Sure, I texted back. We can be ready by then.
I’ll let him know. XOXO, Mom.
She always signed off like that. I’d tried to tell her that no one really did that in texts anymore, but she’d just laughed at me and said she was too old and set in her ways to change. Which was actually kind of silly, since she was only in her mid-fifties.
Gideon came into the kitchen then, wearing one of his new pairs of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. This one seemed a little tight on him, but I didn’t mind, since it showed off the nicely defined contours of his biceps.
I caught myself staring and said quickly, “Um, my father and Lance Rinehart are coming over later this morning. I guess they have some things they want to talk to us about.”
“All right.”
He didn’t seem particularly fazed by that information, so I asked, “What do you think they want?”
“Well, I assume they have new information. I doubt it’ll be anything pleasant, though.”
Thank you, Susie Sunshine, I thought. But then I realized he was probably right. With everything that was going on, the chances of the news being unpleasant were pretty high. Figuring we’d find out soon enough, I said, “Tea or coffee?”
“Wasn’t that tea we were drinking yesterday?”
“Yes, the iced version. People generally drink it hot in the morning, though.”
Apparently the hot variety didn’t appeal to him any more than the iced kind, though, because he replied, “I’ll try coffee, I think. I’ve heard a great deal about it.”
“Don’t believe the hype,” I said, and he frowned.
“Do you think I won’t like it?”
“I don’t know. You don’t seem to like tea that much, and coffee has a much stronger taste. But you’re down here on Earth, so you might as well try new things.”
Our eyes met as I made that remark, and a little shiver went down my spine. Oh, I’d like to try all sorts of new things with him, and if the need that had awakened in his expression was any indication, he was certainly open to new experiences as well.
My cheeks flushing furiously, I went to the pantry and got out the bag of French roast I found there. At least I did know how to make coffee, even if I didn’t drink it all that often. It was something I could do for my father when he was buried in a book, trying to meet a deadline.
As I busied myself with getting the coffeemaker going, I said, my tone probably too casual, “Did you ever have your food synthesizer make Earth-style breakfasts? Eggs, toast, that kind of thing?”
“Bread, no. It did not do well with complex carbohydrates. I did have eggs.” His eyes closed briefly, as if he was recalling a pleasant memory. “And bacon.”
It seemed his taste buds were human enough. But there hadn’t been any bacon in the care package my mother had sent over with me. Oh, well. Maybe I’d send a text later and see if my father could stop on the way over and get us an emergency supply.
“No bacon, unfortunately. But I’ll make some eggs and toast. Maybe the toast will be a treat, since you haven’t had much bread in your life.”
He didn’t seem too disappointed by that prospect. “That sounds very good.”
So I got busy with putting a simple breakfast together, and when it was done, we sat down and ate it at the dining room table. Gideon appeared to enjoy everything, even the coffee. I didn’t have too much time to savor my meal, though, because the hour was inching toward nine o’clock, and that meant I didn’t have a lot of time to shower and get ready before my father and Lance showed up. Since Gideon was already dressed, I told him he could watch some TV if he wanted while I was getting ready.
“Of course,” he told me, and took his freshened-up cup of coffee with him into the living room.
I hurried off to take my shower, glad that it seemed as if it was going to be another mild day, which meant my hair shouldn’t take interminably long to dry. Even so, I went as quickly as I could, rushing through the shower and the toothbrushing and all the other things I had to do to get ready. Since it was just my father and Lance, I didn’t worry about primping, but just scrunched some product into my wet hair to keep it from frizzing, then put on some colored lip balm and a single coat of mascara.
When I headed back out to the living room, it was five minutes until ten. Not too shabby. Gideon paused the television and turned toward me. He must have been watching how I worked the controls the night before. “You look very well.”
I smiled, but thought the compliment was a little misplaced. I hadn’t done that much to get ready, and only had on some jeans, a tank top, and one of my denim shirts on over that. But I still thanked him, then said, “We might as well turn that off. They’re going to be here any minute.”
Gideon obediently picked up the remote and shut down the TV. Not a moment too soon, because in almost the next instant, the doorbell sounded. My heart started to beat a little faster, which I thought was kind of silly. I’d known Lance all my life.
True, I thought, as I opened the door, but Gideon hasn’t.
My father and Lance came inside, and Lance stopped in the little entryway, his gaze fixed on Gideon.
“So,” he said, “this is the alien.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Half-alien, Lance,” my father said, his tone mild enough, but there was an undercurrent of steel to it nonetheless. Not that he and Lance didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but my mother had probably filled him in on the situation with Gideon and me, and my father wasn’t about to let anyone diss his only daughter’s boyfriend.
Or whatever Gideon was to me.
He got up from the couch. His expression was nearly impossible to read, but I could feel a pulse of irritation come from him before it was quickly clamped down. “I am Lir Gideon.”
“Gideon, this is Lance Rinehart,” I put in, even though that was stating the obvious. “He’s an old friend of the family.”
“Emphasis on the ‘old,’” Lance said. He didn’t crack a smile. When he got like that, I always had the hardest time trying to figure out whether he was joking or not. But then, he’d had military training in remote viewing, which also meant that he’d learned some insanely rigorous mental controls. He was another person I couldn’t read, his thoughts clamped down so tightly that nothing ever slipped out.
“Um, I thought we could sit at the dining room table,” I said. “There really isn’t enough space in the living room.”
“That’s fine, Taryn,” my father replied. He didn’t say anything else, but his expression appeared somewhat relieved.
We all went into the dining room, although I didn’t sit down immediately. Instead, I told everyone that I’d bring some glasses and water. That was about all I had to offer when it came to entertaining, but I figured it would suffice. My father and Lance weren’t exactly here on a social call.
I fetched the pitcher and four glasses, then sat down opposite Gideon. Lance and my father had already taken their respective positions at the head and foot of the table.
“So,” I said, after everyone had some water and I’d set the pitcher down on the tabletop, “what have you found out?”
“Nothing good,” my father said grimly. “We got the network on alert and received reports of about eighty fresh disappearances overnight, most of them here in the U.S., but a few in Central America and also in Australia. The word had gone out to tell people to take precautions, but of course we can’t reach everyone.”
“And there are way too many people who don’t believe anything is going on at all,” Lance commented with a twist of his mouth. His silver-gray eyes had always looked cold to me, but now they appeared positively glacial. “They all think because something isn’t on the news or on the internet, then it can’t actually be happening.” He shifted in his seat and pinned Gideon with that icy stare. “So how many of our women do your people plan to abduct? Your ship’s going to get full pretty quickly at this rate.”
If I’d had Lance glaring at me like that, I doubt
ed I would have been quite so composed. But Gideon only lifted his shoulders and said, “As I was not privy to Lir Shalan’s plans, I can’t say for sure. The Eclipse — that is their ship — is large enough to hold thousands. There is also the possibility that they are only holding the women in orbit here until another ship can come to take them away. Again, I can only speculate, because I was not included in any of these plans.”
Lance’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t missed the way Gideon had referred to the Reptilians as “they” rather than “us.” Whether he truly believed that Gideon had switched sides was a whole other story.
“In slightly better news,” my father said, “we were able to get a small team from Caltech to come out here and take a look at Gideon’s transporter/comm device. They arrived late last night. Jeff definitely came through for us on that one.”
Jeff Makowski, a computer hacker that my father had known for longer than I’d been alive. For someone who was, by all accounts, pretty damn antisocial, he did seem to be connected to a lot of people.
“Did Jeff come with them?” I asked. I sort of wanted to see the legend in person. He’d come to Sedona just a few months ago, to help hack into one of the alien’s handheld computers, but he hadn’t hung around long enough for me to meet him.
“No,” my father replied. He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t really need to. I’d caught flashes from him before on the subject of Jeff Makowski, so I knew that Jeff had had some sort of crush on Kirsten back in the day, and hadn’t been too thrilled when she’d gotten together with Martin instead. And apparently that old wound hadn’t healed very well, because Jeff had quarreled with Kirsten when he was here in December, and departed in yet another huff.
It was understandable, but I was still a little disappointed.
“I got them set up in a maker space off Coffee Pot Drive,” Lance said.
“Maker space?” Gideon asked, obviously confused.
“A shop with equipment like 3D printers and CNC machines, that sort of thing,” my father explained. “People pay a monthly fee so they can come in and use the equipment to fabricate things they need.”
Gideon nodded, and Lance continued, “The maker space has a good deal of the equipment the group from Caltech might need, and we’ll bring in anything else if necessary. I pointed out to Paul that it would have made more sense to take the device to them in California, but he wouldn’t hear of it.”
“I didn’t think it was a good idea to send it out of Sedona.” My father’s gaze flicked toward Gideon and back over to me. “It’s irreplaceable. Better that we have it someplace where we can keep an eye on it.”
“Thank you for that,” Gideon said. “I would have been…uncomfortable…knowing it was so far away.”
My father didn’t quite smile, but I saw a corner of his mouth twitch, as if that was his way of saying “I told you so” to Lance. “Not a problem,” he said. “About all we can do now is wait, though, and hope it won’t take too long for them to figure out how to reverse-engineer the device.”
He sounded hopeful, but even the brain trust from Caltech that was on the case couldn’t guarantee results in anything close to a timely fashion. And in the meantime, women would continue to disappear while the world’s leaders sat back and considered their loss a fair bargain in exchange for Reptilian tech. If it was even the people at the very top who were calling the shots. I couldn’t speak for every country around the world, but in the United States, it seemed that half the time the left hand didn’t know what the right was doing.
“Perhaps I could go help,” Gideon said. “I’m not a scientist or an engineer, but I am more familiar with the technology than your scientists would be.”
“Not a good idea.” Lance’s tone was flat, and he sent a not-quite-derisive look in Gideon’s direction, clearly taking in the green skin and dark red eyes. “We’d have a hell of a time explaining you away.”
“They wouldn’t have to know.” Although Gideon looked calm enough, I heard an edge to his voice and knew that he wasn’t overly thrilled with Lance Rinehart. “I can easily walk among you.” His finger swiped over the metal stud on his leather bracelet, and at once he looked like a perfectly normal human, skin tanned and healthy-looking, eyes dark brown.
Lance didn’t exactly let out a whistle, but he leaned back in his chair and nodded. “Nice trick. It could come in handy. But even if your appearance didn’t give you away, there’s too much risk that they’d figure out you’re a little too familiar with the Reptilian tech to be a plain old human being. Better for you to stay out of their orbit. If something comes up that gets them really stuck, I’ll pass it along.”
“If that’s what you wish.”
“It is.”
“Isn’t there anything else we can do?” I asked, feeling almost as helpless as I had the night before, when I’d been caught in Lir Shalan’s mental version of a tractor beam. “What those scientists are doing is great, but it could take days, or weeks.”
“I know, Taryn,” my father said. “The problem is, even if we could get every single person in all our UFO networks to work together, we don’t have any real power. Yes, we’ve finally been proven not to be utter crackpots, but none of us hold public office. A few are in the military, but I guarantee that the rank and file — and probably everyone except those at the very top — don’t have any more idea of what’s going on than the regular person on the street.”
“And when someone tries to get the word out, it gets pulled almost as soon as it goes up,” Lance added. “A lot of our people have their own internet channels, so they figured that would be the best way to spread the word. But they’ll no sooner post a video than it’s nuked. Some of them have had their channels shut down altogether and had their accounts yanked. The people keeping a lid on this are too powerful…and there are a lot of them.”
I slumped in my chair. Across the table, Gideon watched me with worried brown eyes. They didn’t seem quite as unfamiliar now, probably because I knew their shape even if the color was different. Besides, that had been the color of his mother’s eyes. From the way he shifted his weight, I had the impression that he wished we didn’t have the table separating us, so he might reach out and take me in his arms, give me what comfort he could.
Or maybe he was just wishing that my father and Lance weren’t there.
“Taryn, I know how you feel,” my father said. “But you have to be patient.” He glanced over at Gideon. “I know you said you weren’t included in your father’s — ”
“Lir Shalan’s,” Gideon corrected him. He sounded calm enough, but there was something in his tone that made it clear he wouldn’t be contradicted.
“Lir Shalan’s plans,” my father went on. “But can you make any kind of educated guess as to how many women would be adequate for his purposes? Are we talking several thousand here? Ten thousand? More?”
Gideon didn’t answer right away. His fingers rested at the base of the water glass before him, but he made no move to pick it up. “Their race is very depleted. It’s something they’ve managed to hide from the Assembly for some time, but their numbers are nothing close to what they once were. Because of that, and because this is such a hit-or-miss way of reproducing, I would guess that they would need far more than a few thousand. A hundred thousand?” I gasped, and he sent me a sympathetic look before continuing, “Perhaps a million?”
“That’s impossible,” Lance said, but the worried flicker in his eyes seemed to indicate he wasn’t completely certain, despite his denial.
“Is it? There are how many people here on Earth?”
“A little less than eight billion,” my father replied, since Lance didn’t seem inclined to answer.
“What is a million, measured against that number? A few drops of water in an ocean.”
“These are people,” I argued. “Not drops of water. They have friends, family who will miss them. Lir Shalan can’t possibly think he can take that many without someone noticing.”
&nb
sp; “People are noticing, and yet nothing has changed,” Gideon said. His tone seemed cool enough, but I could see the compassion in his eyes, feel it radiating out from him. He wanted to comfort me. The problem was that he had nothing comforting to say. “I doubt there’s much we can do — except hopefully come up with a way to create a device that will block their conveyors.”
I didn’t reply, because it seemed as if every protest I could devise was immediately shot down. All right, there were people in charge who were doing their very best to carry out the Reptilians’ agenda. But still, there were far more of us than there were of them. If enough people rose up, something would have to change.
Then I realized I was contemplating an all-out revolution, which I knew was completely crazy. Even if it was somehow possible to get any kind of momentum going for that sort of uprising, I had no doubt that it would be quashed quickly enough. And that would mean even more people hurt. No, I feared that Gideon was right. We needed to cut the Reptilians off at the knees rather than march in the streets and demand justice.
Still, I found myself praying that when this was all over, the people who’d brokered this unholy deal would get what was coming to them.
Since we didn’t have much more ground to cover, Lance and my father left soon after that. I’d decided not to mention what had happened the night before with Lir Shalan. It would only make my father worry that much more, and there wasn’t anything he could do to help. I did contemplate whether I should say something to my mother, just because she’d had some luck in getting rid of the aliens years before. Unfortunately, even though she’d been the one to accomplish that seemingly impossible task, she still couldn’t say how she’d managed it. According to her, the power had been fueled by her rage at my father’s death, and had blasted out of her without her really knowing how.
sedona files 06 - enemy mine Page 19