father.

  “Ahem,” CB said, startling her. He put out his hand to take back the papinium sample, waited for

  Tomoko and Matt to climb into the back of the van, and sat down proudly at the wheel. “Shit!” he said suddenly.

  “What?” Matt said.

  “I can’t reach the pedals.”

  “Are you sure he can—” Tomoko began.

  “Oh, yeah,” Matt said. “Here,” he rooted around behind the back seat, where all their belongings were piled up, “use one of these books.” He handed them across. “Just slip them under your foot.” “Wait a minute, those are my books,” Tomoko said in alarm.

  CB looked them over before he carefully positioned them: “Chill! Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun . . . sci-fi stuff.” “They happen to be very important books,” Tomoko said.

  “We don’t need science fiction anymore,” Matt said, “we’re living it now.”

  On this grim note they started out again. Tomoko relaxed in Matt’s comforting arms, lulled by the humming of the van as it rushed down the empty freeway.

  Suddenly, looking up, she noticed that the scenery was going by rather faster than it should have been. Was it her imagination, or did that cactus —what cactus? “Have you checked the speedometer?” she said to Matt.

  Matt groaned sleepily. “What speedometer?” She sat bolt upright. It was very dark now. She looked across at the dashboard. “You slow down this minute, CB!” she said.

  “Huh?” he looked around.

  “Keep your eyes on the road!” She reached across and tried to grab the steering wheel.

  “Relax, To'moko, it’s casual,” he said. To her horror she noticed that they were going at over a hundred miles an hour—and that the accelerator had been jammed down with a pile of science fiction hardcovers—and that CB was sitting crosslegged on the front seat in the lotus position! “Stop the car!” she screamed.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” CB said. “Matt taught me how to do this.”

  She shook Matt. “Have you been corrupting our son?” she said.

&nbs
p; “Well, I have been giving the kid driving lessons,” Matt said. “And it’s natural for guys to want to drive fast. To quote John Wayne, ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,’ right? Hey, you want to get to Washington, don’t you?”

  “In one piece!”

  “Like, it’s casual,” CB said. He made no move to slow down.

  After a moment, Tomoko noticed a strange flashing in the night sky. A sudden illumination that swept across the landscape, making it glitter . . . almost as though they were on some alien planet. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Huh?” Matt said, stirring from slumber.

  “That heat lightning, or chain lightning, whatever it’s called. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  “That’s no heat lightning!” CB shrieked.

  “It’s too regular,” Matt said, alert suddenly. “What could it—whoa! Look there!”

  A sheet of cold blue traversed the darkness . . . then, emerging from the light, a dark silhouette, like a black bird of prey ... the light slowly arcing back and forth. “A probe beam!” Matt said. “Shit, CB, step on it! Tomoko, heip me get our lizard laser pistols out of the back!”

  Tomoko saw the skyfighter clearly for the first time. She barely had time to scream when the first bolt of blue laser light speared the darkness, missing the van by only a few feet. “We’re trapped!” she said. “God knows how many of them there are. We’re virtually sitting ducks—and a teenage kid who can’t even reach the pedals is driving the van!” “Shut up and shoot,” Matt said, thrusting a heavy object into her arms.

  It was one of the miniature laser cannon the resistance had captured from the aliens in one of their many skirmishes.

  Chapter 4

  From the relative safety of a patrol vehicle some miles away, Medea watched the entire spectacle on an enormous monitor screen. The pilot, one of the young, ill-trained riff-raff that the high command was constantly sending her, was having some trouble getting the skyfighter to do what he wanted.