The Orion Plan (48 page)

Another branch descended toward him and curled around his left ankle. Then the tentacles started pulling him upward, out of the gorge. Looking down, he saw the creek become narrow again and the cliffs sink below him. He rose above the Thurston Avenue Bridge, dangling like a fish at the end of the line. The massive trunk of the tentacles straightened as it lifted him higher. Now he could see the Cornell campus on both sides of the gorge, all the buildings and quadrangles and crisscrossing walkways.

The pain in his dislocated hip was intense. He felt dizzy and sick and petrified.

He finally stopped rising. A strong wind buffeted his upended body and made him sway from the cables. Then a third branch coiled around his chest and slid down to his face. Its tip pointed at his eyes, just inches away. Joe stared at a black spike with a perforated surface. There were thousands of tiny holes in the gleaming metal.

“Where is she?” The question boomed from the holes. “Where is Dr. Pooley?”

The voice sounded so different from the one Joe was familiar with, the one he'd heard so many times inside his head. It was huskier, less feminine. And very angry.

“Answer me!”
The air vibrated and the tentacles trembled.
“I know she's near!”

Joe shook his head. “No, it's just me. I don't—”

“Dr. Pooley attended this university. She collaborates with the scientists in its astronomy department. And now, of all the places you could've escaped to, you've come here. You expect me to believe that's a coincidence?” The spike drew closer, almost touching the bridge of his nose. “You're going to tell me where she is. I can't extract the information from your brain because you've put too many toxins in it. So if you don't cooperate, I'll have to use more primitive methods to force you to answer.”

Joe's heart pounded, struggling to pump blood upward to his legs and feet. He felt his fluids pooling in his head and pressing against his eyes. His nausea was unbearable and his vision was darkening, yet his mind made a sudden, unexpected leap. The machine's voice wasn't the only thing that had changed. The intelligence behind the voice was also different.

He focused his aching eyes on the spike. “You're not the Emissary. Who are you?”

The spike retreated a few inches, as if in surprise. But then it moved back to the bridge of his nose. “I'm Naomi of the First People. The Emissary transplanted me.”

Joe shook his head again. He
recognized
this voice. He just couldn't remember where he'd heard it. “I don't believe you. You're lying.”

“Why would I bother to lie to you? I'm Naomi of the First People, and when your species is gone, I'll be this planet's Great Mother.” The cable tightened around Joe's chest. “Now tell me,
where is Dr. Pooley?
”

Then he remembered. He thought of the kind woman from Holy Trinity Episcopal Church who used to come to Inwood Hill Park to visit him. Joe felt a surge of anger so strong it cleared his head, driving away the nausea and dizziness. “That's Dorothy's voice!” His hands clenched and unclenched. “Christ, what did you do to her?”

The spike retreated again, and the cable loosened. For a second Joe thought the tentacles would let go of him, but the other cables held on to his ankles. Naomi of the First People seemed more volatile than the Emissary, more impulsive and unpredictable. For some reason, she repelled Joe more than the computer program had. He found it easier to hate a living creature than a machine.

His anger grew even stronger and his mind took another leap. He remembered the gleaming needle that had punctured Dorothy's foot. “You used her, didn't you? You and the Emissary? You turned her into your servant, just like you did to me?”

The cable gripping his right ankle jerked upward. It gave his leg a swift tug, straining his dislocated hip, and the pain shot up and down his body. As he writhed in midair, the spike angled toward his forehead and pricked his skin.

“Yes, I took her cells.” The voice turned low and vicious. “The Emissary dissolved her body and extracted what was useful. But I have no use for humans anymore.”

Because he was upside-down, the blood trickled from his forehead to his hair. The pain grew worse as the spike dug deeper, but Joe's anger was the best anesthetic. He gritted his teeth and glared at the cables. “Sarah knew you'd come after her, so she didn't tell me anything. I have no idea where she is.”

“It doesn't matter. I'll search all the buildings in this area until I find her. Then I'll kill her too.”

The blood flowed faster now, pouring from his forehead and dripping from his hair. Joe tried to pull his head away from the spike, and as he arched his back he caught a glimpse of the ground below. The landscape was so empty compared with Manhattan—there were no crowds looking up at the giant tentacle or running down the streets in panic. But directly beneath him, in the middle of the Thurston Avenue Bridge, Joe spied a lone figure waving her arms. It was Sarah, and she was screaming.

“I sent the message! To Second Planet!”

*   *   *

Sarah stared at the colossal machine, observing it carefully, waiting for a reaction. It moved like a living thing, like an enormous hydra with a dozen black arms sweeping across the sky. Joe dangled from the arms like a morsel of food the hydra was about to devour.

Sarah called out to it again, shouting as loud as she could.

“Look at the messsage! It went out from the Arecibo dish, and your antennas can pick it up! Go ahead and look at it!”

She was hoping the machine would lower its arms to the ground, bringing Joe down with them. Instead, another cable branched off from the thick black trunk and rocketed toward her. Without any warning, it curled around her waist and yanked her skyward.

The jolt knocked the air of her lungs. She blacked out for a moment as everything blurred around her.

When she came to, she was suspended hundreds of feet above the ground. She was so high up, she could see Lake Cayuga in the distance. Joe hung upside-down from the cables about ten yards to her left. One of the tentacles had slashed his forehead, and now he was leaning away from it, stretching and straining to avoid its sharp tip. A similar cable extended toward Sarah, its surface covered with a fine metallic mesh. A deep rumbling hum came out of the mesh, making it vibrate like a loudspeaker. It was a mechanical growl, ringing with hatred.

“You revealed my presence on this planet! You told the Second People where to find me!”

The voice was so loud it rattled Sarah's skull. But she withstood the blast and narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, that's exactly what I did.”

“Do you realize what's going to happen now? As soon as the Second People receive that signal, they'll launch an invasion! They'll bankrupt their civilization if they have to, but they'll assemble a war fleet and send it here!”

Sarah nodded. “That's why I sent the message. You can kill off the human race and take over the Earth, but you won't keep it for long. The Second People will come here and slaughter you all over again.”

The hum coming from the loudspeaker cable rose in pitch. It turned into a scream, earsplitting and inhuman.

“You're like them! Just like the Second People! All you care about is vengeance!”

“No, you're wrong. I did this to save my species. Now the only way the First People can survive is by letting the human race help them.”

The scream began to stutter, fading in and out. It sounded like static, interference, the noise of confusion.

“How could you help us? Your technologies are hopelessly primitive.”

“Second Planet is two hundred light-years away, so they won't get the signal till the twenty-third century. And even if they launch their fleet right away and travel at blinding speeds, it'll still take them another three hundred years to get here. That means we have five hundred years to prepare ourselves.”

“And why do I need humans to help me prepare?”

“You can't win this war alone. The Second People defeated you once, and they'll do it again. They're fiercer than the First People. More zealous. More bloodthirsty.” Sarah pointed at the ground and swept her arm in a wide arc, gesturing at all the buildings and roads below. “And that's what humans are like too. We're very good at killing each other. We've had thousands of years of practice.”

“And you think this qualifies you to be our saviors? Your ferocious nature?”

“You have access to the Internet, so you can read our history. Sometimes we fight for good reasons and sometimes for bad. But the point is, we never give up. If you share your technologies with us, we'll find a way to defeat the Second People. We'll destroy their war fleet before it even gets here. And if necessary, we'll obliterate their planet.” Sarah pointed at the branching tentacles. “Can the First People do the same? Can you really achieve this victory on your own?”

The screaming noise ebbed, then abruptly cut off. In the silence that followed, all Sarah could hear was the wind blowing. The loudspeaker cable pulled away from her, retreating a foot or so, and the cable that had slashed Joe pulled away from him too. He looked at her for a moment, nodding to assure her that he was okay. His face was purple from hanging upside-down for so long, but somehow he managed to give her a smile. Then he turned back to the tentacles.

“Sarah's right!” he shouted. “You said it yourself—humans are like the Second People. We can beat them and you can't.”

His words echoed against the massive black trunk, and then the silence continued. The wind whistled between the cables. Sarah became convinced that this silence wasn't a good sign. At any moment she expected the tentacles to fling her and Joe to the ground.

Then the loudspeaker cable withdrew another foot. “I have just one question.” Its volume was lower now, more bearable. “How can I trust you? If I share my technologies, what's to stop you from using them against me?”

Sarah shrugged. “It's simple. Just don't share the knowledge right away. First we need to learn to live with each other.”

“And how will we do that? Our biochemistries are incompatible. I can't live in your environment and you can't live in mine.”

“Couldn't you build a habitat for your species? An enclosure that's watertight and airtight?”

“Like a tank in one of your aquariums? Is that where you expect me to resurrect the First People?”

“No, no, I'm talking about a large-scale habitat. You could wall off a big part of the Pacific Ocean and build a giant dome overhead. Then you could fill the seawater and the atmosphere inside the habitat with the chemicals you need to live.”

There was another silence, but this one was shorter. “Our reproduction rate is very fast, so the habitat would have to be at least a million square kilometers. Would the leaders of your government agree to that?”

Sarah nodded, trying hard not to let any doubts show. It was a bit of a shock to find herself negotiating on behalf of the human race. But someone had to do it. “It would be an enormous engineering project, but it would also give us a chance to work together. To build up some trust. And once we've learned to cooperate, you can decide whether to share your technologies with us.”

Now that she'd said the words out loud, they made a lot of sense. This wasn't a desperate, last-chance ploy. It was a logical plan, the best solution.

After several seconds, the tentacles that held Joe turned him right-side up. Then they began to lower him and Sarah. The descent was gentle and slow, and the loudspeaker cable followed them down. “I'll halt my attacks against your military forces, but not my defensive measures. If your government refuses to cease hostilities, I'll return to my original plan.”

Soon they hung a few yards above the Thurston Avenue Bridge. Because Joe was injured, the tentacles carefully rested him on his back. Sarah, though, landed on her feet. The cables set her down on the bridge's walkway and uncoiled from her waist.

While she caught her breath, the tentacles withdrew into the thick black trunk. Then the massive thing began to slide back into the gorge. Its gleaming tip descended below the cliffs and retreated into the hole it had dug beneath the creek. Sarah peered over the bridge's railing and watched the tentacle sink below the water.

Then she ran over to where Joe lay.

*   *   *

Emilio opened his eyes. He lay on his side in the middle of Sherman Avenue. The street was littered with bits of concrete and half-cooled metal.

He was shirtless, and there were bandages on his shoulders and the back of his neck. He felt a throbbing, burning pain under the layers of gauze, but it wasn't so bad. The same people who'd bandaged him must've given him some painkillers.

Then he looked up and saw the Trinitarios. Luis, Carlos, Miguel, and Diego stood around him in a circle, their heads lowered. All four boys grinned when Emilio looked up at them.

“Ho, shit!” Carlos pointed at him. “The
muchacho
's alive!”

Emilio stared at their faces. His homeboys looked normal again. They weren't staring at the sky or listening to voices inside their heads. Best of all, the disks in their palms weren't glowing, and neither was Emilio's. He didn't feel the burning inside his arm anymore. Someone had shut the damn thing off.

He sat up and smiled at the Trinitarios. Now he had something to be happy about. “Damn, what happened? What did I miss?”

Miguel shook his head. “You were lucky, hombre. You fell on your face right before I fired, so my beam went above you. You got some burns on your neck and shoulders but nothing serious.”

“And where the fuck did you get the bandages? Did you find a first aid kit or something?”

Luis stepped forward. “
La Madre
put them on you. Using her black wires. And she gave you some medicine too. Then she told us to go home. She said she didn't need us anymore.”