Strange Robby (52 page)

"What do you mean?" Tommy asked in confusion.

Robby answered him.

"She's not dark anymore. We see evil people as a black shadow. We can see all the bad things they've done. See their dark desires. Francis was like that, and now . . . Well, she's not exactly light, but she's not dark anymore. She's changed." Robby seemed troubled.

"What?" Tommy asked.

"Well, if she could change . . . What about all those people I fried?"

"I'm not sure she deserved a second chance. Most of the assholes you fried had been given more than a second chance, and they just got worse and worse and worse. If I were you, I wouldn't lose any sleep over those scum."

Robby had been messing with it for hours.

"Well?" Tommy asked.

Robby shrugged. "I just don't know that much about computers. I'm sorry, but I don't know if I can make it work or not."

"Let me see if I can help. I'm not terribly mechanical, but I do know computers. Between the two of us, maybe we can figure it out," Carrie said.

Spider sat down on the hearth, and Mark immediately sat down beside her, taking her hand.

"Why don't you just tell us what's on the disk?" Spider asked impatiently.

Spider wasn't herself at all. The longer Carrie was here, the more she realized that. She was weak and got winded easily. She was irritable and edgy. Carrie knew who the boy was, but she kept waiting for Spider to introduce them. Kept waiting for Spider to tell her what she'd been through, but so far in the approximately six hours since she'd arrived, Spider hadn't talked much at all. After the initial excitement of seeing her wore off, she had in fact seemed distant—almost cold. Carrie fiddled with some lines on the comlink. There was nothing really compatible about the disk and the comlink; it was a long shot at best.

She didn't want Spider to see how disappointed she was by her reactions. Laura had told her about the head injury and what she knew about the conditions Spider had been kept in. It explained all of her symptoms, and made her behavior tolerable if frustrating and disappointing.

"What's on the disk!" Spider screamed.

When Carrie looked at her, Spider's face was red with anger.

Carrie took a deep breath and reminded herself that she had to be rational, because Spider really couldn't be held accountable. "It's a list of all the hybrids the SWTF have made. I've found fifty of them, twenty males and thirty females . . . "

"So, now that we're aliens, we're not women and men anymore, we're males and females," Spider said hotly.

It wasn't till then that Carrie realized that not all of Spider's reserved nature was directly related to her injuries or her captivity. Carrie hadn't really had time for the implications of what she had learned to soak in. At least not in relation to Spider. Carrie'd had more pressing matters to worry about than the fact that her lover was half alien—half
not
human.

It didn't really matter to her. Or at least that was what she'd told herself from the moment she'd pieced it all together and figured it out. But she had just said males and females, so maybe in the back of her head she did see them as different. Of course they
were
different, but different was not synonymous with bad.

Carrie was about to explain all that when Tommy said, "That isn't what she meant. You know that's not what she meant. Quit being such a damn moody piece of shit. No one can say anything to you without you getting pissed off."

"It's the cranial injury," Francis chimed from where she sat in the corner polishing rocks on her shirttail.

"I'm sorry, Spider. I've just gone through these files so much, and that's the way the files are labeled." Carrie looked at Spider, and held her gaze. It wasn't easy. She was used to seeing love in Spider's eyes, and it just wasn't there right now. Spider seemed to be running on primal energy, almost more animal than human. Existing at least mentally in a place where everyone was her enemy. Where no one was to be trusted. "Feel me, Spider. Can't you feel that I love you? If you are anything different, you are superior to us. Why would I look down on you? Don't you know I love you?"

"I . . . I can't feel anything." Spider now sounded more confused than angry, or even afraid. "My power is all but gone. But notice that I'm not part of us anymore."

Carrie thought over what she had just said. She decided to take off the kid gloves, because that obviously wasn't working anyway. "Christ on a crutch, Spider! Would you listen to yourself? We're gay; they're not. That makes them, them—and us, us. Tommy's Asian; we're not. That makes him, them—and us, us. You and Robby and Mark are half alien; we're not. So that makes you, them—and us, us. But we're still all human . . . "

Spider glared at her through slitted eyes.

"Goddamn it! You know what I mean." Carrie sighed deeply. "Do you really think I would have stuck my neck out for you if I thought you were some freak? If I didn't love you? Look at us! Look at all of us. We've been forced to give up our lives because of the SWTF. We're all in this together, Baby. There's only one enemy here—and it isn't me."

Spider nodded silently and looked at her feet. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm being such a jerk." She started to cry.

Mark frowned and started patting her on the back.

Carrie stood up, walked over and took Spider's hand.

Mark gave her a dirty look. Obviously he blamed Carrie for Spider's tears.

Carrie didn't really care what he thought. "Come on, let's go somewhere and talk." She helped Spider to her feet, and Spider followed her out of the cabin without argument.

Mark started to follow them, and Tommy grabbed his arm.

"Hey!" Mark protested.

"Give them some space, boy," Tommy said. He pulled gently on Mark's arm till he was sitting beside him. "You stay here and help us."

"She looks worse," Robby said to Laura.

"She does not," Mark said harshly.

Tommy glared at Robby, and Robby nodded. "I wasn't talking about Spider. I was talking about . . . this radio, computer shit . . . stuff."

"That's the way they do," Francis said matter-of-factly. "They use more of their brain than we do. They do more with their brains, and for this reason they are capable of complete regeneration of brain cells. But to do so they have to shut almost completely down."

"What exactly does that mean?" Robby asked.

Tommy shook his head indicating that he was as confused as Robby was.

"She gave herself a head injury, and she used a power she'd never used before, she drained herself. Her brain has been damaged. When we take a hit to the head, drink, do drugs, just about anything, we kill brain cells. That's a permanent loss, because when our brain cells die, they don't come back, they're gone. Not the hybrids. Their cells are harder to kill, and they are capable of the total regeneration of brain cells. But, in order to do it, their whole metabolism has to slow down. In cases of severe head trauma hybrids have been known to go into a coma. Then they arise from the coma in perfect mental and physical condition."

"Damn! All this time she's been pushing herself trying to get exercise. Making herself stay up. Trying not to just lay around all day sleeping, and instead of helping her it was hurting her. That's why she's getting worse," Laura said thoughtfully. She glared at Francis.

Francis shrugged. "No one asked."

"Maybe someone should go tell Spider and Carrie," Laura suggested.

"I'm sorry, Carrie," Spider said looking at her feet.

Carrie squeezed Spider's hand tighter. No reassuring pressure was returned. Spider's hand felt cold and clammy.

"It's all right. I know you've been through hell emotionally and physically . . . "

"It's not just that . . . " She seemed to be having trouble breathing. "I need to sit down."

Carrie helped her over to a rock and they sat down. Carrie moved close to Spider without letting go of her hand.

"How bad are you?" Carrie asked carefully. "Tell me the truth. Don't blow smoke up my ass."

Spider laughed.

"What?" Carrie demanded.

"It's just funny to hear my sayings coming out of your mouth. You used to talk so classy."

"I'm still the classy one—don't you forget it. And don't try to change the subject," Carrie demanded

"I don't really know. To tell the truth, I actually feel worse instead of better." Spider looked up at the full moon. "It's all still a little hard to believe. All my life I knew I wasn't like everyone else, but I thought I was just psychic or something. When I first realized there was a connection between Robby and me, I thought about genetic engineering. I never thought . . . I never dreamed . . . extraterrestrial! I'm so sorry that I got you into all this shit. Sorry about your job, and your house, and all of the shit with the SWTF. When I met you, all I thought I was doing was tampering with a little evidence in a way that would ensure that I'd never be caught. I never had any idea that we'd end up like this."

Carrie put her hand on Spider's shoulder, and was a little hurt when Spider flinched at her touch. She told herself that Spider didn't find her touch revolting. It was just that she had been tortured, and it would take a while before she could accept that every touch wasn't going to be accompanied by pain.

"How could any of us have known? You don't have to apologize to me for anything. Like you said you had no way of knowing. If this is what I have to go through to be with you, then I'd do it twice."

Spider put her arm around Carrie's shoulder and pulled closer to her. "The boy . . . Mark . . . he's . . . "

Carrie let her off the hook. "I know already, Spider. I knew the minute I saw his picture. Everything I discovered after that just proved what I already knew in my heart. So, what's that like? Having a son, I mean."

"You know, of course, that I probably have a dozen," Spider said.

"From the files I've seen I'd say at least that," Carrie said matter-of-factly.

"I never thought I'd have kids. I never really had parents, so I have no idea how to raise a kid. Besides, I've seen the worst that this world has to offer, and I'm not sure I would want to willingly bring children into it. Even when you and I got together, I never thought kids would be part of our future. We were both too caught up in our jobs."

"We might have taken a break from work to raise kids," Carrie said with a smile. "I can't say I never thought about it, especially since you and I have been together. But, in all seriousness, I always thought that if one of us were going to have kids—it would be me."

"It's weird, because suddenly here's this kid. I didn't give birth to him, didn't nurture him, and didn't raise him. Hell! I didn't even know he existed. Yet I feel this unbelievable closeness to him. If I let myself think about the rest of them, I could become really seriously weirded out. Who knows what's happening to them? Mark had a good family a good life, but who knows about the others? Where they are, or what's happening to them. Those bastards killed Scott, you know. My mother, too."

"He didn't pass the test," Carrie said. "These So-what-if guys are some real heartless bastards. Seems that when the hybrids reach a certain age if they haven't done something that obviously shows their power, then the SWTF tests them. Apparently they hire a bunch of thugs to attack them. They don't do it themselves, because if the subject passes the test all of the thugs wind up dead. If the subject doesn't kill them, he flunks the test, and they kill him. It's that simple. They didn't have to test you because you went into the service, and that was all the test they needed. After all, they bred you to be soldiers. What better testing ground than a real war? But in order to keep you under wraps, every doctor who ever examined or took care of you had to either be one of their own, or be convinced not to tell . . . "

"If they couldn't convince them . . . "

"They just killed them," Carrie said. She looked up at the moon. "The more I found out, the more scared I got. The SWTF are completely ruthless, single-minded bastards. I had no idea what had happened to you—or Tommy and Laura for that matter. I didn't want to expose them, because in exposing them I would have to expose the entire project, including you. But at the same time I was very quickly running out of options. I'm glad Tommy got me when he did."

"I'm not sure the general public is ready to learn that they aren't alone in the universe, much less that the federal government has been using American citizens as guinea pigs in their experiments. That we are living among them, look like them, and have the power to cook their brains in their head." Spider looked at Carrie. "I think . . . Carrie, I think I'm dying, and . . . "

"You're not dying! You can't die." Carrie was insistent. She hadn't given up her life for a corpse.

Tommy walked out of the shadows. He hadn't been eavesdropping; not really, he had just been waiting for a good time to interrupt them.