“I don’t care if Gabriel came down on a cloud to tell us where to get more power packs, I’d listen, and listen hard.” “I dunno. This doesn’t smell right, Donovan. Seems much too easy somehow.”
“Maybe it’s about time our luck changed, then.”
Ham shrugged. “By tomorrow afternoon, you’ll either be right ... or we’ll be dead.”
Chapter 8
Bad Relations
Chris Faber woke up instantly—an ingrained habit from years of living next to danger most of his adult life—and glanced over to the left side of his bed.
He still couldn’t quite believe the incredible pleasure of finding Maggie Blodgett lying beside him. In the days since their vigil by the window, when the Visitor patrol had come into his neighborhood, she had stayed with him every night. Little traces of her presence were beginning to accumulate in his house—a couple of her shirts hung in his closet, an extra toothbrush now resided beside his bathroom cup, and a few articles of feminine toiletries jostled next to the rust-edged razor in his medicine chest.
Chris smiled a little, enjoying the faint odor of her perfume, which still lingered on his pillow. Asleep, she looked young and vulnerable, almost like a child. He didn’t want to wake her, so he lay quietly, just enjoying her, the gentle rise and fall of her breasts beneath the shortie nightgown, the curve of her arm thrown over the pillow toward him. Her honey-gold hair tumbled across her pillow, half obscuring her face, but in his mind’s eye he sketched in the details—her green eyes, finely shaped features, all encased in creamy, flawless skin.
Chris had had few women in his life, even fewer whom he hadn’t paid for, and never one as beautiful as Maggie. Her presence stirred up something strange and strong within him, deep in a place where he’d never let anyone in before, not even himself, and he had to admit that the way he was beginning to feel about her frankly scared him. He wondered what Ham Tyler would say if he knew—probably eyeball him with that half-lidded look of his and tease him about being in love.
Druid, curled up at the foot of his bed, raised his head and then bounded up to lick Chris’s face.
Maggie turned over, exhaling with something perilously close to a snore, then woke abruptly when Druid, wriggling ecstatically, licked her nose. “Jesus! Have a heart!” She dived beneath the sheet, and Chris, laughing, put the Shih Tzu back on the floor.
“Take a hike, pal,” he advised the dog. “The only person gets to lick Ms. Blodgett first thing in the morning is me.” One green eye emerged cautiously from beneath the sheet. “I slept like a baby. You been awake long?”
“Just a few minutes. I said no, Druid.” As the dog jumped back off the bed, he gently pushed her sleep-tousled hair out of her eyes and leaned over to kiss her.
“What were you thinking about?” she asked. “You looked so serious.”
He grinned down at her. “About how good you look in the morning—especially right there.”
“You mean you like me better in a sexy nightie than in camouflage fatigues, bristling with weapons?” she said, smiling languorously at him.
“You better believe it, sister,” he said, “and as soon as I shut Druid out of the bedroom, I’m gonna show you how much.”
Later, she stirred in his arms as he gently brushed the hair away from her closed eyes. “That was good,” she murmured. “God, it just gets better and better between us.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, turning his head to nuzzle gently at her breast. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone, Maggie. I—”
She turned her head away, not meeting his eyes, and he faltered to a halt. “What is it?”
“Forgot to take my pill last night,” she said, sliding out from under him. “And if I don’t take a bathroom break, I’m in serious trouble.”
Frowning thoughtfully, he watched her stride into the bathroom, then sighing, turned over and stared at the patterns of sunlight left by the Venetian blinds.
When she came back, she was dressed in shorts and T-shirt. “Okay, Faber, rise and shine. Time’s awastin’, son!”
He groaned. “You’re a worse dictator than Tyler.”
She smiled. “But I’m infinitely prettier and have other qualities that he lacks. Your turn to walk the dog, and mine to make the coffee.”
A few minutes later, she faced him over a steaming mug. “So what do you think of the caffe Vienna? Did I add enough cinnamon?”
He took a sip, swished it around in his mouth with exaggerated care, then swallowed and smiled slyly. “You’re getting better, but it’s still not as good as mine.”
“Faber, you’re such a damned snob!” Mock-scowling, she threw a packet of Equal at him.
“I do a few things well, and I’m proud of them. Making coffee happens to be one of the few socially acceptable skills I have. Somehow people don’t react nearly as positively to well-constructed firebombs.”
She grinned. “If you’re really looking for praise for your coffee, you should share it with some of our friends at the club.”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “I lie in ditches and get mosquito bit for the resistance, blow up buildings for ’em, bribe black market informers, even lay my life on the line now and then for ’em. I even share you. But if I admitted to that mob that I could make kick-ass coffee and had a pantry full of real beans just waitin’ to grind up, you know how fast they’d—”
He broke off, his grin fading at the stony expression that had settled over her face. “Maggie? What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said, getting up so abruptly that her coffee slopped onto the kitchen table.
He followed her into the living room. Her back to him, she was staring out the window where they had stood together several days and countless layers of feelings ago. His nearly healed eyes made out the barely perceptible shaking of her shoulders.
She was crying.
“Mag, hon, what is it?” He tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but she shrugged it off and stepped away from him.
“You had to remind me, didn’t you?” she said. Her voice was low and flat. “About what you do for the resistance.
Double-oh-seven reincarnated as a good ol’ boy with a southern accent and a beer gut—the guy who gives the Grim Reaper the finger as he cheerfully wires bombs together or chases after Visitors, guns blazing. ” Her eyes brimmed over, then hot, angry tears spilled and ran down her face. “Damn you! Damn those stupid aliens! You had to remind me that it’s probably only a matter of time till I have to watch you die, too!”
“Hey, wait!” he said. “What am I supposed to do? Sit around on my ass waiting for the lizards to march in and turn us all into Hamburger Surprise?”
“You always have to make a joke about it, don’t you? Ha ha. Only I don’t think it’s funny, Chris. I didn’t think it was funny when they brought you in with your eyes all bandaged up, wondering if you’d ever see again, and I don’t think I’m going to be laughing a whole lot the next time they carry you in on your back.”
“Hey,” he said gently, putting his arms around her. “Nobody’s carrying me anywhere. Maggie, you can’t think you’re gonna die every time you walk out the door with a gun to fight the scalies, ’cause then you wouldn’t fight anymore. And then you might as well be dead.”
“Yeah,” she said, although she sounded unconvinced, and her shoulders remained stiff under his hands.
He forced a smile. “So tell me a Visitor joke I haven’t heard before.”
She shook her head, her mouth a thin, sad line. “I’m not in the mood right now, okay?”
“Okay. ” Quietly, he held her for a long time, stroking her hair.
Those were the only answers they had for one another at the moment.
Mike Donovan looked at Julie Parrish, seated across from him, and his mouth turned down slightly. “Aren’t you hungry?” he asked. “That tuna salad looks great.”
“Not very, I’m afraid,” she said. “Want some?” She pushed her plate over toward him and took a sip of her Coke
as he took a few mouthfuls.
They had met for lunch at a small restaurant near Science Frontiers. This was the first time in eight days they had been able to see one another, but the atmosphere between them was tense and awkward. Julie obviously had something on her mind, and she looked pale and tired, but his anxious inquiries had only met with head shakes and monosyllables. Unasked, the thought of Nathan Bates and his slimy insinuations of his “special working relationship” with Julie crossed Donovan’s mind.
For a moment, her troubled blue eyes met his, and he wondered if she was trying to work up to telling him something he didn’t want to hear.
Forcing a smile, he said the first thing that came into his head. “You know, even Ham Tyler admitted the information Margie brought back from Denver will be a lot of help.” He glanced around and lowered his voice even further. “Of course, the best thing of all is finding out about that shipment of power packs to Science Frontiers tomorrow afternoon.” “I wish / could find out more about it,” she said. “I tried to ask a few roundabout questions, but Nathan immediately got suspicious, and I had to drop it.”
“It’ll be okay.”
“I don’t know, Mike. It all seems so . . . convenient, Margie turning up like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“It could be a setup,” she said bluntly.
“Are you starting to take lessons from the Ham lyier School for Paranoia and Misgivings?” Donovan crumbled a cracker to powder, frowning. “Her info is legit. Ham double-checked.” “What about Margie? Is she legit?”
“Oh, come on, Julie, you don’t—”
“Mike, wake up to the possible reality. That information may be valid, but it could have been planted, and she could be a spy.”
Donovan felt his jaw muscles tense. “Would you be saying this about Margie if she weren’t my ex-wife, Julie?”
Her face flushed, but she looked at him steadily. “Would you be defending her so much if she weren’t?”
“What’s going on here? You’re not trying to tell me you’re jealous of Margie, are you?” His mouth twisted. “There’s something else, isn’t there? What is it? Bates?”
“You know my only concern in this matter is one of security, Mike,” she said, glancing down at the purse in her lap. “Listen, I have to get going. Nathan has been like a grizzly bear lately, and I’ve got a lot to do.”
Putting his share of the bili on the table, Mike again felt the sad, aching sense that their relationship might be ending as he watched her leave. Julie seemed to be slipping out of his emotional reach, and all his attempts at discussion, at bringing problems out into the open were ending in arguments that left him feeling confused and defensive. He was finding it more and more difficult to fight off a growing sense of pessimism about their future together.
And now Margie was back in the picture, a different person, stirring up feelings he didn’t want to look at too closely. Maybe he needed to give some more thought to Denise Daltrey’s offer about that co-anchor spot in New York City. . . .
Damn you, Donovan, why couldn’t you just shut up and listen for once? In the ladies’ room near her lab at Science Frontiers, Julie cupped water to rinse her mouth and splash onto her face. Her after-lunch bout of vomiting had left her shaking and dizzy, and she leaned against the sink for support.
Glancing at herself in the mirror, she catalogued the red-rimmed puffiness of her eyes, the darkness beneath them, and sighed. She pulled the ever-present Maalox and her makeup kit out of her purse and set to work repairing what she could of the damage to her appearance.
Her period was now two and a half weeks late, and it was getting harder for her to keep down any solid food. If this was so-called morning sickness, it certainly didn’t seem to respect any particular time of day with her, but she knew from her medical training that some women spent their entire pregnancies fighting nausea. She should have had a pregnancy test last week, but she’d been too sick and too tired—and too scared— to learn the truth.
I’ll call Joe Akers first thing in the morning, she thought. Have him schedule me for a test the following morning.
Juliet dabbed once more at the shadows under her eyes with cover-up stick, then carefully fixed her mascara. Popping a breath mint into her mouth, she went back to her lab feeling a bit better for having made the decision.
The enormous gleaming-white room was part of a complex filled with the most modem equipment and computers money could buy. Here the smells of kelp in seawater mingled with the more civilized scents of plastic and alcohol. Julie wistfully remembered the fresh sea-smells from the breezes of Catalina
Island and frowned a little. Science Frontiers had not heard from their research team out there in several days, and she was growing worried. Mac, Mr. Bates’s helicopter pilot, had promised to go out there for a look today.
Forcing her attention back to her surroundings, she spoke to a couple of technicians and set about preparing slides from the latest kelp cultures. Here, Julie knew, she had the resources and some of the best scientific minds in southern California to help her tackle the problems of the red dust bacteria mutation that might live without frost. Even so, she often felt isolated in her work at Science Frontiers.
As her employer, Bates admired her work and gave her a lot of freedom to pursue her research as she judged best, but there was more of the profit-seeker than scientist in him as he inquired about her progress. She also missed the sense of community among scientists that she had grown up with in the pre-Visitor days, before all national and international communications had been so disrupted. Nowadays, research groups mostly had to work alone to find their answers.
As she sliced tiny bits of kelp and prepared slides for the microscope, Julie thought longingly of Hannah Donnenfeld and her Brook Cove group. The information they had swapped was proving very useful in eliminating certain types of DNA cross-strains. But how much faster it would be if they could work together.
“Where were you?” Bates’s normally terse voice was even sharper than usual, and Julie jumped and dropped the slide in her hand.
“I . . . went out for lunch. I do every once in a while.”
“Next time check with me first.”
Anger heated up her face, and she bent to pick up the glass shards of the broken slide so that he wouldn’t see her expression. “Yessir, boss. And would you like me to get permission when I step out for coffee or go to the rest room?”
“I’m sorry, Julie.” His apologetic smile didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I’m a little jumpy these days. I don’t like our power pack situation being this low. You know our computers, security systems, everything depends on those little alien black boxes.”
“You should have kept up your payments to Pacific Edison,” she said dryly.
“In any case, the situation will be remedied tomorrow afternoon. I’d like you to adjust your work schedule so that you can assist with the computer shut-down tomorrow morning, prior to installation of the new power packs. I’d also like you to accompany me to the legation tomorrow afternoon.”
Julie frowned and bit her lip. She had been planning on remaining here so that she could help with the raid. “Nathan, I’m at a very critical point in our research. I’ll be glad to assist with the information transfer to our backup computer system, but I’d hate to lose a whole day’s work right now, just when we’re—”
“Julie, Diana is already suspicious enough of us and our work here. She suspects we’re involved in the production of the new red dust that’s settling into the ocean, and she’s been giving me a lot of heat about it. It may even be why she’s delayed giving us the power packs this long. Come into my office. I want to show you something.”
Reaching into his desk drawer, he pulled out a manila envelope and tossed it across the desk to her. “Mac took these with a telephoto lens over Catalina this morning.”
Numbly, Julie stared at the pictures of destruction—the ruined, laser-blasted tents, scattered equipment, the charr
ed torsos of Bill Kendall, Juan Perez, and Amelia Anderson, their expressions frozen into horrified disbelief as they’d looked into death.
Julie remembered the stories of Bill’s Old Joe, the maybe-mythical hound dog, Perez’s comical reviews of L.A. restaurants, Amelia’s good-natured grousing, all the learning and laughter they’d shared less than two weeks ago, and tears blurred her vision. And there was Andy.
“What . . . about Andrew Halpem?” she asked, her voice low. “What happened to him?”
“Who knows?” Bates shrugged, his eyes flat and expressionless. “They probably got him too. At least he didn’t talk, or things would be really hot around here. Anyway, that’s why 1 want you around to help me tomorrow. No point in getting Diana any more excited than she already is.”
You heartless bastard, Julie thought, going slowly back to her lab. Sometimes I don’t know what's worse—the Visitors runnings things or you.
Diana strode down the corridors of her Mother Ship feeling more than usually pleased with herself. She had just finished talking with Nathan Bates again, and she smiled as she thought about the edge that had come into his voice when she had told him the shipment might be delayed once more. She had enjoyed seeing him squirm, the tension deepening around his usually imperturbable features. She had dragged it out for quite awhile, and then she made a show of conferring with Lydia and assuring him the delivery would be made as scheduled after all.
Except that Bates would never get it. Diana had plans for these particular power packs, and Science Frontiers didn’t figure in them.
A second set of high-heeled footsteps joined hers, and Diana glanced over as Lydia came up from a side corridor. “You wished to see me, Diana?” she said. There was a note of resignation in Lydia’s voice almost all the time now, and Diana smiled, knowing she was largely responsible for that, too.
“Dear Lydia, don’t look so glum. I have some splendid news to share with you.” She led the way to her lab complex in the science department.
During her year of confinement on Earth, when Lydia had assumed her duties and command of the Mother Ship, their efforts in scientific research had almost ended. In Diana’s opinion, Lydia was at heart a narrow-minded security officer who had not been able to see the usefulness of the sciences in combating the humans. Now it was a special delight to inform her of every new development in her lab.
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