Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (39 page)

“You can’t hide out forever,” Sikes said while thinking, We’re in the hands of a bunch of racists—planetary racists who’ve murdered an old man, kidnapped a child, and are holding three members of the LAPD with the blessing of the captain and God knows who else and how high up. Plus, they are completely crazy.

“We won’t have to,” Amy said. “Someday we’ll be out there, too. We’ll fly our own craft to other stars. And
that
will be the time to . . . to say hello, as you put it. When we’re equals.”

“But not
now,”
Stewart added. “Not when we’re nothing more than trusting indigenous bow-and-arrow users who have never seen cannon before. The risk to the”—he looked up at the ceiling as if searching for the perfect word and found it—“the
purity
of our species’ survival is too high.”

Sikes was disgusted with them. He didn’t want his daughter to listen to any more of this crap. “And you had Randolph Petty killed for
that?”

Amy nodded. “We traded one man’s life for the world’s,” she said. “I think it has a rather biblical ring to it myself.”

“Besides,” her uncle added, “Petty was a traitor. He didn’t take those photographs himself. They were
leaked
to him. By an astronomical photo analyst at NORAD who thought she knew better than government policy. NORAD enlisted the aid of the Fuller Institute’s, um, security division to aid in retrieving the stolen photos.”

“NORAD,” Sikes said. “So the government
has
known about the whole thing from the beginning.”

“We’ve known about the ‘whole thing’ since Roswell,” Stewart said. “And that was just four clones in a scout ship.” Sikes didn’t know what Stewart meant and didn’t want to know, but beside him Grazer gasped out loud.

“Why didn’t you just kidnap Petty the way you kidnapped us?” Sikes asked.

“Technically,” Stewart said, “you’re being held in protective custody pursuant to a special White House National Security Directive dating back to nineteen fifty-seven. It’s not kidnapping. And the problem with Petty was that alone of all the other astronomers to whom the leaked photographs were given, he was the only one who didn’t want to cooperate with us.”

“Seventy-two years old, he’s got an asteroid named after him, and you shot him for not ‘cooperating’?”

“Exactly,” Stewart said, glancing over to the silent man with the .45. “Seventy-two years old, an irresponsible and expendable has-been, and he should have known better than to think he could get away with it.”

Sikes looked at Amy with contempt. “And everything you told me . . . it was close enough to the truth so that after the fact everyone would think you had been a hero for trying to spread the word. But just distorted enough to make me go running after false leads until the . . . the space thing was headed back to the stars.”

“It would have worked,” Amy said, “except for Detective Grazer deciding he’d access military personnel files and trigger software alarms. That’s when we realized that the cover story would be compromised.”

“Tell me, detective, how did you manage to make the connection to the institute?” Stewart asked, one professional to another.

Sikes nodded at Amy. “Mata Hari left a photograph on her office wall that showed the two of you. And the Desert Storm briefings made your face kind of hard to forget.”

“Very clever,” Stewart said. “I’ll have to remember that for next time.”

Sikes narrowed his eyes at the man. “You actually think you’re going to get away with this?”

“I already have, detective. Another few hours and that thing will be traveling so fast that it’s going to loop around on the other side of the sun and never come back. And tomorrow you will have the choice of signing a standard National Security Oath for law enforcement personnel, swearing never to divulge the classified information you’ve unwittingly uncovered in the course of your investigation, or spending the rest of your life in a federal prison.”

“That will never happen,” Sikes said. “And you won’t get away with kidnapping and murder either.”

Stewart did not acknowledge the threat. “We have before, and we will again.”

“It’s back on,” Amy said before Sikes could reply. She pointed the remote at the television, and the sound returned. An artist’s impression of a crater-marked asteroid appeared in a box above the news reader’s shoulder as the first story was updated.

British astronomers had just announced that the object—now called the Voronezh Object, after the Russian observatory that had been the first to report its presence—was exhibiting anomalous reflectance characteristics that made it unlike any other asteroid ever discovered. Those characteristics, combined with its speed and trajectory, made the astronomers confident that the Voronezh Object was indeed from outside Earth’s solar system.

The newsreader reported that so far there had been little word about the object from American observatories. Unfortunately, several installations that specialized in asteroid tracking had been closed down for repair and maintenance and might, as a result, not be able to participate in the object’s study.

Franklin Stewart looked significantly at Sikes. “We were able to shut down twenty-eight observatories around the world just by suggesting that their grants might be up for review. Locking the lot of you up is going to be a piece of cake.”

The newsreader went on to say that efforts were underway to attempt to bounce radar and laser signals from the object.

“Hey, that’s a good way to say hello,” Sikes said.

But Stewart wasn’t troubled. “Detective, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the only country with the capability to mount that kind of effort in only a few hours is this one. And I guarantee you that each radar and laser facility will regretfully report that technical difficulties prevented them from sending out any signals at all. No one’s going to talk to that thing.”

“Maybe they already know we’re here,” Kirby said bravely. “Maybe they’re just as afraid to talk to us as you are to talk with them.”

Stewart nodded. “You’ve got a smart kid there, detective. It would be a real shame if she had to grow up in a prison.”

“Daddy?”

“Don’t worry,” Sikes told his daughter. “This scumbag isn’t going to do anything to us. He’s just the kind of creep that’s probably keeping space guys away from us in the first place.”

Stewart took that as a compliment. “Precisely, detective. That’s exactly who I am. The kind of person who is keeping our world free from dangerous contamination. The kind of person who is keeping our world pure.”

“Then again,” Grazer said slowly, “maybe it’s on its way here to land and . . . and take over.”

Sikes liked seeing the shadow that passed over Stewart’s face at that comment.

“Highly unlikely,” Amy said, though she looked almost nauseated at the prospect. “With its present mass and velocity, even if it’s using total conversion of matter to energy, it’s still not big enough to carry enough reaction mass to have it change its trajectory to rendezvous with Earth.”

“Then maybe it’s just going to lob a bomb at us,” Sikes said, rubbing it in. He looked over at Amy. “Like someone once said, it’s a big universe out there.”

“Which is why we’re staying here, as quietly as possible.” Stewart walked out of the room, disappearing into the kitchen. The man with the gun remained unmoving, his gaze never leaving the prisoners on the couch.

Sikes stared at the television screen, at the corny painting of the Voronezh Object. As far as he was concerned, it probably was just a big hunk of rock, and Stewart and everyone else were nuts. But with all his might and all his heart, just in case, he sent out his thoughts to wherever they had to go in space and told that baby to
land.

It would be worth it just to see the look on Stewart’s smug face.

Of course, he thought, whatever happens after that is anybody’s guess. But it would still be worth it.

T
HE
O
VERSEERS, INTENT
on their wounded in the infirmary, did not notice when the light panels began flashing to indicate a new shift cycle had begun. But Moodri noticed. This would be the shift cycle in which the ship reached its closest approach to the gravity-well sun. When that moment came, with the ship’s trajectory sufficiently altered and its normal-space kinetic energy at its highest level, the ship would translate back into the superluminal realm, hurtling it on onward to Terminus and to oblivion for the Tenctonese.

But it was also the shift in which the ship would make its closest approach to the third planet of that sun—the shift in which the rebellion’s plan would at last be enacted.

The light panels flashed, heralding the ship’s last hours.

But only if Melgil arrived as planned.

Moodri remained at Buck’s side, appearing to pay no attention to the nonstop traffic of Overseers, wounded and otherwise. In the past hour three more
jabroka-
enhanced workers had been thrown into the seething tank of salt water. Two other captured workers had been dissolved alive. From the Overseers’ tense exchanges Moodri knew that they suspected that the Tenctonese workers were following some organized plan—only that could account for the breakdown in routine aboard the ship, including the discovery of contraband
jabroka.
But so far the Overseers had not connected the seemingly unrelated acts of rebellion with the ship’s close approach to a planet capable of supporting Tenctonese life. To reach that planet would entail the cargo taking over the ship, and that was clearly unthinkable.

As if he were a simple Elder attending to a sick child, Moodri laid out divining crystals around Buck and told him stories of Old Tencton, relating how the Family: Heroes of Soren’tzahh had sailed across the Great Inland Sea to the Central Island, where so many secrets of the Tenctonese race were revealed in the ancient ruins of earlier, yet more advanced civilizations. He told Buck how the hidden strength of each Tenctonese was the body’s ability to adjust its genetic structure in response to outside environmental influences over the course of a single generation—perhaps the legacy of genetic engineering performed even before the settlements of the Central Island had been built. He gave Buck the gift of his history so the boy could set forth for the future—the old passing its wisdom to the young, just as Moodri had listened to the stories that his Elders had told on the tribal plains, among the blue fields filled with stars.

An Overseer intruded on them once. His uniform was torn, and his sweat smelled dank with panic as he summoned Cathy imperiously and told her that it was a waste of ship’s resources for the infirmary to treat cargo so young and so old as Buck and Moodri. He wanted to throw both of them into the recycler so there would be more room to treat the Overseers who were being injured in the sporadic fighting that was erupting in the service-access tunnels.

From the corner of his eye Moodri saw Buck take hold of a long crystal as if he intended to use it as a weapon. But Cathy told the Overseer that the boy was being treated by the authority of Coolock, and any change in the child’s status had to come from him.

The Overseer had retreated at once. Coolock had that much power. They had remained undisturbed since then.

After the shift lights flashed, Buck grew restless. “Isn’t it time, Uncle Moodri? Shouldn’t I be going to the bridge with my Watcher Group?”

Buck’s group would be assembling within the hour. But it would be useless for him to go without the circuitry key that would activate the stardrive.

“We must wait for the key,” Moodri said.

“Why can’t we go get it?”

“It has been carefully hidden for fifteen years, ever since we tested the design. We cannot go to it. We must wait for it to come to us.”

Then Melgil entered the infirmary, his large spots noticeably paler. He hobbled over to Moodri and Buck, cradling his right arm. “There are checkpoints everywhere,” he said, gasping for breath as if he had run through the corridors. “The Overseers have closed down the shift except for essential workers. The pressure doors are being closed.”

Moodri placed a hand on Melgil to calm him. “The pressure doors must be closed for our plan to work.”

But Melgil wasn’t calmed. “You don’t understand. The Overseers know!”

“The Overseers are confused,” Moodri said. “They may suspect many things, but they know nothing. There have been restless times on the ship before, moments of insurrection. Almost all of them following a heavy release of the gas. What they think is occurring now is nothing they have not experienced before.”

“But they found the assault squad. They found the cache of
jabroka.”

“Did you think they would do otherwise?” Moodri drew his friend around so that their conversation would remain hidden from the Overseers still working with the injured on the infirmary’s other wall.
“Jabroka
touches something deep within our history. Something uncontrollable. It does not offer us the future, only the past.”

Melgil’s face was distorted in frustrated rage. “Now it offers us
nothing.
There is no one left who can force his way onto the bridge.”

Moodri held out a hand to his great-nephew. “Finiksa has an invitation.”

Melgil glared at the boy. “Finiksa would betray us to the Overseers for the sake of a black scarf.”

“No longer,” Buck said. He looked at Moodri with the peace of the goddess. “I am my father’s son, as he is his, back to the crossing of the Inland Sea.”

Melgil gazed at the child sharply, and Moodri knew the methods that the
binnaum
used to search within Buck’s mind and find the truth. And when Melgil had finished, Buck’s shoulders drew up square and proud. “Fear no more,” Melgil said, as if in a dream. He put his one good hand on Moodri’s arm. “Can it be done with so many of them around?”

“It must be done,” Moodri said.

Buck looked confused. “Can what be done?”

“The retrieval of the key,” Melgil answered, “from the one place no Overseer could ever search.”

The old
binnaum
began to pull back the white sleeve of his robe from his withered right arm. Buck’s eyes widened as he saw the network of old scars that ran across its dry and wrinkled flesh. “What the Overseers thought was an accident in the power plants,” Melgil explained. “Back before you were born. Fifteen years ago, when the key’s design was tested and the ship translated into normal space without warning. Surgery was necessary to reattach bones and muscles.”