His head filled with planning another night as a fugitive—plans that had become second-nature since he'd been on the run—Mike Donovan walked on . . .
Tight-lipped, Juliet Parrish folded a blouse and tossed it into the open suitcase on the bed. Denny sat across the room from her, not meeting her eyes. "You going to stay with your folks in Manhattan?"
She swallowed, keeping her voice even with an effort that hurt. "No, I can't get through to them. You need a special permit for long distance now, and anyone in the life sciences doesn't have a prayer of getting one. It's better not to even ask." She picked up her hairbrush mechanically and put it into the suitcase. "Besides—maybe it's better if you don't know where I'm going. I'll get the rest of my things—I don't know . . . sometime later." She took a deep breath, forcing herself to breathe out through her mouth slowly, but not letting Denny see her effort.
Denny made a small gesture as he picked up a bag of Hershey bars—Juliet's chocolate addiction was one of the first things he'd discovered when she moved in—and handed it to her. "Here. You'd better take these. I'll never eat them, and they say it's getting hard to find stuff in the stores."
Blindly she took the plastic bag, careful not to touch his fingers. He shifted on the bed, still not looking directly at her. "I still think you're overreacting."
She shook her head, folding a skirt. "No. I don't want you losing any more accounts because of me."
"But Julie, we don't know that's it for sure."
She stopped, sobs rising, looking directly at his dark, handsome features. "No, that's the really nasty part. They're always so damn polite!" She slammed the skirt into the suitcase without looking at it. "But we know, don't we? We know . . ."
He didn't argue, and after a second Juliet realized she was waiting for him to. She shook her head and walked over to get her jacket out of the closet. Making an attempt to change the subject, she told him the news she'd learned that morning. "Anyway, another biochemist—Phyllis, you remember? Well, she didn't show today either. And no one's heard from her. Just like Ruth and all the others. Classes in the medical school are still suspended until the 'resolution of the current crisis.' If I'm going to go, I'd better make it now."
"Maybe Phyllis just went away," said Denny, not looking up. Juliet stared down at his bent head, resisting an urge to touch his wavy hair just once more . . .
She felt absurdly protective of him in his self-enforced blindness. "Denny. Have you ever thought that maybe she—and Ruth—were taken away?"
Denny looked uncomfortable, but still stubborn. "There's nothing to those rumors, Julie!"
She snapped the suitcase with a final click. "You think not? Shall I stay, then?"
The seconds dragged by, then she heard his voice, so low she had to strain to pick up the words. "I think . . . you should do . . . whatever makes you happy . . . His voice died away.
"No, Den," she said, picking up the suitcase. "Sometimes you can't do the things that make you happy. Sometimes . . ." she bit her lip, ". . . you have to do the things that make you unhappy—because they're the things you must do." She turned away, the suitcase thudding against her blue-jeaned leg. "I'll see you, Denny," she whispered, and left.
Daniel Bernstein proudly polished his Visitor sidearm, then took a swig from a glass of burgundy as he inspected the results. The bottle, half-full, sat beside him on the carpet. He looked up with interest as his father turned on the television set and Kristine Walsh's voice filled the room:
". . . and there were even fewer incidents of violence today. It seems that people everywhere are starting to report in to the authorities when they suspect someone might be involved with the conspiracy. This early warning will save countless lives, and the Supreme Commander urges—"
"Dammit!" Stanley angrily switched off the television set. "I'm so tired of her face, and only hearing one side of what's going on!"
Daniel didn't understand why his father was upset. Carefully he holstered his sidearm, and then poured himself more of the wine. "The truth's the truth, isn't it?"
"Then why not let some others say it?" Stanley peered at the level of wine in the bottle with some disbelief. "Don't you think you've had enough of that, Daniel?"
Daniel looked at the bottle as though he expected it to answer for him. "No," he said finally.
"Well, I do." His father reached out suddenly and snatched both the bottle and the glass away from Daniel, who glowered at him sullenly.
"You know, Stanley, there is the newspaper," said Lynn Bernstein placatingly.
The elder Bernstein gave his wife a disgusted look. "Yeah. It says exactly the same thing she says sometimes word-for-word! And not just that! It's everything! Look at these bills!" He grabbed a handful of the bills Lynn was working on, shaking them at her. "The price is up on everything! Can't make a long-distance phone call without a permit—and when you get the permit, most times you can't get through!"
He paced angrily back and forth, ignoring Daniel, who watched him, narrow-eyed. "It's not even safe on our own block anymore! Dad told me that the Maxwells' kid, Polly, got beat up at school when her project won the science fair! That's crazy! And last night, when that carload of drunks rode by, yelling—well, they didn't just make noise over there. They smashed in their bay window. Dad told me Kathleen said she was scared to death. Crazy! That's what it is!"
"But Stanley, you know Robert is . . ." She trailed off apologetically.
"A scientist? That what you were about to say? Well, so what if he is? We've lived across the street from them for ten years now, and you couldn't ask for a nicer guy—the idea of Bob being involved with a conspiracy is ludicrous! This whole thing is nuts!" Stanley paused, breathing hard.
"You always said this would pass." Lynn frowned up at him, peering over the top of her reading glasses.
"Yeah." Stanley sighed. "Well, it'd better hurry up and pass before we sink. I want things back the way they were."
Lynn glanced around. "Where's Daniel?"
Bernstein made a face. "Well, he's not out looking for a job, that's for sure."
His wife lowered her voice. "Stanley, you have to be more careful what you say in front of him."
"What? In my own house?"
"But he lives here too, and you know how involved he is with . . . them."
He made an impatient, yet conciliatory gesture. "All right, all right . . . I know. But he shouldn't have the right to—"
Lynn watched the light flash on her wedding band. Her voice was soft as she interrupted, "I've heard stories . . ."
"Rumors, you mean."
"Stories, Stanley, that a member of his group had actually . . ." She twisted the ring, swallowing.
"Actually what? Informed, you mean?"
She nodded. "On his own parents—and then they disappeared."
Bernstein rubbed the back of his neck roughly, then dropped into a seat beside her. "Well, Lynn, I hardly think that Daniel—"
She shivered. "I don't think so either, but . . ."
"I mean, what's to inform on?" He tried to sound casual, but even to his own ears the words sounded unconvincing. "We're not scientists, and it's not like I said anything . . ." He frowned, trying to recall exactly what he had said. His mouth was suddenly dry.
"You were very critical. Of her—Kristine Walsh. Of them. The papers. Of him, also."
"Well, I don't think he ought to drink that much. Seems like every time I turn around, the liquor's disappearing faster than I can replace it! And with the prices so bad!"
"But that's not all that you said."
"Look, all I said was that I was tired of hearing—"
"One side of the news. Their side."
"Well, I meant . . . hearing only one opinion. No, I meant . . ." he trailed off, his eyes flicking around the comfortable room as though it were a place he'd never seen before. "You don't think he'd call them, do you?"
They both stared at the telephone. There were three additional extensions in the house—one in Abraha
m's room, next door, which they would have heard—but the other two were in the kitchen and their bedroom. On the other side of the house. Bernstein tried to think, to calm himself. In the middle of his effort, Daniel came back into the living room.
Lynn spoke with a pathetic attempt at normalcy. "Danny, honey, where have you been?"
Daniel sat down on the couch with the paper, not looking up. "To the bathroom."
Stanley turned to his wife, and moved his lips exaggeratedly, while barely breathing the words: "Do you think he's lying?"
She stared for a second at Daniel, then looked back at her husband and shrugged.
Bernstein leaned back in his chair, fighting back fear. This is terrible. What am I going to do? Why is this happening to me?
Robin Maxwell trudged slowly up the street, her arms filled with books. Usually she only did her homework to keep her parents from bugging her, but lately, the way things were going, even her textbooks had begun to feel more friendly than the school and the neighborhood.
The only boy she knew who wasn't acting like she had the plague or something was Daniel. Robin's pretty mouth thinned—she was angry at Daniel Bernstein. He'd managed to mention, in front of Brian, that Robin's dad was an anthropologist. She hadn't seen Brian in several weeks now.
Robin shook back her dark hair, and her indigo eyes were stormy. Damn you, Daniel Bernstein! The grody little creep must've thought that if he turned Brian off her, that she, Robin, would have no one to turn to but him. Well, she'd teach him to think again, that was for sure . . .
If it hadn't been for Brian's absence, Robin would have felt worse about the situation at school—but even the pain of having kids she'd known all her life treat her like crap was nothing to the ache she felt whenever she thought of Brian. Thoughts of the handsome Visitor tormented her dreams at night, and filled her mind's eye by day. Every time she looked at that great Mother Ship hanging in the sky—and you couldn't go anywhere without seeing it—Robin thought of him.
She was so deeply engrossed in her current visions of him that Robin almost walked by her house. Her father's voice jolted her out of a daydream where Brian was there, everywhere, his arms around her, smiling down at her— "Robin, get in the car!"
She looked up to see the family station wagon loaded down with clothing, camping gear, and valuables. Her father was lashing a large bundle to the luggage rack on top of the vehicle. "What?" Robin said blankly. "Where are we going, Dad?"
"To the mountain cabin, honey." Maxwell gave a final tug at the knots, then fumbled in his jacket for the keys. Robin looked beyond him to the cardboard-covered hole that had been their bay window.
"For the weekend?" Robin asked, somehow knowing the answer would be negative.
"Maybe, honey. But more probably we'll be staying there awhile. Your Mom and I packed for you. Hop in, unless you have to make a bathroom run."
"No," responded Robin, feeling something shatter inside her. If I leave, I'll never see him again. I'll die. She moved a few steps toward the car door, then suddenly balked. "But I don't want to go up to the mountains. Please, Dad. I hate our place up there. It's boring!"
Her father's mouth thinned, and Robin took an involuntary step back. But his voice was even. "Get in the car, Robin."
Her mother opened the car door and came around, the expression in her green eyes gentle, but unyielding. "Please, Robin, try to understand. Too many things are happening. A scientist your father works with was arrested for conspiracy this morning."
Polly poked her head out the open car window. "I think we ought to stay and fight, Dad! You haven't done anything wrong!"
Kathleen bit her lip in silent anguish, looking back at her home, then her chin came up. "It's not that simple, Poll."
"But Daddy's no conspirator!" Robin wailed. "Those others—"
Robert gave her a look. "They weren't either, Robin. Get in the car."
"But all my friends are here!"
"Yeah." Polly's voice dripped sarcasm. "Especially the one in the red uniform . . ."
Robin whirled on her sister. "Shut up, Polly!" She turned back to her father. "Please, Dad. I could stay with Karen and her—"
"Robin." The girl had never heard that tone from her father before. "Now."
Robin clenched her fists helplessly against her textbooks as she stalked around the car and jerked the door open. She climbed in, ignoring both Polly, who stuck her tongue out at her older sister, and Katie, who wanted to "sit in Binna's lap, Mommy!"
Robert put the car in gear and backed it out. His tension was reflected in the squeal of the tires as he gunned the motor. Kathleen recognized a figure watching them from across the street, leaning on a rake, and waved sadly. The man waved back. Robert glanced over at her. "Who was that?"
"Sancho Gomez. He came around a couple of months ago looking for gardening work, and I hired him for a couple of hours a week, on Fridays. He worked for a couple of families on this street . . . did a really good job with the roses . . ."
Robert frowned. "But I was just noticing that our roses really needed cutting back."
"They do . . . did." Kathleen brushed distractedly at her hair. "Sancho told me a couple of weeks ago that he couldn't work for me anymore—that his other customers, among them Eleanor Dupres, had told him if he kept working for us, he couldn't work for them anymore. What could he do? The guy's got a wife and kids . . ."
Maxwell nodded tightly. They drove in silence for nearly twenty minutes, until they reached the outskirts of L.A., and topped a small hill. Suddenly Polly pointed. "Look, Dad! It's a police roadblock!"
Kathleen made a tiny sound in her throat as she stared down the street to the Visitor squad vehicle that had landed across the highway, blocking all but one lane. A line of traffic sat waiting, bumper-to-bumper. Two police black-and-whites sat on the side of the road, lights flashing red-blue-red-blue-red . . . A helmeted Visitor shock trooper stood by the nose of the squad vehicle, his stun rifle carried muzzle-up. His helmet swung back and forth as he watched the L.A.P.D. officers check cars, two at a time.
Maxwell's fingers tightened on the wheel of his car, and he didn't dare look at his family, afraid they'd see the naked fear in his eyes. Without a word he swung the station wagon off the road, put on his blinker, then, as other oncoming vehicles slowed to take in the scene below, swung the wheel savagely in a U-turn.
They can't have blocked every road, his mind argued against his growing panic. One of the smaller secondary ones . . .
Ten minutes later they pulled over to the side of the road, staring in dismay at the roadblock ahead of them. "Another one," Kathleen said tightly.
"Daddy, why don't you just drive through?" Robin asked. "You haven't done anything—"
Polly gave her sister a withering look. "Boy, Robin, you sure are stupid. Were you born that way, or did you have to study?"
Robin stared at her sister in shock, then flared angrily. "God, Polly, how can you be so totally—"
"Shut up," Robert commanded without raising his voice. "I have to think."
"How come they want to keep us in the city, Mom?"
Polly asked. "Makes it easier to find us," Kathleen said.
"Why do they want to be able to find us—and people like us?"
"We don't know, Poll." Kathleen cast a quick, frightened look at Robert.
Shouts broke the silence, and they watched a man leap out of the back of one of the cars stopped at the roadblock, running frantically down the road toward them. Horrified, they watched as the Visitor trooper sighted carefully at the fleeing man's back, then fired. A pulse of sound filled the air with a brief flash of blue electricity, then the smell of ozone. The man staggered on a few steps, then fell against Robert's door, his anguished face pressing briefly against the glass, then slid bonelessly down to the road, leaving a trail of saliva and mucus on the window.
The Maxwells sat frozen with shock, unable to move or think, as the Visitor shock trooper and the two police officers ran up to the fallen man. T
he Visitor got there first. Without a glance at the horrified Maxwells, he pushed the man's face brutally against the pavement. The first cop came up with the handcuffs. They heard the man whimper as they dragged his arms behind him, wrenching his back where a black burn showed the impact of the alien weapon.
Sickened, Maxwell recognized that oily blackness of charred cloth and singed meat—and knew, with a terrible certainty, what had happened to Arch Quinton. The other police officer approached, stood looking down at the injured man, his face expressionless, but something flickering in his eyes that might have been pity. "Another scientist?" he asked.
"No," answered the officer with the handcuffs. "He was helping one try and run the roadblock. So that makes him one of 'em, in my book. On your feet, pal!" He dragged brutally at the now sobbing man.
"Easy, Bob—" the first officer remonstrated. "He's wounded."
"That's his fault, Randy. He wants to break the new laws, he's gotta take the consequences."
Randy gave a quick glance over at the Visitor trooper, who was walking back toward the squad vehicle, to make sure the alien was out of earshot. "Come on, Bob! This is different!"
"No it ain't!" The man glared at his partner. "A crook's a crook, and don't you forget it. Ain't nothing different except the guys who give the orders."
Without a backward glance, he dragged the barely conscious man away. The officer named Randy looked after him, then back at the Maxwells, obviously troubled. "You folks coming down the road?" he asked, indicating the roadblock.
"Uh . . . no," answered Robert, thinking fast, pasting a fatuous grin on his face. "The . . . uh . . . little woman forgot her grocery list, can you believe it? We're gonna have to go back and get it." Heart threatening to erupt from his chest, he put the car in reverse.
The officer looked at him a moment, then nodded sadly. "Yeah, okay. Prices what they are today, you can't shop without a list, all right." He glanced back at the roadblock, then at Maxwell. "You all take care, now."
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