Strangers from the Sky
Page 26
"Sorry, son. Sixty years in the refugee
business, and 229
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
you think I'd know enough not to ask nosy questions.
Breakfast, then. Are there any dietary
restrictions I should know about? Allergies, that kind
of thing? My last customer was a Hindu poet who
drove me nuts with straining at gnats, literally,
but you his
"I am vegetarian," Spock stated simply,
hoping it would not prove a difficulty.
"Ah!" Grayson nodded. "That's easy. Some
orange juice, a little old-fashioned oatmeal.
I'm not the greatest cook, but I do well with the
simple things."
He puttered while Spock watched, fascinated
by the literal mundanity of miracle. By no logic
that he understood could he have expected to find himself in the
presence of an ancestor several generations removed,
and in such ordinary domestic circumstances.
"There are a few necessary questions," Grayson said,
dishing up oatmeal generous with raisins and cinnamon
and joining his guest at the table with a great deal of
shuffling and scraping of chairs. "I don't need
to know the specifics of why you've come here. If you
got my name through any of my regular contacts, I
can assume your difficulty falls
into certain benign categories. But I do have to know
this: you're not running because you've killed someone, are
you?"
"No, sir, I am not."
"Didn't think so." Grayson nodded. "The
other thing is, I'll need a name for you. Doesn't
have to be your real name, but I can't keep calling you
"son," can I?"
In fact, you can, Spock thought. More
legitimately than you will ever know! He
considered what name he might give.
"I am called Spock," he said at last.
Truth might prove difficult, but it was
logical.
"Do you have a first name, Mr. Spock, or can't you
tell me that?" Grayson asked, then
interrupted himself before Spock could answer.
"Spock unusual name. 230
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
There was a Spock in the last century a
pacifist long before it was fashionable, one of the
forerunners of the United Earth movement, and considered
a crackpot for his troubles. Dr. Benjamin
Spock. You wouldn't be related to him?" He took
Spock's silence as negation. "Didn't
think so. Lord, your generation probably doesn't
even know who he was. Sic transit gloria
mundi!"
"Sea magna est veritas, etpraevalebit,"
Spock replied without thinking; it was Amanda who had
taught him Latin. He regretted his words
instantly; Grayson was staring at him, a
spoonful of oatmeal poised halfway to his mouth.
"I didn't think anyone knew Latin
anymore," he said, studying his guest anew.
"You're quite an enigma, Mr. Spock." He put
down the spoon and pounded the table suddenly, startling his
guest. "But it's not going to
"Sir?" Spock's apprehension was tangible this
time. Was it possible Grayson had penetrated his
crude disguise?
"This last-name business," Grayson was saying. was
"Mr. Spock. Professor Grayson.'ationo
sir. You're to call me Jeremy, understand? And I
think I'll call you Ben, in honor of my
predecessor. Any problems with that?"
"You may call me whatever you wish,
Professor," Spock said formally. "But with all
due respect, I cannot readily address one of your
years in so informal a manner. Where I come
from, the father image holds much meaning, and is worthy
of great respect."
Grayson shook his head, bemused, went back
to his oatmeal.
"Wherever you come from, they sure know how to rear the
next generation," he said warmly. "Whatever suits
you, Ben. I want you to feel as much at home as you
can. Now eat that while it's hot."
* * *
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
In a terrorist bunker somewhere between Euro and
Asia, a grubby hand yanked a translation out of a
jury-rigged decoder.
"Wake Easter and tell him I got something," the
one named Aghan grunted, kicking his
companion's boot sole to get her attention.
"Tell him I translated the Kiev bug. It's
about spacemen!"
"Tell him yourself!" she snarled. She had her
weapons dismantled and the parts spread over the stained and
sagging couch; he'd knocked the recharger out of her hand
and she had to crawl under the furniture to retrieve
it, pushing her stringy blond hair out of her face.
"Verfluchie cockroach! Spacemen!"
"I'm telling you!" Aghan grinned manically.
He was called Aghan because it meant "November"
where he came from, because he'd been a part of the
Twelve November Uprising and rumor had it he
bathed only once a year in honor of the
rebellion. "I been bugging Kiev and Posnan
Newscenters for months. Everybody laughs at
me. 'ationothing ever happens in those backwaters,"
everybody says. Even Easter laughs. Now I
got something to show him. It took me a day and a half
to translate this, but I got something. Something we could
sell to a lot of people. Spacemen landing in the ocean.
That's what the fat girl was telling Mariya
Yevchenkova before she got cut off."
"Then she's as crazy as you are!" the blonde
snarled, sliding the pressure bolt on her
automatic back and forth with an ominous click.
"I'll tell Easter myself," Aghan said
importantly, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his
fatigues as if that made him more presentable. He
headed for the one room in the bunker with a door that
closed. "If he can't use it, maybe Racher will.
Racher always pays."
Aghan's computer tampering was child's play compared
to what was going on in the
sub-basement of a data storage complex in
Alexandria.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"Lucky I knew about this place," Jim
Kirk re- marked, hovering over Lee Kelso's
shoulder, watching Kelso ply the keyboard as if
he had all the time in the world. "I've spent some
wonderful hours in the museum down the road.
Lee?"
"Working on it, Captain," Kelso reported,
unperturbed.
Kirk rubbed his hands nervously, forced himself not
to pace lest he come within range of the security
cameras. He was calmness itself
compared to Parneb who, having traded his turban and
djellaba for clothing more suitable to night stalking,
stood tearing at his sparse hair in his distress.
Elizabeth Dehner needed no tricorder to know that
his pulse was running amok.
"Come on, baby!" Kelso coaxed the computer.
"You can override that, sure you can! Atta girl!"
Footsteps down the supposedly deserted
corridors made all
but Kelso jump, but it
was only Mitchell, checking up on the
security guards he'd put out of commission to get
them in here.
"Sleeping like babies," he reported. "And I
man- aged to temporarily kill the cameras from here
to one of the underground exits. They're on a timer,
though. More than ten minutes and they'll trigger an
alarm at police HQ."
"Come on, Lee, hurry!" Kirk urged
futilely; Kelso the hacker was not to be hurried.
Parneb watched in utter amazement. The ease with
which these future sorcerers had breached the most
advanced security system this century could produce
both delighted and frightened hirn.
"Gentlemen, if you please! If we are caught
his
"Don't sweat it," Mitchell reassured him.
"We're the ones who'd have to face the music. You can
always disappear."
"Here we go, people!" Kelso announced,
punching one final button with a flourish.
Three separate printers went into simultaneous
chat
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
tering action around the room. As each one
completed its contribution to the creation of four sets of
false identities to cover four displaced time
travelers, Kelso scurried from printer to printer
retrieving his creations, gleeful as a child.
Parneb had told Kirk everything he knew about
the agrostations, Aeroationav, the way things worked in this
century. Kirk had taken it from there.
"We've got to get to the Vulcans. We'll
need all our training, all our skills, to pass
ourselves off as doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs
whatever it takes to get to where they're being held."
"What then, Captain?" Elizabeth Dehner
had wanted to know, questioning the end if not the means.
"That depends on what we find when we get
there," Kirk replied grimly, holding contact with
those cool grey eyes, for emphasis. "Humans
are humans; they can't have changed that radically from our
time. We'll need you to read the situation, recommend
the solution least traumatic to all parties concerned.
I know it's vague . . ."
"Understood, Captain." Dehner nodded, glad
to have some part in the escapade at last. No one would
know how much the thought of that
responsibility frightened her. "As Mr.
Mitchell would say piece of cake!"
Kirk smiled faintly, admiring her cool.
"It's best if we split up," he instructed
his troops. "We'll literally be scattered around the
globe in order to do what we have to do. I don't
need to remind any of you of the Prime Directive,
of how essential it is that we do nothing to change the
course of history."
"That means hands off the girls, Mitch."
Kelso had quipped, and Mitchell had just looked
pained. Kirk ignored them both.
"We'll keep in communication constantly and
arrange a rendezvous once we're all in
place. We will also monitor what's going on around
us. Any indication that
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the common man is getting wind of this thing, and what
his response is. Parneb, we'll need currency
from several regions and in several denominations,
credit cards, travel
accommodations . . ."
"Malesh!" Parneb sighed. "I would not be
Egyptian if I did not have certain connections.
I will do what I can."
He had vanished into the twilight,
returning with the necessities and a car to take them
to Alexandria. On the road, Kirk had outlined
to Kelso exactly what he wanted in the way of
ID'S. Getting past the guards had been almost
too easy, and Kelso had gone right to work.
"All set!" he announced now, collating and
distributing his works of art as they came out of the
printers. "Each of you will find a set of identity
papers, letters of reference, degrees and/or
credentials where applicable, an updated
planet-wide passport, and sundry other
items. Captain . . ."
He handed Jim Kirk the first set.
"Colonel James T. Kirk, Ground
Forces
Intelligence, Americas Base. Thought I'd
let you keep your real name; you'll have enough else on
your mind," Kelso explained. "Besides, it's a
cover name, and the average intell-agent changes that every
other Tuesday, so I've left your file open in
case you need to change it. All you do" he
demonstrated "is stick your ID into any
computer of this type even an automated bank
tellertll do it punch n this code, which I trust
you'll commit to memory, and the new name.
I've laid in three backup files so you can be
up to three other people.
"Now," he went on, leaving Kirk to marvel at
the authentic look of his forgeries. "Mitch, I had
a little fun with yours. "Comrade Engineer Jerzy
Miklovcik . . . tilde ,,
was 'Assigned Gdansk Shipyards,
Strategies Div."
was Mitchell read. "Very impressive, Lee.
I like these."
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
"And you'll find a standing-orders file in the
machine that you can alter for anywhere on the globe, using
the same procedure as the captain," Kelso
pointed out a little smugly.
"These are all fictitious?" Kirk wanted
to know, fingering his papers thoughtfully before secreting them
m venous Jacket pockets.
"All except our lady psychiatrist,"
Kelso explained. "We agree the PentaKrem
probably wants a shrink to give the Vulcans a
going-over, and whoever they pick is going to have to be
pretty thoroughly vetted. So I tried to find a
real shrink who was security-cleared and at
least temporarily out of reach. That's what took me
so long. However. . ."
He handed Dehner her papers with a flourish.
"Dr. Sally Bellero, former Assistant Head
of Psychiatry at University Hospital,
Marsbase, presently on leave of absence in her
home town of Tezqan, Peru. There really is such
a person stationed on Marsbase, and as luck would have
it she's written several papers on space
psychology and the parameters of possible alien
intelligence. I figure even if they question your
credentials, the turnaround from Mars is over two
weeks on conventional radio this century, so that
buys you some time."
"What about friends, relatives, people in Tezqan
who might recognize me?" Dehner wondered,
pushing the rest out of her mind for the present, even the
ticking away of two weeks before her cover got
danger
ous.
"Tezqan was levered by an earthquake ten years
ago and has been almost entirely repopulated,"
Kelso reported. "Your entire family was
killed."
"All right." Dehner nodded. Until
this moment she'd felt virtually useless. "
I can work
with that. Thank you, Lee."
"Sure." He grinned, blushing. Beneath the
admiring gaze of his immediate fan club, he produced
the final
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
set of papers. "Lastly, for me I couldn't
resist this one: Technician Howard "Studs"
Carter, member STEM Local 583 Itinerant,
out of Hollywood, California.""
"What's STEM?" Kirk asked, bemused.
"Stuntmen's, Technicians',
Electricians' and Mediatncians' Union, of
course," Kelso said. "Exploits all of my
known talents and some of my unknown ones and gives
me, shall we say, lots of "lee"-way?"
No one so much as groaned.
"Lee, you're a genius!" Kirk said.
"I know," Kelso said modestly, erasing the
menu he'd created from scratch, reinstating the
overrides so that no one from this century would be able
to detect any tampering.
"All nght," Kirk said, ready for action.
"Gary, how much time left on the
cameras?"
"Minute and a half, Jim," Mitchell said
calmly. "We can make it, if we hustle."
They hustled.
"Spacemen," Easter said. "You got the tape?"
Aghan showed it to him with a leer. "Already decoded."
Easter thought about it. He was a slow thinker, an
odd trait in a terrorist, but in a century where his
kind was ostensibly obsolete, Easter was an odd
kind of terrorist.
He had chosen his code name after a rebellion
of the previous century, one of countless gravemarkers
in a grudge war twelve hundred years in the
solving. One peculiar outcome of the Eugenics
Wars was to get England at last out of Ireland,
barely in time for both to become mutually
cooperative pieces in the jigsaw puzzle that was
United Earth. The final generation of IRA
guerrillas, bred to street fighting and not much else
from the time they could stand, had suddenly found themselves out of a
job.
STRANGERS FROM THE SKY
Their grandchildren held college degrees and
meaningful jobs and a broader perspective
on matters politic, but there were always throwbacks,
and Easter was one of them. Spiky-haired,
underground-pale, living on chips and Guinness and
overdoses of sweets, crooning "A Nation Once
Again" in his exaggerated brogue without ever understanding that
its words no longer had meaning where he found no war,
Easter created his own.
He and his kind lived in a past that had never
existed, created an edge to live on, a need to be