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Authors: Walter Greatshell

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“So we’re supposed to be grateful, is that it? You think you’re actually saving our lives.”
“Not exactly. It’s more like you’re being preserved for future reference. We all are.”
“Ah. Sounds pleasant.”
“Barrel o’ monkeys!” Cowper’s head cackled.
“I know it’s hard to understand right now, but in a minute you’ll see everything.”
“I’ll see you in Hell, bitch. My boat will nuke us all before it will let you get away with this … ”
Parminter’s voice trailed off as Bobby’s upper torso split apart, unfolding like a great, trembling orchid. A glossy blue protuberance shot forward like a chameleon’s tongue, flaring wide and engulfing the man’s face. He had no time to scream.
The guests left by the first light of dawn, climbing aboard their ship and issuing orders to cast off. The Virginia’s XO had already been busy; the work there was done.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 
FATHER KNOWS BEST
 
B
obby came to me after we parted from the other sub. I could tell he wanted to say something, but it made him deeply uncomfortable.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t like doing it this way. Why do we have to talk to them so much?”
“To let them know we are not thieves or killers.”
“They don’t care. It just makes them hate us even more.”
“They just don’t know. They can’t imagine. Could you imagine before you were changed?”
“I don’t ’member being changed. I just
was
.”
Bobby was our Mystery Boy. He had still never explained to any of us exactly how or when he acquired his unusual abilities. He was brought aboard the boat as a helpless refugee, and forty-eight hours later every human being on board was converted to his peculiar species of ultraplastic, nonspastic, completely human-looking Xombie. If they were even Xombies. As a Maenad myself, one of the ship’s original Blue Meanies, I had my doubts.
“Okay,” I said. “But you remember before that. Being human.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you have wanted to be changed?”
Bobby didn’t have to think twice. “Yes.”
“Well, not everybody feels that way. That’s why we try to prepare them.”
“But even after we tell them, they’re still upset.”
“Sure, but they
know
. Knowing is important. You heard the man—they
want
to know.”
“They still fight, though.”
“Not after the change.”
“No, not after the
change
. But why do we have to tell them beforehand? Why can’t we just do it and get it over with?”
This was something I had wrestled with myself. I had never been completely convinced that our so-called mission was anything more than wishful thinking. The visions were powerful, yet they could easily be some mass hallucination. It was very possible we were all insane. Just as with the wild Xombies ashore, we had a deep need to convert people, but our more-lucid brains required elaborate justifications for doing so. Or at least mine did.
I said, “I think it’s necessary and right to reveal our purpose to those we are about to change. I don’t like hiding it as if we’re ashamed. If what we’re doing is the most important work on the planet, then we should say so.”
“Even if it they don’t believe us?”
“Even if they don’t believe us.”
“Okay. Can I ask you something else?”
“Yes.”
“You know that head on the table?”
“You mean Fred Cowper.”
“Isn’t he your father?”
“That’s what I thought … but I just found out my dad was someone named Despineau.”
“Then why is your name Lulu Pangloss?”
“He and my mother were never married. Her name was Grace Pangloss.”
“Oh. There was somebody else named Despineau when I was in Providence. A lady.”
This was the first time Bobby had ever mentioned Providence. Something very traumatic had happened to him there. Trying not to look overly interested, I said, “A lady named Despineau?”
“Uh-huh. Her first name was Brenda.”
Brenda. Brenda
Despineau
. I remembered what Mummy had told me, and wondered if I had just discovered an unknown relative.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
“She got all shot up.”
“Shot up? How?”
“There were these guys looking for immune women. They caught her, but Mr. Miska got her out.”
“Really,” I said.
Immune women.
Well, it made a kind of sense. For a long time I thought I might be immune … until I turned into a Xombie. There were rumors of Immunes wandering the landscape, but the thought that some of them might be lost relatives of mine was unexpectedly disturbing. If what we believed was true, then Immunes were inherently doomed. We were helpless to save them. “How do you know all this?”
“I was there.”
“Bobby, was Uri Miska the one who changed you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you human before you met him, though?”
“I don’t
know
. Shut up!”
“But if Miska changed you, that means he must be a Clear. Maybe the original Clear.”
“I don’t care! So what?”
I could think of nothing to say to that. So what indeed? It suddenly all seemed so obvious: Of course it had to be Miska. Changing tack, I asked, “So did Miska turn this Brenda woman into a Clear?”
“Yes.”
 
Thinking about what Bobby had told me, I went to the CO quarters and opened the captain’s safe.
“About time,” squawked Fred Cowper’s head. “I was beginnin’ to think you might have forgotten about me.”
Cowper’s head had developed the ability to form crude words, wheezing like a bagpipe, but he could also actually talk to me without speaking, his voice buzzing inside my head as if broadcast to my brain. All of us on the boat had learned by now that we shared some degree of telepathy, but in most cases it was not as clear, or as consistent, as my connection to Cowper. Otherwise, it would drive us batty—who could tolerate such an inescapable chorus? There was no volume control on thoughts, no on/off switch, hence most Xombies preferred less invasive means of communication. Cowper only did it as a matter of necessity, but even he preferred that I reply aloud.
Since losing his body at Thule, Fred Cowper had learned to function quite well, cinching off the ragged stump of his neck and sprouting a nest of rootlike tendrils with which he could scuttle around like a hermit crab. His mouth had widened to accommodate the enlarged manipulating organ that was his tongue, and this sensitive member was guarded by a phalanx of oversized, jagged teeth.
Cowper’s head was somewhat terrifying, but to me he was still Dad—the only dad I ever knew. Angry as I once was at him, I had made peace with the past and now was simply grateful to have him in my eternal life. Whether he really was my father or not, he was a piece of my former humanity, a part of me. A fragment of living memory I clung to like a security blanket. Having found him, I would never lose him again.
“Fred, I need to ask you something. About our past lives.”
“I know,” he said. “Grace told me she spoke to you.”
“She did?”
“Yeah, about me not being your real father. It’s true … but that’s not all of it. There’s something I gotta get off my chest, too.”
“You don’t have a chest.”
“Whatever. There’s something I been meaning to tell you.”
“What?”
“I know I was never much of a father to you.”
“I had no basis for comparison.”
“Still, you must’ve thought I was a real bastard all those years. I felt like one.”
“Then why didn’t you do something to change it?”
“I was human. Humans are fuckups, and I fucked up big-time. See, there’s something else your mother and I never told you.”
“What?”
“I’m gay … Or rather, I was gay. Now I’m just a head.”
I stopped. “Excuse me?”
“I shoulda told you while we were both still alive, and it woulda meant something.” His black eyes rolled back in his skull, lubricated by their greasy lids; his mouth worked like a gasping fish. “I’m—I’m … sorry.”
At Fred’s unexpected confession, I did something I hadn’t done since becoming a Xombie.
I laughed.
“It ain’t that funny,” he said.
Testing him, I asked, “So if you weren’t my father, who was?”
“Another Navy man—a NATO officer named Alaric Despineau. She met him while we were stationed in Europe.”
“So she cheated on you?”
“It ain’t that simple and you know it. We were all … confused. I was at sea for months at a time, which made it easy for me to pretend I had no part in it. Truth was, Grace needed something I couldn’t give her. He could.”
“You mean children.”
“Among other things. I had no understanding at the time and hung her out to dry. Now I see how she had no choice … any more than I did. Biology is a bastard.”
“What caused them to break up?”
“Your mother had an unfortunate attraction to men who weren’t available. It was her independent streak. Alaric was always away at sea, so Grace was stuck raising you alone. Over time they just drifted apart.”
“Who was Brenda?”
He blinked. “Brenda?”
“I just heard of a woman named Brenda Despineau.”
He paused a long time. “That was Grace’s first child. Your sister.”
“Sister. How come I never knew about her?”
“She was a good bit older. At first she helped raise you, but eventually she and your mother had a falling-out. Grace had troubles, as you know. Brenda left home as soon as it was humanly possible … and took your brother with her. She woulda taken you, too, if she could have.”
A brother now, too. I felt a long-dead nerve throb to life in my skull. “What happened to them?”
He shook his head. “Brenda didn’t want my help, or anybody’s. She was a real tough cookie. What she really wanted was you, but your mother took you and went on the run. After that, we all lost touch with each other for years. That is, until you and your mother found me.”
“You never heard from any of the others? Or bothered looking?”
“Honey, I don’t go where I’m not wanted. Just a little fatherly advice.”
“You’re not my father.”
“I can dream, can’t I?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
 
PETROPOLIS
 
A
s we approached the north channel of the great Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, the hydrophones detected curiously subterranean noises, rushing from one shore to the other. This wasn’t the clear swish of boat propellers but a deeper rumble, like bowling balls hurtling through a pipe.
“Traffic,” said Phil Tran, listening over the headset.
“Ship traffic?” asked Coombs.
“
Traffic
traffic—there’s some heavy machinery passing through the Bridge Tunnel. Big rigs.”
“I
told
you so,” said Alton Webb. “We should have come here in the first place.”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty.” To me, Coombs asked, “Want to take a sighting?”
“A sighting … sure.”
“Periscope depth.” The command flitted through the ship like a dead leaf. Flesh and metal moved fluidly to comply.
“Periscope depth, aye.”
“Raise periscope. She’s all yours, Lulu.”
My stone-cold hands seized stone-cold handles, my stone black eyes drank in daylight. I walked the periscope in a circle, taking a series of pictures, then quickly lowered it.

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