“What are you waiting for?”
The voice inside his helmet did not sound like Samantha’s. Wil turned to look at her, or at what he could see through the dark visor that covered her face. There was someone else with them, standing to Samantha’s side. Wil didn’t need to see Samantha’s face to know she had a stricken expression. He could read it in the stiff way she stood.
“Come on, doctors,” the third person, sounding female, said. “Marty’s due for his next test.”
Marty! The boy Lorraine had mentioned.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Samantha said.
Without hesitation she hooked the fat arm of her cleanroom suit through Wil’s and walked past the “NO ADMITTANCE” sign.
They entered a short hallway and followed it to a small room. In here, red lights glowed warmly. Wil and Samantha looked around themselves in wonder.
“Must be some kind of decontamination unit,” Wil guessed.
“Let’s go,” Samantha urged. “I want to see who Marty is. Maybe he can lead us to Julie.”
Now they entered another hallway. The guard they had seen stood outside the next door. If he had even glanced at their ID badges, they couldn’t tell. But obviously these people had been expecting someone. Wil thought that was a terrible blunder, proving security wasn’t as tight in this place as all its locked doors and secret rooms might make it seem. Well, he thought, a tiny little kid like Lorraine got away easily enough.
He opened the door at the back of the hall and entered a large sterile white room. Flashing lights drew his attention to computers that ran along the back wall. A large table in the room’s center held lab equipment. There were steel drums filled with God-knew-what, oxygen tanks, and EKG monitors. The four or five other people in the room worked busily, their backs turned to the newcomers. Samantha leaned toward Wil.
“What do we do now?”
“Let’s just look around,” Wil said. “I have a feeling we’ll know Marty when we see him.”
Samantha felt a tap on her shoulder and almost screamed. At the last moment, she caught the sound in her throat. Someone beckoned them to a back corner of the room.
“We’ve prepped him for you,” he said. “I’m afraid his vital signs have slackened off since the last time he was examined.”
“Let’s have a look at him,” Wil said.
They walked toward a partition at the back of the room. It was a glassed-in room, the windows covered now by drawn curtains. But suddenly Samantha stopped dead in her tracks. Her hands came up, shaking, to point at something in a large Plexiglas case. Wil looked in that direction and whispered:
“Oh, damn . . .”
It was a wooden box shaped almost like a coffin, and with a glass top.
“That’s the newest one,” the man in the other suit said. “Just dug it out of the gulf a few days ago. It’s the most intact pod we’ve ever found. That’s why LaBerge wanted it protected.”
Within the helmet, his sigh sounded like a windstorm.
“Ten years of work,” he said, “and we still haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly what they’re made of.”
Ten years, Samantha thought. Gordy had said she’d been here ten years ago. On shaking legs Samantha neared the case. Someone was using robotic arms to scrape tiny pieces off the wood at the side of the pod. “He” carefully placed the splinters on slides. Samantha’s eyes were immediately drawn to an unusual knot in the wood. For a split second she thought she saw a tiny face turn to her with a silent, pleading scream.
Their escort tapped her shoulder and pointed to a monitor. An electron microscope stood near the case, and when the slides were placed within it, a strange image appeared on one of the screens at the back of the room. It looked like a chain of long knotted-up balloons.
“Not like any wood I’ve ever seen,” the man said. “How about you?”
“I . . . I’ve never seen wood under a microscope,” Samantha stammered.
With a firm but gentle tug, Wil steered her away. They went to the glass-walled room and went inside.
Marty turned to gaze up at them. Samantha met his eyes, and she began to scream.
Then she began to remember.
53
RACHEL AND ERIC emerged from the tunnel, dripping wet and smelling of seawater, while Wil and Samantha were tying up Wesley Kane. They found themselves in an office filled with file cabinets. Taking the clothes off their backs, they wrung them out as best they could and dressed. Rachel shivered.
“It’s so cold,” she said. “I don’t see how that little girl made it out so easily.”
“I don’t think it was easy for her,” Eric said. He took Rachel into his arms for just a moment, and they tried to draw warmth from each other’s bodies.
“Are you ready?”
Rachel took a few steps. Squeaking noises filled the room like a blaring Klaxon.
“We’ll have to go barefoot.”
Eric and Rachel removed their shoes and hid them behind one of the cabinets. Rachel glanced at the files, wishing she could take the time to look at them. What secrets would they reveal?
She followed Eric into the hall. It was darkened, as if this floor of the building was not currently in use. Still, she and Eric moved quickly and carefully, always on the alert for others. They left a wet trail for a few yards, but eventually their clothes stopped dripping. Rachel worried someone would see the trail. She was grateful to see it end just before a fork in the hallway. Anyone who came after them would have to decide which way to turn.
There seemed to be nothing on this floor but supplies. Then Eric found something strange in one of the darkened rooms. Rachel looked at the triangular-shaped wheeled piece of equipment. There was a pulley and chain attached to it, rusted now after years of disuse.
“What is that?” she asked.
Erie touched it. “A winch. The kind of thing you use to pull boats out of the water. This is a strange place to store something like that.”
Rachel looked toward the door, as if she could see down the hall to the secret passageway.
“Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe that wasn’t an escape tunnel at all, Eric. What if they were using it to pull something into the building?”
Eric nodded eagerly. “Of course! Something they couldn’t bring through the town because they didn’t want it to be seen. When the job was finished, they destroyed that loading dock out there and covered up the opening to the tunnel with sand. Nature took its course, and the tides came in over it.”
“At a different time of day,” Rachel added, “we may not have been under the water for so long.”
Eric took her by the arm.
“Let’s get going,” he said. “I have a feeling we’re going to find something very important on this floor.”
Rachel hurried along with him. She looked around herself in wonder.
“Why aren’t there any other people on this floor?” she asked. “If it’s so secret, where are the guards?”
“I have a feeling there may be only one or two other means to get in here,” Eric said. “The guards are probably based at the stairs and elevator. They might not even know about the tunnel.”
Rachel pointed down the hall. All the other doors had been simple wood ones, some with glass windows. But this was a double door, made of metal. Even from this distance Rachel could read the sign:
“DO NOT ENTER! DANGER OF CONTAMINATION BEYOND THIS POINT! NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL!”
Again Rachel looked for a guard.
“Whatever they had in that room,” she said, “it must be gone now.”
“Let’s have a look anyway,” Eric suggested.
They were only half-surprised that the door was unlocked. It was true—whatever had been stored here had been moved away. The room, as huge as an airplane hangar, was empty. Disappointed, Eric turned to leave the room. But Rachel tugged at his wet sleeve.
“Wait!” she cried. “Look over there! Do you see how that panel of the wall is slightly different from the
others?”
Eric looked in the direction she was pointing. He squinted his eyes and studied the back wall, but it all looked the same to him.
“Not at all,” he said.
“Well, it is,” Rachel said. “We’ve found another secret room. Let’s take a look.”
She went to the panel and pressed her hands against it. Eric’s eyebrows went up when it slid around like a revolving door. There was blackness beyond it.
“Another secret passageway?” Eric whispered. Something about the darkness warned him to be careful.
Rachel did not answer. She reached inside the room and felt along the wall until she found a switch. When the lights went on, she gasped.
The room was filled with metal boxes, at least thirty of them. They were neatly stacked, carefully numbered, and padlocked. Eric went to one and pulled on the lock.
“What do you suppose is inside here?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “But I want to find out. Eric, I saw some tools in one of the rooms we entered. Let’s go back for them.”
They turned off the light, replaced the panel, and hurried to the room Rachel had mentioned. When they found the tools they needed, they returned to the secret room. As they entered and turned on the light, Rachel whispered:
“Eric, I don’t think we’re alone.”
“Is it Steven? Are you feeling his presence?”
Rachel’s head swung back and forth. “No. Eric, someone is watching us.”
Eric felt a chill rush through his body, and it wasn’t from his damp clothes. He looked around himself, but the whole area seemed empty.
“I don’t think there’s anyone here,” he said, although he couldn’t be certain. Rachel had been right about her other “feelings.” “If they were, they would have come out by now.”
“You’re right,” Rachel agreed. The feeling of being watched wouldn’t go away, but still she went on with her task. She took a hammer and crowbar and began to work at the back of the metal box. In a few minutes it popped open.
There was another box inside, a wooden box with no lid. Rachel gazed at it in wonder, taking in the strange whorls of the wood, patterns that resembled living things. Eric leaned over and looked inside.
“Weird,” he said. “Someone carved faces into that. I wonder what it is.”
Rachel just stared at it. Something was very, very familiar. She reached in and ran her hands along the wood.
“Look, there’s an empty space at the front,” Eric said. “Some kind of wires are sticking out. Do you think it could have been a probe of some kind? Gordy said there was an explosion at sea ten years ago. Maybe there was a submarine, and they launched these one-man probes to let spies enter our country without being caught. Only they were caught, and here are their vessels.”
He scratched his head. “Is that what this is all about? Does this have something to do with enemy spies? Maybe this whole setup is to study these pods, to see how it was done.”
“I don’t have anything to do with spies,” Rachel whispered. “But, Eric, I’ve seen this before. Those faces in the wood—”
The sound of a quiet sneeze made them swing around. There was a muttered curse from a dark corner of the room.
“Who’s there?” Eric demanded.
Suddenly a man appeared, armed with a rifle. He aimed it at the two.
“How long have you been standing there?” Rachel cried.
“Long enough,” the man said. “Did you think it would be this easy to move around on this floor? We were aware of your presence from the moment you opened that panel. You might have gotten away if you hadn’t been so resourceful.”
He looked right at Rachel as he spoke.
“I wanted to shoot you down on sight,” he said. “But the fat man wanted me to hear what you had to say. You’ve got something to do with those other two, don’t you?”
Rachel stiffened. Eric put an arm around her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted.
“Sure you do,” the man said. He waved the gun at the opening in the wall. “Move on out. You’ll be with your friends in a few minutes. And then you’ll all have a lot of explaining to do.”
Rachel was tempted to retort that the man’s superiors would have explaining of their own. But she decided this was one of the times when silence was best.
54
SAMANTHA SAT ALONE in a cell very similar to the one which held Julie captive. She’d been separated from Wil minutes after her breakdown, dragged yelling and struggling off the floor where Marty lay strapped to an examination table.
Marty.
Samantha kept looking at her hands, trying to see beyond the pinkish flesh and five fingers. These were not her hands at all, but “borrowed” appendages, part of an overall metamorphosis from her true identity. Seeing Marty had brought back memories of her real self.
“I’m not human,” she whispered, not even caring if she was being monitored. “My name is Ch’Mrazi and I am Ixtauran.”
When Marty had turned to look at her, it had been with aquamarine doe’s eyes. His eyes were twice as large as a normal human’s, the focal point of a bald, rounded head. His nose was small, his mouth lipless, his ears tiny. The overall effect was that of a baby.
This is what Samantha knew herself to be like; at least, it was what she had once looked like long ago. As a female, her head had been different in that her ears were bent downward and her cheekbones were more pronounced. Like Marty, she did not have five fingers, but eight, and they had been almost six inches long. Like Marty, she had also had a tail.
She was humanoid, but very definitely not human. She was beyond human.
And the others? Were the children also Ixtauran? Was Rachel, or Eric? Where did Barbara and Wil fit into this?
Some memories had come crashing to the surface when she looked at Marty, but not all. There were still many unanswered questions.
She brought the back of her wrist up to her eyes and wiped away tears. As far as she could recall, Ixtaurans did not cry tears.
Samantha heard rattling in the metal door, which swung open to reveal an armed guard.
“Come on, lady,” he said. “LaBerge wants to talk to the lot of you.”
He waved his gun into the hall, then followed her after she’d exited the cell. He did not seem afraid, or even curious. Samantha guessed he’d never been down to the lowest level, and had never seen Marty.
Or . . . he had seen the young alien and had no idea that Samantha was supposed to look like that. This revelation gave her strength. If no one knew who she really was, perhaps there was some way out of this.
She was led to a large windowless room. There was an oval table down its center, surrounded by black chairs. She saw Rachel and Eric sitting with a young boy between them. A dark-haired child swiveled in another chair, her back to Samantha. But it was the trio standing at the back of the room that caught her attention. She was sorry to see Barbara here, because it meant her friend had been caught. She saw now that the other child was Lorraine, swinging back and forth in her chair and pouting. But she ignored them and called to the child who meant most to her.
“Julie!” she cried.
Julie turned away from Wil and Barbara and ran the length of the room in just a few strides. Samantha caught her in open arms and hugged her fiercely.
“Oh, it’s so good to see you!” she cried.
“Samantha!” Julie said.
Samantha pulled back and looked at her.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” she asked. “Did they hurt you?”
Are you another like me?
Julie frowned, staring at her. She had heard Samantha’s words.
I . . . I don’t know who we are.
Samantha gasped at the sound of Julie’s voice in her mind. Why hadn’t she been able to hear her before? Was this what Rachel had meant by “feeling” Steven’s presence?
Barbara and Wil had joined them.
“She seems okay,” Wil s
aid. “I understand they’ve been treated decently, other than being locked up.”
“Being locked up cuts out the ‘decently’ part, in my opinion,” Barbara said.
Samantha stood up, keeping an arm around Julie. She looked at Wil, seeing him differently than she had when she’d thought they were of similar origins. The feelings of love and affection still stirred within her, but now there were doubts about the “rightness” of those emotions.
She didn’t have time to dwell on it. Julie was tugging at her sleeve.
“Come meet my friends,” she said.
Samantha went to the table.
“You must be Steven,” she said to the young black boy.
“Hello, Samantha,” Steven said politely.
“We were reunited with him after we were caught,” Rachel said, not revealing news about the room she’d found.
She wanted to correct him, but stopped herself. If she was the only one who knew of their true nature, they might become as upset by the truth as she had been; as she still was.
“Hi, Samantha,” Lorraine drawled. “They caught us.”
“Yeah,” Barbara said. “We didn’t get as far as Haybrook’s back door. I’m glad, too. The creeps that pointed guns at us and brought us back here were nasty SOB’s. I’m glad Gordy wasn’t involved.”
Samantha gazed into Lorraine’s eyes and realized now where their gray-green irises had come from. Her eyes were meant to be lapis-colored, like Marty’s. When she had been changed, a little of the original tint had remained, showing through the green of her “new” eyes.
Lorraine was definitely one of her own kind. But how had that change taken place?
“Samantha, what’s going on here?” Wil asked gently, as if he had read her mind. “When you saw that . . . thing down there, you acted as if you’d finally remembered something.”
Samantha turned on him. “Don’t call him a thing! He’s a child! A sentient being with as much right to respect as any of us!”
Wil’s eyebrows went up, and he backed up a step.
“You’re right,” he said. “Of all people, I should be open-minded. I’ve certainly seen enough in my life.”
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