by Stephen Cox
*
He looked at his watch. It was time to see the boy. He burned to talk about the Ship, but until he could control the child, it was too dangerous. Pfeiffer picked up the wire cage, the two fawn-coloured guinea pigs emitting little wheeps from time to time, and juggled their food and the folder in the other hand.
He walked down the stairs to Cory’s little cluster of rooms, which were underground, with only one exit. They worked on the airlock principle. There were cameras and pressure pads on the floor, and the door could not be opened from inside. So even if Cory was invisible, distant soldiers would see him via camera, or at least they’d be able to register his weight. Of course, that was if what Longman said in her notes was true, that Cory’s hiding power had a limited range. He wanted to test that, of course.
They had safeguards in place, what to do if Cory attacked anyone. It would be very unfortunate, but at least it would be under controlled conditions and they could take readings.
Through the glass door he saw Cory curled in foetal position on the bed, his back to the door. There were crayons and paper, books and a teddy bear, all ignored. The nurses had softened the light and brought in three pot-plants, but they just enhanced the medical starkness.
Every time Pfeiffer saw the boy, there was a twinge of fear. The nurse by the bed looked at Pfeiffer through the glass; she too was anxious and miserable.
As he came into the room, she said, ‘He’s been like that since he used the bedpan, two and a half hours ago. He’s still refusing food.’
‘That’s not good, Cory,’ said Pfeiffer. ‘We can get you something else if you like.’
‘Go away horrid liar-man,’ said that alien voice. ‘Take chain off.’
Pfeiffer drew over another chair and said, ‘I have these two guinea pigs here and someone needs to look after them. They need feeding and stroking and, I’m afraid, cleaning up after them. Nurse, we’ll need newspaper and straw from the lab if Cory keeps them. Maybe they could be allowed to run around the room.’
The nurse frowned.
Cory shifted, but kept his back turned.
Pfeiffer went on, ‘They’re not pigs at all, but rodents. Bonnie Alexander has rabbits; they’re rodents too. If you like, they could stay here and you could look after them.’
‘Cory not baby, knows word ro-dent. Cory want to see Mom and Dad and Bonnie and Chuck now-right-now.’
‘Well, Nurse, you’d better take the guinea pigs back to the lab.’
Cory uncoiled and rolled over. The chain clinked as those violet eyes stared at the cage.
‘I have some carrot pieces and some dried food. You need to make sure they have enough water.’
‘Cory hold. Not guineee-pigs’ fault, no-it-isn’t.’
The nurse found a towel, Cory put it across his lap and Pfeiffer opened the cage. Cory reached his hand into the cage and both guinea pigs sniffed it.
That bizarre, inhuman face . . . Pfeiffer had a vision of Cory picking up one of the animals and swallowing it, wriggling and whole. It was nonsense, of course; the child ate no meat. But that was not the face of a vegetarian.
Cory picked up one guinea pig and lifted it onto the towel, then the other. He made a fold so they could hide under it and reached out for the carrot pieces.
Looking at Cory, Pfeiffer could feel his hands quiver again and thrust them into his pockets. He was frightened of Cory, an entirely rational fear. After all, he’d felt the horror come out of Cory’s mind, playing on every sense; the monster had felt so real, even though it was a phantom in the air. The reports about the wounded soldiers were disturbing: flashbacks, nervous tremors, trauma. Sitting by Cory felt like sitting in front of a primed bomb.
‘Well, Cory,’ Pfeiffer said, ‘all sorts of good things can happen if you cooperate with me. I was thinking I could bring your mommy down to see you, through the glass. Very soon.’
Cory’s ears went up a little and he looked at Pfeiffer, then they went down again.
‘Your mommy and daddy are sick. They hurt people. Your mommy bit someone. We have to help them get better.’
‘Liar. Bad-Man Liar.’
The ears were drooping again. That mobile face had real expressions.
‘They want to come and see you,’ Pfeiffer said, ‘but you need to help me.’
Cory turned his gaze back to the animals under the towel. ‘What want?’ he said at last.
Pfeiffer held the folder. ‘So, Cory, if you try to help me understand these pictures, you can see your mommy for a bit – through the glass, to keep you safe, in case she bites you.’
Pfeiffer felt a shudder, a coldness coming off the boy. The child’s ears were still down, like a frightened dog’s. Pfeiffer was half repelled, half fascinated.
‘What pictures?’
Pfeiffer picked two, Cory’s sketch of the snake-machines and a photo of Haldeman’s silver fragments pieced together. He showed Cory the sketch.
‘So, what are those machines, Cory?’
Cory rocked to and fro; in a human child that would have meant distress. ‘Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know.’
‘We found some pieces of them, broken up.’
Cory looked at the photo and shuddered. ‘Good blown up. Horr-i-ble machines, horr-i-ble killing things. Sowl-jer machines.’
‘They are weapons, aren’t they? You drew them attacking people.’
‘When Mom come? Answered questions.’
‘So these are very bad machines. What did they do that was so terrible, Cory?’
A long silence.
‘I’d better take the guinea pigs away, Cory . . .’
‘Killed everyone. Fours of thou-sands. Killing made Cory sick.’
‘You must have enemies, to do such a terrible thing.’
The nurse grimaced and he felt it too, the wave of grief and cold terror. A small part of his mind noted that the guinea pigs looked like inert lumps under the towel. The boy had clearly been the victim of some brutal event.
‘Everyone like Cory live peace, no enemies. Maybe machines made by someone else. Machines crazy.’
‘Do your machines go crazy and kill, Cory?’
Cory looked fiercely at him. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Machines my planet made to do what told. Machines not people. These machines made to kill, so not ours.’
Pfeiffer paused to digest this. A child parrots what its parents tell it, so who knew whether this was true. What would a Chinese child, reared in that totalitarian prison, say about the world?
Cory reached for the cage and returned the motionless rodents. The creatures were breathing, but Cory had been too much for them.
‘Liar-man said Mom come. Cory said enough.’
‘Yes, Cory, you’ve been very good. We will bring Mommy down, straight away.’ It was time to show him compliance worked. ‘And maybe Bonnie and Chuck will write you a letter. That will cheer you up, won’t it? And your mommy will want you to eat breakfast.’
Pfeiffer needed to speak to Haldeman, then get a message to the President, let him know the child was talking. He needed to be exceptionally careful, getting what he really wanted out of Cory; the Ship had killed three men.
‘Chain so uncomfortable can’t sleep, must bite leg off. Like fox and trap story poor-fox so unfair. Horr-i-ble.’
‘We need to get you somewhere you can run around,’ Pfeiffer said, getting up. ‘Maybe you can make a snowman. But you must keep being good. Eat some breakfast. You need to stay well.’ And he needed to ratchet up the threat level on Molly Myers.
In due course, Cory would give him the key to the Ship and command of its power. The Nobel Prize beckoned: the thunder of applause, the flash of photographers like a galaxy of stars. Where would they be then, those from school and college, those journalists whose names and faces still lingered in his mind . . . ?
*
; Pfeiffer’s day had turned worse. His stomach was on fire. When he’d called Haldeman on the secure line, his deputy had been uncharacteristically belligerent.
‘Dr Pfeiffer, I must protest at this work being done behind my back.’
‘What work?’ Pfeiffer snarled; he had no time for this.
‘The midget submarine.’
‘What midget submarine? I know nothing about this.’
It took Pfeiffer longer than he should to get over three simple points: he hadn’t known, he was furious at anything done behind either of their backs, and someone would pay for this.
Tyler told him that Haldeman had struck up an illicit liaison with one of the army secretaries, not just to fornicate, but to keep an eye on the army. Haldeman told Pfeiffer the submarine was ready to go into the lake.
Pfeiffer was getting unhappier by the minute; at this rate he’d have to go to the President to stop it before the Ship found out and killed more people.
But right now, they needed to focus. ‘Haldeman, very briefly, give me your theory about why the snakes are a different technology from the Ship.’
Haldeman was passionate, long-winded and slipped easily into metaphor. It was something to do with the nature of the intricate circuits. Pfeiffer still found it a big leap in the dark, but . . .
‘Have you changed your mind?’ Haldeman ended, gleefully.
‘Scientists must always keep an open mind and rely on the evidence,’ Pfeiffer said sonorously. One of his team tugged at his arm and he growled, ‘I’m busy.’
‘Dr Pfeiffer, you really have to come and see this. They’re showing it every commercial break.’
When Pfeiffer entered the conference room the FBI liaison turned and said, ‘Dahlia Diamond.’
The base commander arrived moments later, muttering.
Pfeiffer thought Diamond was a smart, cynical TV journalist with a good act, but his wife revered her; The Women of America Trust Her, the adverts crowed. They loved how Diamond talked about the ordinary folks, the real America, apparently indifferent to the fact that she was never seen in anything but the most expensive French and Italian couture. What a phoney, he thought whenever that glamorous brow frowned with concern and she leaned forward, just a little, to ask her next gentle question, whether the person in the other chair was the Secretary of State or a Virginia miner’s widow. She was shameless, a hack playing on emotion and sentiment – but she did get the ratings.
‘So, what’s she saying?’
‘They’re trailing her live interview tonight.’ The speaker looked worried. ‘You’d better see.’ He walked to the television set and turned up the volume.
Here came the jaunty music and Diamond stood, looking like a million dollars, against a plain background. ‘On Diamond Tonight,’ she started, ‘we ask the questions the whole world wants to know: does an alien boy live among us? Is Witness telling the truth? Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence – and, dear viewers, I have that evidence.’
She milked the moment, smirking, then, oh so serious, reported, ‘Nurse Fell, a young nurse at Amber Grove Hospital, a tireless helper of the wounded after the Meteor, was one of the few who knew about the alien boy. She cared for him, she loved him – as a friend of the family, she babysat him.’ Two beats. ‘And she filmed him.’
She produced a grey aluminium film can and Pfeiffer’s guts immediately kicked off: a sharp spasm that made him grunt.
‘Nurse Fell will be on the show and she can tell us everything about this child from the stars. I’ll be asking the questions you want to ask, and you will see the evidence. You will make up your own minds: only on Diamond Tonight.’
She smiled a little maliciously and added, ‘Broadcast to you from a hidden location, just in case the government forgets the First Amendment and tries anything foolish.’
‘The President will go out of his mind,’ the FBI man said.
*
An hour later, the base commander, FBI liaison and Pfeiffer sat waiting for the call. Pfeiffer had to weave his fingers together to stop the quivering; he was not looking forward to the tongue-lashing to come.
The first voice was the Chief of Staff. ‘The President is running a little late – no, here he is.’
‘Pfeiffer?’ said the President.
‘Yes, Mr President,’ Pfeiffer said, trying to hide the tremor in his voice.
‘We’re screwed,’ the President said, without rancour. Like a comment on the weather.
‘Not exactly,’ said Pfeiffer. ‘I think—’
‘I’m not asking for advice. I have a plan. We had the wrong playbook. Even the best coach makes a bad call. We blew it.’
There was a pause, a long pause, then, ‘We can’t bluff our way out of this. My folks on the Hill say this will speed up hearings. Diamond’s people have offered them Fell, to testify, and the film. That she-devil’s smart enough and she’s lawyered up, so the stuff must be premium grade. Witness say they have a shit-load more photos; they’re offering those to the committee too. I need to get on top of this. Now.’
‘We have plenty of dirt ready,’ Pfeiffer said. Operation Garbage Can was primed: they’d smear the Myers as communists and traitors, and Mrs Myers as a mental case. Easy enough to destroy Longman’s credibility too.
‘Well, time for that is past. It’s a new game.’
The pause this time was so long the FBI man asked, ‘Sir? Are you there?’
‘When I ran for the House, just after the war, a big man in the California party took me under his wing and he told me, sometimes you gotta go after the Reds, wave the flag and talk tough on the budget. And sometimes you need to get out there and smile and eat burgers at the county fair, kiss a few babies. It’s time to change direction: to get on the train while we can.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Pfeiffer said.
‘George, I need the Myers on the phone – warm ’em up first. I need them happy to do a press conference up here in DC. We can use the Russians – all that crap about being open? So let ’em meet the Russian Ambassador, a photo-op. Lord help me, I may even have to offer that bitch Diamond a face-to-face.’
‘Sir . . .’
‘I guess the Myers want their kid safe and their friends free. I’m President of the most powerful country in the world and I can’t promise them that? I want to tell the press as soon as I can that I’ve spoken to the Myers, then broadcast to the nation: Thank God he landed in the US, eh? Safe and well. Mistakes were made, I’ve apologised personally to the Myers and everything is sorted. Yeah, Diamond has her scoop, but hell, we get the kid on TV with the Myers and the story will move on. My grandmother, Lord bless her soul, she always said, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.’
Pfeiffer saw a path opening up, for good or ill. So this was how the Administration might slip free of the consequences of its decisions, how the family might get everything they wanted and how, sure as night followed day, that future would not include him.
‘They’ll want to go back to Amber Grove,’ he pointed out.
‘What, and have every crackpot in the country gawping at ’em? Not to mention spies and crooks and nuts with guns. No, that just can’t happen; we’ll need them safe. Does the thing smell? It looks like it stinks. We may need to have it stay at the White House.’
‘He smells a little, but it’s not unpleasant. Uh, Mr and Mrs Myers are very insistent on “he”, Mr President.’
The outer tentacles are dry, like fingers, thought Pfeiffer. He only touches people he likes.
He had felt the ground move under his feet. The President had, without a word, side-lined him. He and Haldeman were now playing second fiddle at Two Mile Lake. His triumph of the morning had been a false dawn; there was a pit below him, and an endless fall into a nameless darkness.
CHAPTER 43
When the President calls . . .
Call-me-S
ophia looked hopeful. ‘We’re taking you to Cory now: you’ll have twenty minutes, but through the window.’ She paused, then said encouragingly, ‘It’s a start, right?’
It might be yet another mind-game, so Molly was prepared for disappointment. She submitted to the cuffs without argument and as they walked, a soldier at her side, she tried to fix the route in her mind. Here was the ICU, and here was the window—
‘MOM!’
—and here was Cory at the window, purple tentacles and paws pressed to the glass. She put her hands against his, touching through the glass, and his need and love poured out to her. The tears came. She yearned to hold him.
They’d brought the bed to the window as he was still chained. He looked frail; solitude physically hurt him.
She bent her ear to the glass, trying to hear as he gabbled away. ‘Talked to horrid Liar-man, Mom – talk-more, see Mom more.’
‘Be strong, Cory, he won’t get away with all this.’ She really wished that was true.
‘Cory think killing-snake-machines on Earth. Oh-no. Crazy sowl-jer machines. Horrid Liar-man has pictures.’
‘Tell them nothing, Cory. They must let us go, and our friends, and then we’ll talk to them.’ They were brave words, but the truth was, she didn’t know what to do anymore, other than spend each precious minute with Cory telling him about the things they would do together, the people they would see, the bright, hopeful future she had always wanted for him. Cory kept talking about Bonnie and Chuck as though they were close and with their parents and she wondered how far he could travel in his dreams.
She kept her smile until she was out of sight, then let them lead her, sobbing, back to her cell, where she was left to sit alone for hours.
She expected Pfeiffer or one of the FBI interrogators, but instead, a frowning soldier turned up late with what passed for lunch. She pushed the tray aside and was trying to immerse herself in one of the trashy paperbacks Call-me-Sophia had slipped her when a grey-haired officer walked in and announced, ‘Mrs Myers, I run this facility. Please come with me. You have a phone call.’