Bitter Waters (25 page)

Alicia started to say something, perhaps to mention that she'd been hypnotized before, and then fell quiet, looking troubled. Who knew what the infection and converting her back to human had done to the structures of her mind?

Ukiah took Alicia's hand, squeezed it tight, and left her to Bridget's care.

Starr led them back into the house to a kitchen filled with drying herbs and spices. Rennie eyed the abundance of straw brooms, the blue hollow glass witch's ball in the window, and
the locked hutch containing mistletoe, skullcap, and dragon's blood root, as Starr put the teapot on to heat and started to prepare tea.

“She's a witch,”
Rennie noted with surprise and uneasiness.

“She's Wiccan.”

“I thought you said she goes to your church.”

“She does. I'm Unitarian.”

“And to think that other Christians kill each other over saying mass in Latin or not,”
Rennie said lightly, but nevertheless paid closer attention to the tea making.

Ukiah pointed out the poisonous herbs were all locked into the hutch. In focusing Rennie's attention on it, Ukiah noticed something he missed earlier. “Starr, what is this? These dark leaves.”

Starr came to see what he was looking at. “That's wormwood. Artemisia absintium. It can be dangerous, so we lock it up.”

“Why do you have it?” Ukiah asked.

“We use it in various ways. When smoldered as incense, we use it to summon spirits. It's good for expelling worms, especially roundworm and threadworm.”

“Some carry it as protection against bewitchment and hexes,” Rennie added, his brogue suddenly thick, as if he had stepped back a hundred years.

Starr grinned at Rennie, as if amused by his discomfort. “Why do you ask, Ukiah?”

“I think I saw it in a painting recently.” Goodman's mural to be exact. “It's hard to tell. The leaves were small and not done with a lot of detail—more of an impression of the leaves than an accurate drawing.”

The teapot started to whistle, drawing Starr back to the range. “Wormwood has lots of colorful history behind it. Its nicknames are ‘Old Woman' and ‘Crown of the King.' The Greeks thought it a cure against the poison of sea dragons, and it's in the Bible.”

Sometimes the trick to being a private investigator, Ukiah decided, wasn't finding clues but ignoring all but the right one. Even if he was sure that Goodman had painted
wormwood into his mural, Ukiah now had a wide range of reasons why. Had Goodman been trying to poison his monstrous mother? Had he believed he needed protection from witches?

“She's most likely done.” Starr added a tin of powdered hot cocoa mix to the loaded tea tray and handed the tray to Ukiah. “Take this out to Bridget. I'll stay in here, sketching.”

“Please picture a staircase in your mind,” Bridget was saying when the men returned to the patio. Alicia sat with her eyes closed, her body relaxed. Bridget indicated to Ukiah to set the tea tray down on a nearby table with an absent wave of her hand. “It can be a staircase wholly in your imagination, or one you know very well. Perhaps it's the staircase in your house, or one at your school, or maybe it's somewhere outdoors, old and worn. When you see the staircase, please see yourself standing on the bottom step, looking up. When you can clearly see yourself and the stairs please nod your head.”

Alicia nodded ever so slightly as Ukiah settled quietly in one of the chairs beside Bridget. Alicia's breathing slowed and her face started to sag in total relaxation.

“Please see yourself walking up the staircase. With each step you take you will go deeper and deeper into the hypnotic state. When you reach the top of the stairs you will be deeply hypnotized and ready to respond to the questions asked to you. Please take your time and walk slowly up the stairs. Just nod your head when you reach the top. Walk up the steps and be more . . . and . . . more . . . hypnotized . . . more . . . and more . . . hypnotized.”

Alicia nodded once more.

Bridget glanced now to Ukiah. “She'll answer questions now.”

“Alicia . . .” Ukiah realized he should have given more thought to what questions to ask. “Alicia, do you remember Hex taking the Ae from the ship? They were in the armory. It's empty now. Do you remember him taking them?”

“The Ae?” Alicia's face twisted into one of Hex's frowns. She continued in Hex's flat voice. “Prime planned an ambush for me while I was out collecting specimens for the creation of the breeder. I had taken heavier weapons with me than he expected. He waited; thinking I'd lay them aside, but I could
sense his uneasiness, try as he might to hide it: like sandpaper against my nerves.”

Ukiah stared at Alicia in dismay; he hadn't expected Hex to answer. Behind him, Rennie growled so deep and low that Ukiah felt it more than heard it.

“It was—disquieting.” Alicia/Hex continued. “I think back to the mother ship but I do not remember him, nor does any
I
that shared memories with I prior to leaving the mother ship. He was a loner always, but
I
did not see that, surrounded by myself as
I
had been, but now that I was alone with him, I see that I was truly alone, and he was another, and not myself. He pressed me to set aside the weapons and I saw the truth and he saw with me, and in that moment . . .” Alicia/Hex paused, mouth working, trying to shape the confusion of the alien who had always been one, finding itself suddenly two. “We drew our weapons, I and he, and we fired, he and I, and wounded . . . both . . . ourselves.”

“A simple yes would have worked,”
Rennie bristled, aware of how much information was spilling out to Bridget.
“Who would have guessed Hex was a talker?”

Ukiah thought of all his brushes with the Ontongard.
“I've always found Hex to be amazingly chatty.”

Rennie grunted.
“Perhaps it's like talking with a deaf man; he doesn't know how loud he has to shout to be heard.”

“Or how much he has to say to be understood,”
Ukiah followed the analogy.

“What happened with the Ae?” Rennie growled, pushing Alicia/Hex back to the question.

Alicia/Hex lay quiet, drifting back through time. “I retreated, as did Prime. I had wounded him worse, but he got to the armory first. He chose to flee, and I gathered everything that he had left and put them on a sled. I could not see the shape of his plan; the utter foreignness of his rebellion blinded me. I reacted instead of acting. I took all that the sled could carry and gave chase. I should have stayed and found his bombs, but I chased after and the scout ship was destroyed behind me. Prime wounded me, and I lost even the memory of where its ruins lay.”

“What did you do with the machines?”

Alicia considered the question and shook her head slowly. “I—he—we.” She paused, struggling, then as solely Alicia said, “That's all from that time.”

Despite his disappointment, Ukiah felt relief to hear
her
voice, confirmation that Alicia still remained.

“Where are the Ae now?” Ukiah tried a different approach. “Surely, when you—Hex discovered that the breeder survived, Hex thought about the Ae.”

“Prime's breeder,” Alicia/Hex growled. “I was disappointed at the loss of the breeder until I reviewed those memories and realized what Prime must have done. Swapped the DNA. Used his own. Poisoned the breeder. But it survived, so it might still be of use, but used carefully.”

Ukiah shuddered. “You would need the Ae.”

“Yes. The Ae are in storage. They were still safe when
I
took the remote key out for reactivating the mother ship, untouched for nearly fifty years.”

“Where are they stored?”

Long silence and then Alicia alone answered, “They're in a mine.”

Hex's personality had been so strong that it was almost wrenching to suddenly hear Alicia as wholly herself, free of the Ontongard taint.

“A mine? What type of mine? A coal mine? A gold mine in the Rockies?”

“Um.” Alicia swung her head, as if looking around. “It looks like limestone. It's been converted to a storage facility. Room-sized vaults. There's a gate and guards. Very high security.”

“They're all standing on you,” Alicia had told Ukiah. “Pressing you to the floor, so you can't move, and can't be heard . . .” Thus two personalities lay recorded in her mind, Hex's thoughts and her own awareness as Hex used her neurons to play his genetic-coded memories and make plans. Apparently with Hex exorcised from her, not only could they tap the ghost impression of Hex, but Alicia could also peer into those memories and reinterpret them.

“Where is the mine located?”

“Near a working limestone strip mine.” Alicia traveled out
of the mine. “Everything is coated with fine limestone dust. There are farms along the road. There's a sign for the Pennsylvania turnpike, and it's pointing south.”

“It shouldn't be hard to find,” Ukiah said.

“What will be difficult,”
Rennie said,
“is getting in and finding the Ae. We'll need the name of the dummy company that Hex used, and how he got through security.”

Ukiah realized suddenly that once they had the three pieces of information, it should be fairly simple to gain access to the Ae. While Hex had been humanoid in shape and size, from his irisless eyes to boar-bristle hair, he could not pass as human. Ironically, because of Prime, Hex was very egocentric for an Ontongard and would not expose his original form to risk. And because of the Pack's relentless slaughter of Hex's Gets, Hex could not count on any one Get to be alive in order to retrieve the Ae. Thus Hex would have set it up so that any Get, current or future, would be able to access the storage facility. “How did you get through security to get the key?”

Alicia/Hex harrumphed, agitated. “Snow filled the city. I hate the winter. The air so cold it freezes the inside
I
lining my lungs; each breath is a murder of myself. There are six of me, I and five Gets. I am comfortable at this number. I am thinking—we are thinking—I am thinking about . . . a mansion of brownstone. I had been there, but I hadn't, another
I
had been there and I see through”—a pause as Alicia struggled with pronouns—“
my
eyes. The house is where it is warm, I will go there after
I
get the key, but there are humans there that will have to be dealt with, and it is annoying because they will probably die. I am angry at the snow, and the humans that die so easily, taking parts of me with them. Stupid, stupid planet.”

“Where is the house?” Rennie asked, leaning forward. “Describe it.”

But Hex's recall had run its course, leaving Alicia to puzzle it out alone. “The street is called Royal. It's narrow and straight, and the houses look like European, something old that's been updated, but not really changed for hundreds of years. I—he can remember it when only horses moved through the streets, and there was no taint of cars in the air.” She considered for a minute and added, “The house number
is seventeen, with tall windows and tall ceilings, and it smells of slow-cooked spaghetti sauce. Someone's practicing a piano. They're playing ‘Moonlight Sonata,' too slow, over and over again, missing the same keys.”

“Which town?”

“I don't recognize it.” Alicia meant herself this time. She examined alien memories of things she had never seen herself, shaking her head, as she found nothing familiar, and finally said, “The cars have Louisiana license plates. I can smell a river.”

“New Orleans,” Rennie guessed. “How long ago was this?”

Alicia thought for a while. At one point, driven to paranoia by Prime's rebellion, only Hex made Gets. After the Pack killed Hex, his Gets began making their own. Alicia counted back, thus, the life of the Get that made her Ontongard, to the point it had been created by Hex, and then the memories back more. “Ten years ago.”

So the piano player had been dead or changed into a Get for a decade now.

Bridget whispered, “I'm confused, and somewhat alarmed.”

Ukiah winced at the flare of annoyance from Rennie. “Alicia was—taken over by an alien being called Hex. She's fine now, but it's left its mark on her.”

“What are these Ae?” Bridget asked.

“They're very dangerous machines that we need to find and destroy,” Ukiah said. “Alicia's the key. They—the other aliens—don't realize we've rescued her and can tap her memories, so they have no reason to move the machines.”

“Why have you kept this secret?”

Rennie sprang toward Bridget and Ukiah leapt between them. He caught Rennie inches from Bridget, but Rennie didn't struggle, seeming content with the bolt of fear he sent through Bridget. “Could you tell I was an alien? Do you know how to tell a good alien from a bad alien? Can you tell an alien from a human?
You
can't.”

Unless you cut them to pieces,
Ukiah thought, and suddenly flashed to Adam Goodman, carefully sectioned up, and
then watched. Someone knew how to separate humans from aliens—only what was annoying inconvenience to an alien proved extremely deadly to humans.