Clones vs. Aliens (18 page)

“Just think for a moment,” Mason said, holding up a hand. “Fisher and Alex have experience working together inside enemy-controlled facilities. They have more experience at it than most FBI agents, in fact. They’ve proven themselves capable of great ingenuity in high-stress situations. And they’ve had more face-to-face contact with the Gemini than anybody. They know how they act and speak.”

Fisher’s mom and dad looked at one another worriedly. Veronica looked at Fisher, clearly hoping to hear a better
idea come out of his mouth. Fisher wished he had one for her. Amanda’s face was set with solemn determination.

“You may be right,” Mrs. Bas said hesitantly. “If you really think it’s the best way, and if you two are really up for it … maybe. Just let us think a little.”

Mason nodded.

“Of course.” The spy turned back to Fisher and Alex. “But in the meantime … you boys wouldn’t happen to know your wig size, would you?”

“Are you sure we have to do this?” Fisher said, scratching his head through the luxurious blond tresses of the wig that Agent Mason’s FBI disguise artist had clipped to his real hair. The young man was busily applying eyeliner and rouge to Alex’s face. “The Gemini can look like anything. Why can’t we just go as ourselves?”

After a lifetime of being teased, harassed, and generally tormented, Fisher really wasn’t enjoying the wig-and-lipstick look. He dreaded even the
tiny
possibility that one of the Vikings would see him like this. And truth be told—he did not make a very pretty girl.

But he knew this was the most important mission he’d ever been on—maybe the most important mission in all of human history. His concerns were tiny by comparison.

Still, he made a plan to vaporize any cameras he noticed on site until he was out of disguise.

“For one thing,” Mason said, “the pirates have
already seen you. And even though they’re probably terrible at telling humans apart, it’s safer to change your appearance. For another thing, the Gemini have been mostly assuming girl form during their time on Earth. It’s what the pirates expect to see. They’re less likely to ask questions.”

Amanda’s and Veronica’s parents had both come to collect them. Fisher feared, given their responses to the news coverage of the aliens’ fight, neither family would ever let their daughters out of the house again. The boys were sitting on a pair of stools in the living room, with the suitcase-sized disguise kit wide open on the floor in front of them.

FP looked up at the brothers and cocked his head, his ears twitching a little with curiosity. A pair of tentacles appeared from around the corner of the couch, and Paul glided around FP, gazing up with his deep black eyes. FP turned around and bumped Paul’s bulbous head with his snout, and the octopus responded with a little ripple of his ten limbs.

Fisher fiddled with the embroidered hem of his light blue skirt, which fell just below his knees. His white turtleneck made him feel like he was being throttled by a rag doll. At least he was wearing flats. Nothing would mess up interspecies negotiations like tripping in wedge heels before they’d gotten through the airlock.

Fisher pulled on a strand of his wig and the gentle curl sprang back up. He pulled it again, and watched the coil oscillate up and down.
F = -kx
, the harmonic oscillation equation. Physics always calmed him down.

“How do I look?” said Alex. Fisher brushed his new hair out of his eyes. He looked over at his clone, amazed.

“You look like a girl,” Fisher said, marveling.

“You’re pretty convincing yourself,” Alex said. He was wearing the exact same wig and outfit as Fisher. The disguise artist had even given Alex a third freckle on his nose to match Fisher exactly.

“I smell like an entire florist shop was just hurled at me,” said Fisher.

“I smell like a bakery,” said Alex. “I’m kinda liking it. Maybe I should invest in some pastry-scented colognes.”

Fisher pursed his lips, trying to catch a glimpse of the soft pink coating that now encased them: Petunia 37, according to the lipstick tube.

“Is this stuff volatile at all?” he said. “Reactive? Are there any substances I should avoid?”

“Just dignity, I think,” Alex said.

“You’re both very fetching,” Mason said with a smile. Fisher brushed a crease out of his skirt. “Ready?”

Alex nodded, followed by Fisher. Each of them shouldered a small handbag concealing a few gadgets and potentially useful items.

Mr. and Mrs. Bas, who had been consulting with several colleagues in the kitchen, entered the room and stopped short, their mouths unhinging.

“You—you look so beautiful,” their mom said, and she sniffed, wiping a real tear away from her eye.

Mr. Bas put an arm around her shoulder. “Are you certain this is the only way?” he said.

“It’s the only way short of launching an attack,” said Mason. “Your boys are going to keep a lot of people from getting hurt.”

“Is there any way we can help?” Mrs. Bas said.

“We’ll be okay,” Fisher promised—a promise he hoped he wouldn’t have to break. Sneaking onto an enemy spaceship, dressed as a teenage girl, wasn’t exactly an ideal plan.

The Bas parents were themselves disguised in perfectly tailored navy officer uniforms. They had insisted on going with Agent Mason to take their sons to the ship, and he’d insisted on this condition.

“Okay,” Fisher said, flipping his hair over his shoulder. “Let’s go negotiate.”

A car was waiting for them right outside the house, and sped them to the coast. Too soon, it pulled up beside an almost invisible footpath, which led straight through a cliff to a tiny dock covered by blue and gray camouflage netting. A small boat in the same color scheme was waiting for them.

Agent Mason, Fisher, Alex, and their parents boarded the boat. A crew of three was already aboard. Fisher staggered a little bit as the craft launched, trying to adjust for the rolling of the deck. The sky was gray above the smooth sea, and the cold mist of spray dampened his face and his fake blond hair.

“We packed this for you,” said Mr. Bas, indicating a large duffel bag he’d brought. “It has a transmitter as powerful as a major radio station. If you get in trouble just hit the big button and we’ll know. There are also two parachutes inside. Slip them on, jump, and they’ll deploy automatically as soon as you need them.”

Fisher forced a smile. They knew he’d been through tougher spots than this and gotten out okay, but this was the first time they were actually knowingly sending him into danger. If he didn’t come back, they would blame themselves as long as they lived.

But he would be okay. It was a simple job. Just pretend to be an alien species’ hive drone and conduct negotiations with a totally different alien species over a dispute he knew nothing about.

Yep, simple.

The boat started to kick a little more as the waves got higher farther from shore. It was almost evening. In the distance to the right was the opening of the San Francisco Bay, and directly ahead of them was a dark smudge
in the sky, a stark shadow against the setting sun.

“There it is,” Mason said. He pulled out a pair of binoculars and gazed at the ship. “Totally motionless. Imagine the kind of power it must take to keep an object that size hovering in midair for days on end.”

Ordinarily Fisher would’ve been able to estimate the ship’s mass and calculate the amount of power it would take to the tenth of a joule. But the closer they got to the huge vessel, the more unsteady his brain felt. It seemed that no matter how many crazily dangerous situations he encountered, he was still scared.

To their right, the bay came into view, and they could see San Francisco and Oakland winding down their busy days as evening rush hour set in. Fisher thought about how many people lived there. Millions in the SF area alone. Millions more in LA, Sacramento, San Diego, back home in Palo Alto. Then farther away, Seattle, Austin, Chicago, New York, Boston, Atlanta … all of those people. Every single one of them was threatened by the Gemini and by these pirates. As fear and doubt crept their spiky tentacles into Fisher’s thoughts, he kept naming cities, practically chanting in his head, as the ship got bigger and bigger ahead and above them. London, Berlin, São Paolo, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Nairobi …

He could help all of them. He had to help all of them.

Mason pulled a small hand radio out of an inside pocket.

“Attention, vessel. My name is Syd Mason, and I am a representative of the local human government. We have gotten the Gemini to agree to in-person negotiations. We are bringing them to you now, in the interest of peace for all. Please respond.”

Five seconds passed. Ten, thirty, then a minute, then five. A shadow fell over the boat. Fisher gazed up at the black-and-red monster of a ship. It looked like a windowless black tower turned on its side—and covered in guns. He wondered if the pirates would refuse, if he and everyone on the boat were about to be turned into a mist as fine as the sea spray around them.

Syd’s radio crackled, sending a shock up Fisher’s backbone.

“Confirmed,” a deep, synthesized voice responded. “Hold your position and stand away from the Gemini representatives.”

“Good luck,” Mrs. Bas whispered. She inched closer to them, obviously seized by a powerful urge to hug the boys. But she quickly backed away, careful to maintain their cover.

“You’ll do great,” said Mr. Bas, his voice catching a little in his throat, patting each of them on the shoulder once.

“Clear a space,” Mason said. He, Fisher’s parents, and the crew backed away as far as the little boat allowed,
and Fisher and Alex stepped forward. Fisher kept a tight grip on the duffel bag.

There was a very slight warmth on Fisher’s face, and the sea scents in the air disappeared. Even the sounds around them dulled. A smooth, almost comforting hum greeted their ears. Suddenly, everything was green. Fisher and Alex were standing in the center of a column of light.

The antigravitational beam.

A moment later Fisher and Alex became weightless. They floated upward gently. The tension in Fisher’s muscles vanished as the Earth released its pull on them. Other than the lack of water, it felt a lot like being in a swimming pool. Alex smiled and swung his arms from side to side, turning himself.

“Can we get one for our house?” he said, turning a somersault in the weightless beam. Fisher looked out over the ocean as they continued floating higher. He saw the waves getting bigger and more turbulent as the ocean went farther out, whitecaps dotting the deep blue. He even saw the spray of a pod of whales. Everything was dyed the emerald tone of the beam, making Fisher feel like he was watching it on an insanely high-definition screen with a custom color filter turned on.

The view was cut off by complete darkness as the battleship swallowed them. Moments later, they popped up
into some kind of receiving deck. A hatch snapped shut beneath them and the beam’s emitter, a complex arrangement of circuits and lenses in the ceiling, went dark.

Fisher and Alex settled to the floor. The hexagonal room was mostly bare, a utilitarian construction of black and gray metal. There were shelves and equipment racks on all six walls, although they were currently empty.

They were in the belly of the beast now. Agent Mason and the others couldn’t pull them from the mission even if they wanted to. The fact that there was no longer any option of turning back helped ease Fisher’s fear. His course was set, and he would follow it—whatever the result.

He couldn’t tell where the dim light was coming from. There was a deep, rhythmic hum in the air, undoubtedly the ship’s engines. The air tasted like dusty pennies. Fisher wondered whether the pirates, who at least
looked
like robots, needed to breathe, or whether the atmosphere inside the ship had been calibrated just for them. Of course, even if the pirates were mechanical, it was possible they needed a pressurized environment to work properly.

A doorway appeared in one wall as a hatch opened silently. Fisher started to say something but bit down on his tongue to stop himself. The Gemini had one brain. Two Gemini drones talking to one another would be like Fisher talking to his hand to get it to pick something up.
It would give them away immediately.

Alex took the lead, rolling his shoulders forward in a show of bravado that was funny, given his blond wig and skirt. Fisher tried to mirror Alex’s posture exactly.

The hatch led to a long, dark corridor with a trapezoidal shape, the walls sloping inward as they went up, resulting in a ceiling narrower than the floor. As far as Fisher could see, the walls and floor were totally featureless. The ceiling, however, was studded with what looked like plugs and input terminals.

Two of the lobsters were waiting for them at a corridor intersection. Up close, Fisher could see that they both had greenish hues to their metal-and-plastic exoskeletons, and their stalk eyes swiveled and clicked, looking over Fisher and his clone.