At that moment a familiar voice roared to them across the tumult: “Matthew Jones . . . Tomoko Jones . . . mein lieber Gott, ich habe euch vermifit . . . but Herr Ambassador, these are my friends, my very good friends, they are not reptiles, they are the ones who saved Japan—”
Matt was too overwhelmed to think anymore. Exhausted, he collapsed onto a bloodstained Louis Quinze sofa and stared dully at the people who milled about and chattered.
Meanwhile, the black man was alone on the lawn, waving a machine gun. To everyone’s astonishment, a small portal opened up in the vehicle, and two enormous robot arms shot out and gripped him fast. He appeared to be struggling and screaming for help as he was dragged into the tank.
When he was safely inside, Dingwall began to rail at the Visitors who were crammed in front of
the papinium tank’s control console.
“How dare you invade before the appointed day. Do you realize what this may have cost us, you fools? If 1 find out which of you is responsible—” “But, Dingwall,” one of them blurted out, “instructions came from your superior officer.” “Diana would never command such a thing! You’re lying. Diana well knows the importance of the papinium factor, and she certainly wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the possible reconquest of part of the northeastern sector.” What a relief it was to be addressing these cringing lackeys, Dingwall thought, and not have to worry constantly about his disguise! Enjoying his rage, knowing it might be the last thing he would enjoy if all hell broke loose over his pet project, he allowed his voice to rise to a truly terrifying metallic timbre. “I’ll see to it that you’re shipped back home on the next available transport! I’ve had enough of incompetents like you, who don’t even have the intelligence to make up decent lies! Diana’s orders indeed. You use her name like some kind of magic word, but—”
“If you please, commander,” began the subordinate diffidently, “It wasn’t Diana who gave the order.”
“Then who was it?”
But he had already guessed. That meddlesome Medea, still technically superior to him in rank, was up to her Machiavellian antics again! He was infinitely weary of all this . . . why couldn’t Diana simply have courtmartialled the bitch? But no, that gluttonous balloon exercised some kind of hold
over the supreme commander ....
“Very well,” he said at last. “I suppose you’re not entirely to blame. But I want you to rough me up now. Bruise me, hit me on the head.”
“But commander—”
“Do it! I order you to! I intend to look like a tremendous hero to these people, to turn this apparent setback into a stunning ploy for sympathy.”
He reeled as the lackey obeyed. He's enjoying this a little too much, he thought. He reminded himself to see that the creature was properly demoted as soon as he got back into a position of authority again—which, he was sure, this latest stunt would make very possible indeed.
Blows to his face and chest! The pain, burning, burning . . . there had to be no saurian bodily fluids, he told himself. The blood that ran down his face, dark and crimson, flowed from a little sac he had had installed in the dermoplast of his face. It did not reflect the pain within, but it ran into his eyes and affected his vision. “All right! Enough!” he grated.
They let go.
He emerged, battered and staggering, onto the lawn. The papinium tank roared as its antigravity hover-engines started up, and began to move away, kicking up stones and setting off little whirlwinds of dead leaves.
Feigning great distress, Dingwall gasped, “I told them . . . diplomatic status . . . threatened them . . . international asylum records . . . they saw reason . .
Then he collapsed into the arms of Tedescu, the ambassador’s butler and his secret slave. As he pretended weakness, he fixed the convert’s eyes with a hypnotic stare; he snared the creature in a net of mind control. Tedescu gazed blankly ahead like a zombie. Which, of course, was precisely what he was, Dingwall thought with satisfaction.
At once the servant began to exclaim, as the ambassador rushed up to see what the matter was, “Este erou!”
Andrescu proclaimed, “This man is a hero! He has made the marauding Visitors see the light of diplomatic reason, and has sent them back to the no-man’s land from which they came. A diplomatic triumph, in a small way!”
The guests started to cheer.
Tedescu carried Dingwall into the reception hall, where tables and sofas were hastily being moved.
Dingwall saw the wounded Matt Jones on the divan; he saw Tomoko and a strange fellow in a blue ninja costume; he saw the boy. If only he could kill them this very minute!
But that would only spoil the fun.
And give the game away.
He would get to them soon . . . soon!
Through the blur of sweat and tears, Matt saw lights: glittering, crystalline, swaying slightly from a vaulted, sculpted ceiling. The faces of his friends ... of CB, of Tomoko, of Fieh Chan, of Professor Schwabauer and Setsuko . . . was she wearing a geisha costume? Here in McLean, Virginia? Voices chattering; champagne glasses clinking; laughter.
I’m dreaming.
The blue ninja said, “We are safe for now, Matt Jones, my friend. Apparently we have been rescued by the conductor of a local youth orchestra.” “Orchestra—”
Music now, from somewhere far away.
A figure who resembled Bela Lugosi stood in front of them. When he opened his mouth, he sounded like him too.
“Welcome,” he said. “I am Ferenc Andrescu, your host. I am supposed to be the Romanian Ambassador here, but I have lately been dispossessed and live here only on suffrance and on my dwindling treasures. I have heard much of your sufferings, Matt Jones, from this man Schwabauer and from his friend. You shall stay here as my guest. I think of it as a sacred trust.”
“Thanks,” Matt whispered. Someone thrust a champagne glass into his hand. He thought: What are we celebrating? He said, “We should be fighting them! Now!”
“Not yet, Matt Jones,” said Andrescu. “You must hide your anger deep within yourself. Our conductor friend has parlayed a truce, and it must be remembered that we are theoretically at peace with the Visitors, here in the free states; there is ostensibly no war going on, and our freedoms are supposed to be respected by them.”
“No war with the lizards!” Matt groaned. “No war? But we—our enemies, our birthright, our planet—” He was floundering for words, but could find nothing to express his horror.
“One thing at a time, Matt,” Setsuko whispered.
He felt her hand on his forehead, swabbing the blood with a damp, cool cloth. “For the moment, we are still free.”
“Still . . . free . . .” He could think no more. Blissful blackness invaded his consciousness; the wavering chandeliers blinked out; the voices were stilled.
After a while Tomoko made CB leave the party and go to bed. That was the first sign he had that they had returned to some semblance of civilization. No one had ordered him to go to bed in a long time. Though he put up the customary protests, he was secretly relieved that they were treating him like a kid once more, and he retreated to the bedroom in the suite to which the ambassador had assigned them.
The noises of the party came, very faintly, from downstairs.
I’m just too hyper to sleep yet, he told himself.
There was a television in the living room of the suite. He sat on the floor and started clicking the remote, flicking from channel to channel.
There weren’t that many channels, not like in the old days of cable TV and 87 channels and HBO and Showtime. The lizards had taken over the satellite network that had once ringed the Earth and provided its inhabitants with the ceaseless information flow that kept it all together. But now no more.
He watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon for a while. It was the one where Bugs Bunny goes up in a rocket and lands in a weird alien landscape and is being chased around by Marvin Martian, who is about to destroy the Earth with a “space modulator,” and . . . well, he’d
seen it many times before. But it wasn’t funny any more, not with real aliens in real spaceships who really might destroy the real Earth ....
Then there was an announcer of some kind: news, maybe.
Everyone’s excited about the grand opening of the Spring Oaks Mall next week. The mayor said in an interview that this heralds a new age in our economic prosperity, and proves that we can live side by side with the Visitors in a peaceful coexistence ....
Views of an uncompleted shopping mall. Banners. Signs.
At the opening ceremony, the McLean Youth Orchestra will perform the world premiere of a work by an alien composer. The Galactic Symphony, by Loukas Stourmwitch, is a work designed to promote intergalactic brotherhood... the composer could not, because of the red dust infestation, be present at the ceremony, but has sent a congratulatory note from the Visitors’ home planet.
CB remembered how the aliens had dismembered and eaten his parents before his very eyes. He couldn’t stand to hear this news. Was it better to be free, when you became blind to what the aliens really were, to the fact that they were despoilers, pitiless, sadistic? Angrily, he switched it off.
Then he heard a melody coming from a distant part of the house. It was some kind of musical instrument; sometimes it would sound haunting, at other times it squawked hideously. Someone practicing.
What the hell? he thought. He got up, threw on a Japanese sleeping robe, and went out into the hall.
It was a lonely, big house. The sounds of the party were subsiding, and the music was more clear now. It was a clarinet, he thought, or maybe a saxophone.
He went up some stairs.
Another staircase now, a winding one that led off a closetlike doorway; the servants’ staircase, probably. CB remembered seeing things like that in BBC shows like “Upstairs, Downstairs.” A landing now, a small room.
A little girl sat playing the clarinet. A succession of extremely bizarre noises was issuing from the instrument.
CB said, “Sounds pretty grody to me.”
The girl said, “Like, who’re you? What are you doing in my room, anyways?”
He said, “Well I, like, heard this weird music and I just followed it here. My name’s Chris, but people call me CB. I’m from—”
“California, and you wonder how I can tell.” She giggled and shrugged back her curly blond hair, and tugged at a loose strand in her neon pink sweater.
“You’re pretty foxy,” CB said. “Like, what’s your name?”
“I’m Nadia Tedescu.”
“Whew! Are you Romanian?”
“What do you think?” she laughed. “My dad works for the ambassador. We’re live-in staff. I go
to McLean Junior High. You will too. You’re one of the new Joneses, right? Dad told me to look out for you. He said that Californians are precocious.” “Hey.”
She went on, “I guess I’ll see you in school.” “School?” It hadn’t occurred to him, after all he’d been through, that he would have to go. He was getting pretty disenchanted with freedom already, after only a couple of hours of it. “I didn’t have to go to school for a whole year. We just went out and fought lizards. We even went to Japan in a skyfighter. It was totally awesome.”
“Is that some kind of a line?” Nadia said, laughing. He could tell she was impressed, though.
He said, “And what was that weird noise you
were making?”
“That?” She put down her clarinet. “It’s
whatchamacallit’s, I mean Loukas Stourmwitch’s Galactic Symphony. We’re playing it in the youth orchestra. You know? The new shopping mall? Galactic brotherhood and all that? I know, it’s bullshit, but I don’t care; I’ve lived in a diplomat’s house all my life. Ambassador Andrescu’s almost like a father to me. He lost all his own kids, you know.”
“Lizards?”
“No. Russians, I think. He won’t talk about it, but my dad knows all about it.”
“But that stuff you’re playing sounds horrible.”
“It’s just modern, that’s all. Why don’t you come along to our rehearsal tomorrow? It’s really neat, and you can meet some other kids, and maybe we could go to the mall.”
“Sure,” CB said. “But only because you’re so foxy.”
The girl giggled again. CB missed having friends his own age. They chatted for a long time. It was only after he’d gone back to bed that CB wondered what was wrong with her eyes. The girl had a beautiful face, but her eyes just stared ahead, not looking at you.
Probably just a typical airhead facial expression, he told himself as he lay down on the sofa, in front of the television. Matt and Tomoko had already fallen fast asleep, and the blue ninja had gone home with Dr. Schwabauer and Setsuko.
Freedom wasn’t so bad, even if it meant school again. There was that girl to think of, and he’d be making other friends.
He hadn’t felt so safe in a long, long time.
PART 3
SYMPHONY OF TERROR
Chapter 18
When Dingwall reached his Alexandria home, he immediately stormed into the basement and began frantically calling headquarters. However, they all seemed busy with the Los Angeles situation, and it was morning before he was able to raise anyone at all. Diana was the first one he reached.
He threw up his arms in frustration as the lizard leader’s face appeared in the monitor. “I did the best I could,” he said. “They’re buying it for the time being ... in fact, I’m some kind of hero, as a matter of fact. Because of my bravery and my willingness to take my diplomatic lumps, we’re going to have even more people than I originally anticipated show up at the premiere, it seems. Nevertheless, the presence of your escapees can only mean trouble. Luckily, I know where they are. They’re staying at the Romanian ambassador’s house, and as it happens I have the place crawling with converts!” He allowed a smug smile to play across his artificial features, and, although Diana’s face was frozen into a grimace of implacability, he
knew that she was secretly pleased.
“In fact,” he went on, “I even have a little girl convert for the little boy. These humans are very sentimental creatures; I’ve no doubt that a little love interest, even in one so young, is just the right thing to suck them into our trap.”
Diana said, “Well, I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense. You’ll have your little invasion, and you’ll capture my resistance fighters for me, and you’ll have your promotion; while Medea can languish while her tongue grows back.”
“Her tongue?” Dingwall was almost convulsed with laughter.
“Yes, it seems that it was sliced off in a recent fracas with the resistance. I know I shouldn’t laugh over it, but she does deserve it, considering how she’s allowed the pleasures of this planet’s cuisine to go to her head ... or should I say her abdomen? You should have seen the blood and venom dripping from her tongue! It was hilarious.”
“Alas, my incognito pose does not allow me to enjoy such spectacles,” Dingwall sighed, as he removed a small water-vole from a bell jar by its tail and proceeded to consume it thoughtfully. “You really are so much luckier than 1 in your position.”
“Well, . . .” said Diana, idly preening herself.
He scrounged around in the bell jar, trying to catch another creature. His hands fastened around a mink, which he pulled out. It nipped at his hand, but he didn’t mind. “I love the texture of minks. I love the way the fur tickles the throat.” He started to chomp down on the creature now, severing its jugular with the first bite. “Ah . . . but still and all it’s nothing like a young human being. Knowing that the human possesses a shred of intelligence, that it can actually think and feel and is profoundly discomfited by one’s devouring of it, adds immeasurably to its flavor, doesn’t it? And there’s a subtle aftertaste. Like their culture—raucous, undisciplined and primitive though it is—ah, their culture—”
“Come on, Dingwall. I really do think you allow your perverse love of these natives’ culture to go too far.”
“Maybe so,” Dingwall said. “But then I always did like playing with my food.”
Medea did not much enjoy the ministrations of the lackey who was painting her ravaged tongue with an astringent tincture.
“And no food for at least two days,” the nurse said, as she applied the burning mixture with a cotton swab around which she had wrapped her own, gloriously lengthy tongue. “It will have all grown back by then, I’m sure.”
She looked out over the sun deck of the Phoenix Hilton, fretting and yelping as they held her down. If only there were more time! She wanted to be present to lead the charge that weekend, to have at least some share in the glory; or else Diana would surely crush her utterly.
“At least I can have a little liquid sustenance, surely,” Medea whined, and the nurse brought her a small chalice full of human blood, which she quaffed greedily.
Revenge! she thought bitterly, remembering the times when she had held power and had exercised it mercilessly, as a good reptile should.
The blue ninja had disappeared once more. Tomoko knew
The ambassador was talking about the legend of nosferatu. “It’s really somewhat different from those films, you know,” he said. “For example, did you know that vampires are capable of turning into fine mists, and going through ladies’ keyholes? I suspect Dr. Freud would have had a lot to say about that, da? But truly, I have come to feel that the saurians have come to stand, in the popular consciousnes, for what our nosferatu used to represent.”
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