Our Child of the Stars

by Stephen Cox

  ‘The captain is very rattled by whatever Cory did,’ Pfeiffer said. ‘I can’t have him disappearing on me again.’ He gestured and Gene’s nurse pushed past Molly and chained Cory to a stanchion on the side.

  The other nurse poured water from a jerrycan into a bowl and unwrapped a bar of soap. Molly tried to mop up the worst of the stinking mess from her face and front, then accepted a lukewarm cup of stewed coffee, desperate to get rid of the taste from her mouth.

  Gene began a monologue about lawyers and what they would do to those present.

  They had brought nothing but grief and disaster to all their friends.

  Molly wrapped herself in her blanket and held Cory close, trying to warm him. She hummed his favourite songs, the ones her mother had sung.

  Pfeiffer put on headphones and talked into a radio. Some minutes later, he said, ‘Well, your precious little boy stopped two soldiers breathing. They’re alive, but in a bad way. We’re testing for brain damage. Imagine telling their families. We’ve four others suffering from shock and they can’t find half the dogs.’

  He paused and Molly realised that under the fear and the outrage, Pfeiffer admired what Cory had done – as if he had found some new poison. Sick at him, she shot back, ‘You came for us in the middle of the night with soldiers and guns and dogs and helicopters. It’s your fault!’

  He ignored her and went on, ‘Longman and DuBois are in custody. The science editor was found handcuffed, so I guess you know he’s a Soviet agent. How many Soviets have you spoken to?’

  ‘None,’ she said.

  ‘You attacked us,’ Gene repeated. ‘You’ve hurt my son and you won’t get away with it.’

  ‘Mr Myers, you’d be astounded by what some people get away with. Cory is of extraordinary importance – to understand his people, for our future good relations with them, for our understanding of the world. We’ll do everything we can, but you need to cooperate with us, for your own good.’

  He smirked. ‘By the way, we’ve also arrested Turner and his lawyer. So don’t be expecting any help from Witness.’

  That sucked the life out of her. They had gambled and failed.

  ‘I love you,’ she told Gene across the ambulance.

  ‘I love you too,’ he replied, ‘and I’ll get you both out of this, or die trying. Pfeiffer, what’s happened to my parents?’

  ‘They’re fine. Your mother is doing well, considering. Cooperate and I’ll let you call them.’

  In the movies, they’d figure out a plan and bust out fighting. That nurse had the key to Cory’s chain in her pocket and the soldier sitting furthest away had the key to Gene’s cuffs. Maybe Cory would be faking his sickness and she would steal a handgun and hold up Pfeiffer, like Annie Oakley, then Lars Olsen would ride up on a snowmobile and they’d make their getaway . . .

  But this was no movie. Escape was impossible.

  *

  In their sealed world they sometimes heard other traffic, a horn or the screech of brakes, but often it felt like they were the only vehicle on the road. Time was out of kilter. Molly didn’t have her watch, but she reckoned they’d been moving for more than an hour, though surely not two. Cory was still slumped against her, too cool, but still breathing.

  Molly imagined a long bath and a warm bed and waking up in Canada to find their capture was nothing but a bad dream – then the ambulance stopped. She could hear voices outside, and other vehicles. They set off again, driving more slowly now, and she heard what she thought might be a helicopter. They stopped again and this time she could hear people shouting . . .

  ‘We’re here,’ Pfeiffer said as the rear doors were opened, harsh lights dazzling her, and men crowded around the entrance.

  Someone was shouting at her, but it took her a moment to take in his words.

  ‘—won’t be tolerated. My men are armed with live ammunition. Do you understand?’

  Then there was a more welcome voice. ‘Hello, Molly, Gene,’ said Dr Jarman. ‘Let’s get you and Cory inside in the warm, shall we?’

  ‘Hello, Edgar,’ Molly said, and there was a tiny flutter of hope.

  Two soldiers lifted Gene out; the nurse unlocked Cory’s shackle and passed the end to a soldier so they could lift his gurney to the tarmac. Molly accepted Dr Jarman’s arm and climbed down. What could she see around her? Low buildings, wood cabins and lots of men in khaki. A double chain-link fence: so, a military base, most likely. There was a taller building of two or three storeys that turned out to be their destination.

  They were marched into the bowels of the war machine until at last they reached a room deep in the complex. Molly looked around, recognising an ICU. It was hideous in khaki and brown and blue, but at least the sheets were clean and the air carried the blossom of some chemical flower in an attempt to cover the disinfectant. There were two beds, surrounded by machines to measure heartbeat and breathing and the unique Cory waves of his brain, machines to feed him, to help him breathe or to restart his heart. She couldn’t see any other patients. It was like those first days in the hospital. After all that love and running and worry, they were right back where they started, only in more danger, with fewer options.

  Pfeiffer and Jarman, stiff and hostile with each other, settled Cory and connected the wires and a mask adapted for Cory’s face, then Jarman started checking him over. Looking at Molly, he asked, ‘Any ideas? What do we need?’

  ‘He attacked us,’ Pfeiffer said. ‘Is this collapse related to that ability?’

  That was Molly’s theory; Cory had been so tired after their escape from Crooked Street, like he’d been drained of life – but this was so much worse.

  ‘Who knows?’ she said.

  ‘There are beds and showers there,’ said Pfeiffer, pointing at a door. ‘Nurse, show them. Mrs Myers, you can go. Only one of you is to be here at any given time.’

  ‘No!’ said Gene. ‘You’re not separating us.’

  ‘Any nonsense, Mr Myers, and neither of you will be allowed near him.’

  There were four rooms in the unit, two on either side of the ICU. One was a robing room, with two soldiers keeping a stark guard. A tight little medical prison, thought Molly, no windows. No escape . . .

  She was exhausted and sick and running on empty, but she was still Cory’s mother. ‘I need to sleep near him,’ she said. ‘It . . . it’s better if one of us is near. Can we push the beds together? I’ll need some of his things, in case he wakes up.’

  Gene shook his head. ‘You’re ill, Molly. Get a shower and I’ll take first watch.’

  ‘Good. I have a lot of questions,’ Pfeiffer said.

  Jarman took her hand. ‘Molly, get some rest. We need to look after all three of you.’ There was mischief in those tired eyes and she felt something in her hand.

  As soon as she was in the shower-room, she looked at Jarman’s tiny note.

  Big base (in state?) Planes. We’re fine. Eva, Roy on mend. Stay strong.

  The shower was wonderful and she gratefully washed the vomit off herself. A nurse and an armed guard stood outside, in case she was considering fighting free with a bar of coarse army soap or beating them unconscious with an army sponge. As the hot water cascaded down, she leaned her face on the wall and cried noiselessly. They had gambled and lost. They should have fled when the thugs had first come.

  Pfeiffer had seen what Cory could do. Her kind, caring little boy might have burned out two soldiers’ brains. There would be no stopping Pfeiffer now, trying to turn Cory into a weapon. If he lived at all.

  CHAPTER 39

  The President

  Pfeiffer stank of his own cologne and he heard the little buzzing in his ear that said, Too much Benzedrine. He and two other anxious men, the FBI liaison and the base commander, stared at the secure scrambled line in the conference room.

  ‘If the child dies, we’re no further on,’ said the President
’s voice. ‘Christ, what a disaster.’

  ‘Mr President, we have the child and the Soviets don’t,’ Pfeiffer said. ‘We arrested the whole conspiracy and kept it under wraps, which is quite an achievement.’

  ‘Great: the Russkies are mobilising at the NATO border and playing all sorts of games under the ice and in the Pacific, but we have a child in a coma. Who owns the corpse isn’t the issue, Pfeiffer. Get that damned alien awake and get the story out of the adults.’

  In Washington, the President thumped the table. Over the speaker it sounded like a building collapsing.

  Pfeiffer tried to recover the situation. ‘Sir, we have all their family, their friends, the children, their allies. Gene Myers’ mother is ill. We have excellent leverage. And Jarman is cooperating, at least as far as the child’s health is concerned.’

  ‘You’ve had nearly two years, Pfeiffer, and what have we got for it? Jack-shit is what we’ve got.’

  Pfeiffer gritted his teeth, remembering all those pious campaign speeches where the President condemned the loss of old-fashioned manners. He persevered. ‘This child can use its mind to hide itself. It hurt six soldiers: can you imagine how we could use those abilities, Mr President? And it must know what these snake-machines are.’

  The nightmare that the boy had produced by the lake, snakes that could swim or crawl or somehow fly . . . and in front of him were the sketches Cory had hidden in the Myers’ attic. That thing with the sleek, eyeless heads at both ends could only be the machine Haldeman was assembling like a broken-up skeleton.

  And the fragmented reports the CIA had somehow obtained from Pevek suggested silver machines had attacked that tiny icebound hell-hole. They had, it was claimed, come out of the East Siberian Sea, destroying buildings, tanks and people with blue fire. The view from the US military was that the Russkies had used nuclear weapons on their own town, spreading radioactive poison across the remote Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Some thought they’d wiped out the snakes before they could spread. In his heart, Pfeiffer admired Russian ruthlessness. They were deadly serious about winning.

  The President was still holding forth. ‘None of you guys agree about any damned thing! So now you’re saying the Russkies tried to control the machines and they ran amok?’

  ‘That is one theory, Mr President,’ Pfeiffer said carefully. ‘Or perhaps the Russians decided Pevek was expendable and tested the snake-weapons on them? I don’t buy this pacifist nonsense the Myers gave the journalist; any civilisation needs to defend itself, and the kid didn’t hesitate to fight when he had to.’

  ‘Pfeiffer, I swear, if you don’t sort this, you’re finished. You won’t get a job ticking off donors at the Blood Bank. I ought to send George down there.’

  Pfeiffer kept his fixed smile, even at the thought of the President’s Chief of Staff, who always supported Pfeiffer’s rivals, if only to bait him.

  Click.

  The President was gone.

  The base commander looked at Pfeiffer with ill-disguised hostility. The FBI man managed to hide his personal views better.

  ‘You see the children as leverage?’ said the officer.

  ‘In the broadest sense,’ Pfeiffer said. If in doubt, attack. ‘I hear you have an outbreak of mutiny. I hope you can control your own men.’

  The base commander stared at him as if Pfeiffer were a bug he wanted to squash. ‘Those men came back in one hell of a state. Three of them are currently in a specialist facility. Two soldiers, career men with exemplary records, refused to guard the creature because of it – well, that’s disobeying an order, and they’re suffering the consequences. But between you and me, faced with something utterly alien that can do . . . what it did . . . Well, d’you blame them?’

  ‘It’s still a breach of discipline, Colonel. Very sloppy.’

  Pfeiffer was glad Dr Haldeman was stuck at Two Mile Lake, where he couldn’t bore the President with his ridiculous theory. The NASA man had spent long months staring at the intricate, almost organic circuits of the alien technology and had developed this fantasy that the snakes were radically different machines from any of the devices brought by the purples: a different civilisation, if you would. Pfeiffer didn’t see it; the top men he’d brought in didn’t see it. The last thing the President needed now was to be swayed from the judgement of his Scientific Counsel.

  He touched his jacket pocket. The slim silver bracelet once worn by Cory Myers was a good-luck charm for a man who didn’t believe in them. Now he had the boy, all his secrets were within his grasp.

  Time to interrogate the Myers. He moved the blind a little to look out over the bleak, snowy base. Two men in bulky winter uniforms were trying to dig a trench-latrine in the stone-hard earth. He watched the pickaxes rise and fall for a little. Say what you like about the military, they had a good range of punishments, and they ensured they were public.

  *

  Pfeiffer and his FBI colleague sat across the wooden table from Molly Myers. The doctor shuffled the files and folders of evidence while deciding how to begin. To one side was a grim-faced military nurse. Pfeiffer looked at Mrs Myers, the dark hollows under her eyes and unkempt red hair. He’d expected raging defiance but what he got was sullen silence. She had no cards left to play, so she might give in more easily than he’d expected.

  The FBI liaison officer sat silently beside him.

  ‘We arrested Nurse Hooton,’ he started at last. ‘Her boyfriend had taken her to Bermuda, of all places.’ Show her it’s hopeless; we’ll find anyone, anywhere.

  Molly shrugged.

  ‘So, your incredible little boy. Cory. When are his people coming? Did they land in Siberia? Did something go wrong?’

  Again, blank-faced, she said nothing.

  ‘Was your plan to flee to the Soviet Union? We’re looking at charges of espionage and treason – the science editor is singing like a bird.’ He sneered. ‘A poisonous traitor, but not a very brave one.’

  Another shrug, then Molly murmured, ‘I asked for a lawyer. I’m not talking without a lawyer present.’

  ‘It will be better if you cooperate.’

  She shrugged again.

  Pfeiffer produced the typed transcript of Longman’s story and found the place. ‘“Cory’s people have no word for war”,’ he read aloud. ‘You’re an intelligent woman, Mrs Myers. This is nonsense – Cory attacked me with his mind.’ Pfeiffer tried, but could not hide his shudder. ‘In the alleyway, and as you fled. Then, by the lake, even more strongly. Two of the soldiers might have died. And the criminals who attacked you? Months later, those thugs are still showing signs of trauma. Any civilisation must be ready to protect itself, Mrs Myers.’

  There it was: a glimpse of Molly’s fury. ‘You attacked him. His people loathe violence. They see it as a curable disorder. Cory won’t eat meat because he loves animals. His people have no poverty, no hunger, no borders, no soldiers . . . What savages we are.’

  ‘Your son could have killed me – he could have killed those soldiers. Imagine a group of adult Corys, able to hide, able to attack the minds of their enemy.’

  ‘He was a scared little boy,’ she said.

  The Ship was willing to use violence, so its builders must be too. Pfeiffer took the child’s drawings out of a folder. The swirling visions like a storm were hard to understand, but there were the silver snakes that breathed fire. Cory had drawn them destroying purples like him, humans, animals . . .

  ‘We found these hidden in the attic in your house, under a floorboard. And this one’ – he held it up – ‘under the carpet in his room in the cabin. And, by the lake, he projected them as a nightmare . . .’

  Myers had a handkerchief to her mouth. ‘I feel sick,’ she said, very pale.

  The nurse rose and silently handed her a bowl.

  Pfeiffer looked at the FBI man, but this was no time for sympathy; he needed results. He pressed on with the ph
otographs from the second folder. The ten by eights all had a white-coated man in for size, next to the twisted and melted and burned metal. But you could clearly see this was the head-structure and loose scales of a snake-machine.

  ‘We found these around the Meteor site, and some larger fragments further north. You clearly recognise them: they’re the same machines in Cory’s pictures and visions.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Cory ties everything together: he proves these things are weapons, some kind of robot. Odd drawings for a child who doesn’t understand war, don’t you think? He shows them attacking humans too. Is this a larger spaceship under fire from them? Are they burning their way through walls?’

  He waited in vain for her to say something.

  ‘Mrs Myers, we have proof he is dangerous and that his people fight wars. Have you no loyalty to your country, to humanity? Why won’t you cooperate?’

  The FBI man finally spoke. ‘We can keep him safe if you help us.’

  Pfeiffer was seeing a pattern. ‘You think they attacked the Moon mission. I did wonder last year what you were hiding.’

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ Molly said.

  That comment about the Moon landing hit home, he thought. It was inexcusable for her not to have come forward then, at that moment of national grief and humiliation.

  Silence.

  ‘Mrs Myers, do you know a single occasion in history where two cultures collided and the technologically inferior race came off well? Do you not understand what we’re up against?’

  Silence.

  ‘I’m not feeling well,’ she said at last, and here they came, more tears, but he had to be steel not flesh. She had cried during that first interrogation, last year. Myers was a cunning liar who’d kept the boy from him. Her husband was clearly her pawn.

  They hadn’t managed to arrest everyone yet. One person on the list was still free, but the forces searching for Nurse Fell were inexorable. She would be arrested very soon.

  CHAPTER 40