Variations on Humanity

by Paul Eslinger

He reached for the handle. It didn’t move. “Locked,” he grunted.

  Rhona pushed close and peered around Keene. “Any signs of forced entry?”

  “No.” He twisted on the handle again. It still didn’t move. His lips puckered while he ran his fingers along the seam the door made with the jamb. “Ouch.”

  “What happened?” Rhona blurted.

  “Sliver.” Keene raised his hand and examined his finger. “Metal sliver…”

  Rhona gestured at the door. “Someone forced their way in.”

  “Yeah.” Keene extracted the sliver and tossed it on the counter top.

  “Move back,” Sam said as he stepped back several paces. He darted forward, jumped, and kicked the door next to the handle. It popped open and slammed against a stop.

  Rhona pushed past Sam and entered the apartment. The furnishings showed a feminine touch and everything was neat. She stopped and grabbed Keene’s arm when she saw a potted plant lying on the floor in the small living room.

  Keene nodded without speaking and his eyes darted back and forth. He pointed towards one doorway and headed that way as Sam edged towards another door. Rhona trailed along behind Keene, her heart pounding.

  Chapter 27 – Miracle Cure

  They found Andrea on her bed, naked, face up, and motionless.

  Rhona gagged, wiped the spittle from her chin, and with a determined mental effort, moved closer to the bed. Enough time had passed since the attack that most of the blood was dry. She looked closer and saw a bubble of blood in one nostril. “She’s alive!”

  “What?” Keene spun around and looked at Rhona. “She can’t–”

  “I saw her breathe.” Rhona swallowed the lump in her throat, touched her earpiece, and brought Laura into the conversation. “Andrea’s badly hurt,” she squeaked. “We need medical help now. We may only have minutes.”

  Laura’s voice was so choked she could hardly talk. “I’m watching the video feed. You need to get her over here fast.”

  There wasn’t time to call in help or find a stretcher. Keene and Sam glanced at each other and then stepped closer to the bed. They pulled Andrea to one side using the tangled bedding and wrapped a bloody blanket around her to hold her exposed intestines in place. Using the bedspread as a sling, they staggered through the apartment carrying the unconscious woman between them. She didn’t weigh more than 140 pounds, so they made it outside without stopping to rest.

  They used the blanket to pull Andrea into the back seat of the pilentum. Rhona got in with her, holding her so she didn’t slide onto the floor. Keene spoke rapidly while he tucked in the end of the bedspread. “There isn’t room for all of us. Sam and I will stay here, call Olga, and check around. They should be ready for her at the house by the time you arrive.”

  He straightened, slammed the door, and pounded on the top of the vehicle with his palm. “Go, go, go!”

  Trixie refused to look in the back seat, but she had already entered their destination in the AI. The pilentum darted out of the parking lot and accelerated down the street. Rhona drew a deep breath and touched Andrea’s bloody neck. Some of the blood was fresh, probably caused by them moving her. Her pulse was weak, fast, and erratic. Without a watch, Rhona estimated it was over 150 beats per minute.

  The short trip seemed to take an eternity and Rhona was relieved to see three Abantu emerge from the house as they turned in the driveway. A flaming red mop of hair identified one of them as Edris.

  Thinking about hair color helped Rhona ignore the grievously wounded woman in her lap. Moments later, Nanda opened the pilentum door and looked inside. “How is she doing?”

  “She’s still breathing,” Rhona said with a shudder.

  Nanda set a large bag on the floor beside Rhona. “Hold her a moment longer. I want to start an IV.”

  Watching the familiar action of a medical professional–if professional was the right term to use for Nanda–helped Rhona start thinking again. “Will she survive?”

  “She should.” Nanda pointed at her bag. “I can keep her blood oxygenated with this equipment long enough for us to get her to the infirmary.”

  It didn’t take long for Nanda to hook up her equipment. She gestured at Edris and Adara. “Bring the stretcher over here by the door. Rhona and I will get her out.”

  Rhona helped move Andrea and followed the others until they reached the infirmary. After checking that Andrea was still breathing, Rhona glanced at Nanda. “You don’t need my help, do you?”

  “You would just get in the way,” Nanda responded without rancor as they unwrapped Andrea’s bloody torso and positioned her on one of the beds.

  Rhona looked at the blood on her hands and clothing and shook her head. “I’m out of here. I need to clean up.”

  She couldn’t resist calling Keene and Sam as she headed for her apartment. “Have you found anything?”

  “One thing,” Keene grated. “Tire tracks behind the Lodge, out of sight of any surveillance cameras. They lead off to the north, across Kansas 156, and then in between the trees. They look like they are following US-283.”

  “Bicycles?” Rhona asked.

  “Probably mountain bikes.”

  “Can you follow them?”

  “Trixie just arrived in a chariot. She and Sam are going to drop a canis and then try to follow it and the tracks from the air.”

  “What are you doing?”

  Keene cleared his throat. “Olga arrived just after you left. I’ll spend more time talking to her. What about you?”

  “Andrea is in the infirmary, still alive. I’m going to take a shower and head up to the Intelligence Center.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  Rhona knew Keene was groping for clues, so she ignored his harsh tone. “If they came down 283, they crossed the embassy line. I want to know why Dulcis didn’t spot them and raise a red flag.”

  She changed her focus. “Dulcis, did you observe any bicyclists crossing the embassy border today, or during the last few days?”

  “No bicyclists have crossed the county line since I was upgraded.”

  “We have to improve security,” Rhona responded, mostly for Keene’s benefit. “Who will they target next?”

  “Who are they?” Keene asked. “Why are they here? Andrea’s phone has been tapped for a long time. I don’t think she keeps any secrets.”

  “We’ll start looking,” Rhona responded.

  “We turned the power back on at the Lodge. They broke into the panel box and flipped several breakers.”

  “Is anyone still at the Lodge?”

  “One man.” Olga’s voice joined the conversation. “He says he arrived late and stayed up watching a show. He slept in and didn’t hear anything.”

  The hot water relaxed Rhona’s tense muscles and she really began to think as she shampooed her hair. Her previous idea that someone was targeting people close to the Abantu who knew her, Keene or Sam, returned in full force. She had been so busy–preparing for the Security Council meeting–planning her wedding–studying Abantu technology–that she had buried the thought. Now, they had almost buried Andrea. It was time to think clearly.

  The other incidents were history, but the current events were still fresh. What could she do? She tilted her head and squeegeed the water out of her hair. “Dulcis?” she asked.

  “Yes, Rhona.” The AI’s perfectly synthesized voice came from the walls of the bathroom.

  “Do you save information on all detections of movement across the embassy boundary on the surface?”

  “I do.”

  “Other than cars on roads, how many detections occurred in the last week?”

  “Fifty-seven.”

  “What caused them?”

  “Forty-two were deer. They were confirmed by visual data.”

  “That leaves seventeen,” Rhona prompted.<
br />
  “Twelve were hawks swooping low for prey.”

  “What else?” The numbers ticked off in Rhona’s head while she reached for a towel. “That leaves five.”

  “Three were dogs. The other two have an unknown reason.”

  Rhona toweled herself vigorously. “Explain the two.”

  “The time was early this morning. The detections showed up because Sam asked me to lower the detection threshold. Doing so causes false alarms.”

  Excitement quickened Rhona’s pulse. “Were those two up near US 283? Are Sam and Trixie headed in that direction?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Were those detections in low spots between hills? Did you check thermal data as well?”

  “You are correct, Rhona. Trixie and Sam think the thermal data show two faint, man-sized moving images. They do not register that way with my algorithms. There was ground fog, so the visual data are useless.”

  Rhona tossed the towel on the floor. The housekeeping function would dry it off and put it away. She was more interested in a discrepancy. “The sensors in the pilentum didn’t have any problem with fog when I drove Elaine here from Rapid City.”

  “Trixie and Sam deployed a limited suite of sensors around the boundary.”

  “We need to fix that.” Rhona picked up a fresh blouse and mused aloud. “Two men on bikes… off the road… in the fog. Were the detections near the road?”

  “A hundred yards west of the road. Old imagery indicates they were following a game trail.”

  “Send this information to Keene, Sam, and the others.” Rhona grabbed a pair of pants and pulled them on. “We know how they got here and what they did. Now we need to figure out who sent them.”

  Rhona was nearing the Intelligence Center when Helen came down the hall from the direction of Laura’s office. Helen’s face was flushed and there were unshed tears in her eyes when she approached Rhona. “I just heard about Andrea.”

  “It was terrible, but Nanda says she will recover.” Rhona stepped closer and held out her arms. Helen responded in the same manner and the two women clung to each other for several long moments.

  Finally, Rhona stepped back and wiped her cheek. “We never figured out who ran you off the road or sent the fake nurse to kill you. We need to…”

  “Yeah.” Helen wiped away a tear and sniffed. “We need to find who sent them.”

  Rhona put an arm around Helen and steered her towards the Intelligence Center. “Have you thought of anything else that may give us a clue about your wreck?”

  “I’ve tried to remember more details, but I can’t.” Helen shook her head. “I remember Glenn making a comment about an idiot passing on a curve. There was a crash and I woke up in the hospital.”

  “That’s okay.” Rhona patted Helen on the shoulder as they entered the Intelligence Center together.

  “Hey, Rhona,” Geena called out when the two women stepped into the melee of changing displays.

  “Yes?”

  “The canis followed the bicycle tracks all the way to the highway. We checked the street camera at Ness City. It was too foggy to identify any vehicles coming north on 283.”

  “Bicycle tracks?” Helen asked with a frown.

  “We think the people who attacked Andrea rode bicycles along trails to avoid detection.”

  Helen’s hand covered her mouth. “I’ve been sleeping here, but I drove home alone yesterday in the pilentum to get some clothes and personal things. There were fresh bicycle tracks in my driveway. No one was there and the house seemed fine.”

  “I didn’t know you knew how to drive it.”

  “It’s easy,” Helen protested. “You don’t really drive it. All you do is tell it where to go.”

  “That’s okay,” Rhona said. “I was just babbling. That comment was more about my ignorance than about your driving. The tracks from bicycle tires are the interesting part.”

  Helen’s brown eyes grew wide when she looked at Rhona. “Do you think they were looking for me?” she whispered.

  “Possibly,” Rhona replied. “Do you know anyone who rides a bicycle in the middle of the winter?”

  “Some of the younger boys living here in Jetmore ride all year. They would come to the store, even in bad weather. None of them rides as far out of town as my place. The house is a half mile from the paved road.”

  Rhona held up both hands as options started swirling in her mind. “Hold it. Sam and Trixie are still out in one of the chariots. They can swing by your place and check out the tracks.”

  “Didn’t you say the other tracks went towards Ness City?”

  “Yep,” Rhona replied. “This probably means there were more than two people out yesterday.”

  Helen’s eyes widened again as she shivered. “No one is safe.”

  Rhona was surprised at the amount of adrenaline her fear dumped in her bloodstream. She took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from her palms on her pants. “Let me talk to Sam and Trixie about checking out your place. Then, we’ll move on to other things.”

  Interactions with other people sometimes left a deep-seated feeling of accomplishment, while questions to Dulcis merely brought information. After talking to Sam, Rhona sought out Geena. “Do the boundary sensors detect metal?”

  “Yes. All types of metal, not just ferrous alloys.”

  “Yet, they didn’t detect the bicycles this morning. Did the sensors malfunction?”

  Geena held one finger up and spat out several long sentences in Abantu. Rhona was making progress on her language study, but she didn’t recognize many of the words.

  However, Rhona did recognize Nanda’s voice in her earpiece. “Rhona?”

  “Yes?”

  “We finished with Andrea, for now. She doesn’t have any significant brain injury, so she will recover completely. We’re predicting six days of treatment in the infirmary.”

  “That’s good news.”

  Nanda’s voice grew cold. “Just catch the people who did this.”

  “We’re trying. What kind of weapon did they use?”

  “Ceramic knives. No metal, though.”

  “Thanks, Nanda.”

  Geena shook her head just after Rhona’s conversation with Nanda ended. “There weren’t any sensor malfunctions.”

  “It was a long shot,” Rhona replied. “Who makes a bicycle that doesn’t use any metal parts?”

  Moments later, Dulcis answered. “A Swedish company made the Itera model plastic bicycles for a while in the early 1980s.”

  Rhona shrugged. “That proves it can be done. Does anyone make them now?”

  “No mass market product is available, but it’s possible,” Dulcis replied. “In 2011, engineers in Bristol working for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company developed a nylon bicycle using a process similar to 3D printing. The material is supposed to be stronger than steel.”

  “Hmm, does Enzio Martin have any connection with those engineers?”

  Dulcis responded immediately. “Martin has a contract to supply materials to that organization.”

  Chapter 28 – Otherworldly Sensors

  Despite Rhona’s desires to the contrary, they didn’t establish any hard clues to the identity of Andrea’s attackers before lunch. After lunch, Rhona prowled around the Intelligence Center, frustrated at her lack of an epiphany. She came to a stop behind Keene as he studied four different displays. “Found anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing about Andrea. However, there is an interesting new group in Colorado.”

  “What group?”

  “They use the acronym PURE.”

  A dozen different concepts ran through Rhona’s mind and then she nodded. “Humans only, huh?”

  “You got it.” Keene scratched his ear while his eyes continued to scan the displays. “People United
to Remove Extraterrestrials.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “The website just popped up today. So far, they are just soliciting funds.”

  “Any luck?”

  Keene waved both hands. “Surprisingly so. Donations have already topped $1 million, and most of them are for $50 or less.”

  “Can we guess their plans?”

  “It’s a crapshoot.” Keene paused and hugged Rhona with one arm. “They heard about our hack at the White House a few weeks ago. One of their themes is that no electronic communication is secure.”

  “They’re correct,” Rhona replied with a grin.

  The upgrade to Dulcis gave them the capability to tap almost every electronic device on the planet. It took a small amount of time to make each link, and they were actively establishing new links, but in reality, they were only tapping a few percent of the devices. Analysis programs sniffed through the tsunami of electronic information, but the programs developed very few new intelligence insights, often because no one knew exactly what to look for.

  “Yeah,” Keene agreed. “We’re swimming in an ocean of information and we can’t find Rucker and Martin.”

  Rhona leaned into Keene’s embrace for a few moments, mentally setting aside the worries of the day. The brief respite rejuvenated her flagging spirits. She patted Keene on the arm, “Keep up the good work.”

  Moments later, she stopped in the little region where Sam and Trixie were working. “What’s going on?”

  Sam jumped as if startled at her arrival. He glanced at Trixie and then faced Rhona. “Trixie has been working on a new sensor.”

  Rhona raised one eyebrow. “Oh? What does it do?”

  “We’ve tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to make thought-activated equipment,” Trixie said. “Even though the technology has been around for ten lifetimes, it is not widely used. It can read the electrical impulses generated by a brain. Individual brains are so different, and have enough innate variability, that it takes a lot of training data and an immense amount of computing power to get reliable readings.”

  Rhona rubbed her fingertips together. It was a quantum technological leap to move from tapping cell phones to reading minds. However, Trixie’s comments on the difficulties had been interesting. “Why are you bringing this up?” Rhona asked.