"I"m her minder!" He nearly shouted too. No, if he"s Korean, "minder" won"t translate. "Her guardian-I"m watching out for her." If that hasn"t queered my pitch with her for good . . . And now I know I want a pitch, blast you . . . "Anyway, it"s time you left."
Whatever his tone added, Dora let him edge her away from the stairs. Her hand tugged him on down the corridor, and they stood watching, as the figure slowly approached the steps, began descending, and disappeared.
Dora stood in the centre of her unit, motionless, mute, while Darryl flicked on lights, checked windows, prowled the rooms from end to end. As he came back to her she whispered, just audible, "He knows where I live."
Darryl put a hand on her shoulder, unable to help himself. He felt her shaking, and furiously suppressed the impulse to pull her into his arms.
"He"s gone now. It"s okay."
Ever so slightly, her head shook.
"We can call the cops. He"s a b.l.o.o.d.y stalker . . ."
"The cops!" It went up to a sort of squeak. "What can they do? Issue a restraining order? For that they have to know his address."
"But doesn"t the firm . . ."
"He-they won"t give us one. They always phone us. We don"t call them. And the number"s blanked. I wanted to hack it, but Dad said, No. Not polite. It"ll upset them. Risk the deal."
"The deal! Listen, I can talk to him tomorrow morning. Make him-"
She looked at him, and the words died on his lips.
"What is it, do you think," she was speaking very deliberately, "that Dad wants most?"
The deal. Come h.e.l.l or high water, and if that includes his daughter, includes letting the client put pressure on his daughter . . .
"I can stay here tonight."
Their eyes held, silently following the statement"s back-trail: In case he comes back. As silently, the future opened before Darryl"s eyes. Tonight. And tomorrow night?
He very nearly reached out again. He did notice, too vividly, the way Dora"s hands almost moved, and stilled. Before she set her lips, and shook her head.
"I"m inside now. I"ve got good locks. Go home, Darryl. You need the sleep."
Her face silenced his protests. She"s got her old man on her back as well as this . . . stalker . . . She"s had enough tonight already. Don"t make it worse.
She went to open the door. But as he came up, she rose suddenly on tiptoe and a b.u.t.terfly brushed his cheek.
"Thank you," she whispered. "Very much."
Darryl went downstairs with his head worried silly and his heart cavorting somewhere up in the stratosphere.
Fire-Sights had three days of uneasy peace, enlivened by another mighty quarrel from which Dora emerged raging so visibly that Darryl dared not even try to comfort her. He stuck to driving home after her each evening, checking the unit, and in daytime, keeping her nearly always in sight. Except for the quarrel she was fraught and silent, giving him an occasional fragile smile, and burying herself in the work for their next big job: Sat.u.r.day night, the season"s launch for the Ibisville football team.
The display had been laid out at one end of the stadium. It was very late before they had everything pulled down and packed, and again, almost all of the crowd had gone. As he carried the last load of rails and leads out the stadium back gate, Darryl looked across empty acres of an ill-lit concrete parking lot and felt a tingling nervous sense of deja vu.
Dora"s shoes tapped behind him. She had the palmtop in her pocket, the laptop under her arm. He pushed the gate wider for her and went ahead across the twenty feet to the van. As he turned, the shadows under the stadium wall moved.
Darryl had one startled glimpse of dark shapes, misshapen heads, caught the glint of metal and felt a searing shot of adrenaline before Dora screamed, "Run!"
Darryl"s body took charge. He ran, faster than he ever moved in his life, straight back to her.
Ten feet from the van his feet stuck. His limbs stuck. He kicked and fought like a fly in amber and with every muscle flex the invisible bonds tightened until they were crushing his chest, cutting off his wind, strangling him.
Darkness filled with spangles over what was left of his eyesight. Somewhere a voice was shrieking like a fire siren, "Let him go, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, you dingoes! Let him go!"
A sudden blur, then his eyes cleared. The restraints had stopped tightening. He could, very carefully, breathe.
He orbited his gaze madly: Dora, frozen just outside the gate, a small shadow in the dusk. The shapes around him, bigger than he was, ominously blocky and solid, with projections that did not match human form.
Battle gear, his frenziedly racing brain called back from TV News pictures. They"re soldiers or something, they"ve got armor and helmets and weapons and . . .
Beyond them, in front of him, stood another, familiarly suited, less blocky shape.
"You heard me," Dora was saying. Her voice quivered a note too high, but it was adamant with pure rage. "You let him go! Or I don"t go anywhere!"
Darryl"s heart stood still. He wanted to call out but his voice was silenced too. Frenzied, despairing, he tried to make his eyes cry. Don"t promise just to save me! I don"t matter! Don"t do it! Don"t go anywhere!
"Does this mean that you will go?"
It was Major"s familiar distorted voice he heard. Dora answered, with a steel ring he had never heard before.
"Only if I have answers first. Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing here?"
Silence. Into it, Dora bit off the next words.
"Or I can smash this palmtop, here and now. And whatever you do to me, I"ll never be able to put the algorithm together again."
Another pause where Darryl"s heart choked in his throat. Don"t dare him, he wanted to bawl, who knows what he-they-can do to you? Look what they"ve done to me. Dora, don"t!
"You will know soon enough."
"I"ll know first." Dora jerked her chin up. Her face was a blur but he could guess how it looked. Good luck, mate, he thought, crazily amused, on arguing with her now.
Major turned slowly half away from her, toward Darryl. "Even for his sake?"
Dora laughed at him, wildly as a banshee. "Oh, sure! As if you won"t do something-kill him, mind-wipe him-anyway!"
The pause this time, Darryl realized suddenly, through the choke of his own fear, might have been faintly bemused.
Then Major took one pace back, lifted a wrist toward his face, and overhead the sky took fire.
They slid silently down out of the blaze, one, two, three, grounding lightly as bubbles and as airily, one somewhere behind him, one to either side, and Darryl"s insides liquefied with pure molten fear.
Oh G.o.d, oh, G.o.d, his mind gasped, whipped back through childhood memories, it wasn"t just a movie after all, it"s not the big saucer with the lights and music but there are aliens. Back in "14, there was talk of contact, signals out of s.p.a.ce. We all forgot it when nothing happened. But they"re real. They"re here.
The bubbles stood motionless on mundane concrete, silvered, sleekly rounded pods, bigger than a ship container, taller than Darryl"s head. No lights or portholes like Spielberg"s. I can"t even see engines. Just a faint haze reflecting from the mirror sides, a tremble round them like heating in the air.
It was the most terrifying moment of his life, and he could not tear his eyes away. Until beyond Major he heard Dora catch her breath on something like a choke. And then bring out the words with ferocious bravado.
"Oh, very impressive. So what are you? ETs? Alien life forms? Green snakes with three mouths and tentacles, I suppose?"
Major drew him-her-itself? up. "We are a carbon-based, oxygen breathing life-form." It actually sounded affronted. "As bi-symmetrical as you."
"But this isn"t what you look like, is it?"
The pause might have been embarra.s.sment.
"Your planet has considerably higher gravity. We find it-uncomfortable. Mostly, we prefer to appear as-simulae."
"Images?"
"You would say, holograms."
No wonder he-she? it? always stood against the light; no wonder the voice sounded weird. Sweat was clammy on Darryl from toe to armpit, but his brain had refueled on terror, and suddenly the words burst out of him too.
"Where? Where"d you come from? Where?"
Where"s Dora going-oh G.o.d, what can stop her? Where"s she going to?
Major"s figure turned very slightly toward him. After another moment"s consideration, the voice replied.
"My correct-names-as you understand them, would be Major. Ursor Major."
The pause was expectant. Darryl gaped, lost. But Dora gave one short gasp and exclaimed aloud.
"Ursa Major! Oh-oh!" She clapped both hands over her mouth and tried to stop the spurt of laughter. "Oh, G.o.d, that is the most awful joke!"
Shut up, Darryl tried to telegraph, Dora, shut up! But despite what could have been called bridling, Major-Ursor Major, he corrected himself bewilderedly-made no other response.
"And you came all the way from the star, the constellation-all the way here? To this system? This planet? This country? This town?" She was battling more hysteria. "Or are there more of you? Are you all over earth, the solar system, do you . . . What in heaven"s name for?"
When the voice came this time, Major sounded almost humanly resigned.
"There are no more of us. We have not landed elsewhere. The rules of-" the voice crackled unintelligibly as a thoroughly ruined mike, "forbid ma.s.s intervention in native groups. And this is an obscure satellite of a very small star, in a seldom-travelled galactic arm." Talks like a book, Darryl thought, amazed, when he-she? gets going. "That was precisely why we came."
"But for what?"
Major"s arms moved. For the first time the body language was utterly unhuman, somewhere between a telescoping and a ripple in their lower halves. Dora waited. At last, the words came.
"We were seeking-art."
Dora"s laughter almost did become hysterical. In terror Darryl tried to hitch himself closer and the restraints let him shuffle a couple of feet before she got control of herself.
"You wanted what?!"
"We wished-we require an artistic form. An exotic, utterly unusual, spectacular artistic form, never seen before. It was-it may still be-our" crackle, sputter, "for the," splutter, Crack! "at which, we must prevail among the other," fizz, crackle! "or lose the-perhaps your word is, throne."
Dora"s jaw sagged. Darryl"s feelings got the better of him and before he knew it he had exploded in turn.
"If you mean fireworks, there must be a million other b.l.o.o.d.y "art shows" round the world, New Year"s Eve in New York, in Sydney, the Melbourne Ekka, America, any Fourth of July . . . Better than ours are! Bigger than ours are! Why"d you have to pick on us?"
Major"s figure swiveled toward him. The voice answered almost at once, expressionless. "Because in such a remote area, there would be less concern if n-inhabitant-disappeared."
Darryl"s voice dried in his throat.
"There are still plenty of other places!" Dora snapped. "With better pyrotechs than me!"
"But not," Major answered softly, "one who understands alternate s.p.a.ce."
The pit fell out of Darryl"s stomach and kept falling into emptiness. They understand what she did. They really understand it. Oh, Mary, Mother of G.o.d-the old prayer came more than naturally-now they"ll never let her go.
Night hung round them, laced with city lights, but none of the sounds that should have accompanied them. No bird calls from the park, no rev-up of distant traffic, no pa.s.sing jets. We"re alone, Darryl thought. They"ve already taken us into another world.
He shut his eyes. Then they flew open and fastened on Dora as on his last hope of life.
And Dora was staring back at Major as she had at Darryl, a bare four days ago. As if actually seeing him for the first time.
Then she came a pace forward. Very softly, she said, "You know."
Major"s head inclined. She took another step. Her voice began lifting, but no longer in fear.
"You know what I did. You understand it. You know."
"Some of us know. Not all. To have another who knows-and not one of us-would be a gift beyond price."
Dora"s lips parted and held. She stared.
"An artist," Major spoke almost as softly as she had, "such an artist, using such a form as yours, would be honored as never elsewhere. An artist who also saw alternate s.p.a.ce, who could transmit that vision-such a one might claim any honor, privilege-materials, facilities, possessions, wealth, as you understand it. Any of such that is imaginable. Every slightest, greatest desire."
She"s going to go. Darryl"s heart turned to ice in his chest. She wouldn"t go for coercion, and she won"t go for the bribes, but for the understanding . . . to work with people who know what she really does, where she"s coming from, where her head might take her . . .
She"s going to leave.
"Dora, don"t!" It burst out of him again, beyond control. "You can"t do it! Not go off with these, these-you can"t leave here, Ibisville, the firm-your family . . ."
"My family?"
Dora whipped round on him. Her chest rose and fell. Then she took four fast paces and they were nose-to-nose. "Let me tell you about my family. Great Grandfather came here for Gold Mountain, in the 1870s, he dug his mine and carried his gold out in two baskets, all the way to Ibisville. Then he was rich enough to marry, back home. But the gold haunted him, so he brought back his wife and her brother, the apprentice of a firework maker. They sold crackers and skyrockets to the stupid diggers until they had a business, land, money. My grandfather inherited, then my father. But always-always! this was Gold Mountain. A trading place, an outpost. The Family, the real family, was in China. At Home.
"And now my father wants to show off to that Family, to make some great coup, because he still thinks China"s the same China, and one day he can go home . . ."
"But you"re his daughter!" The venom had shocked Darryl into speech. "The backbone of the business! You"ll inherit the firm-"
"Hah!" Dora almost spat at him." The one who inherits will be Charlie-my brother-the eldest son! He"s off in Macao, pretending to study accounting and running wild with his rich cousins. But one day, he"ll come home. And then my father will hand over the company without a second thought. And Charlie won"t understand either. There"ll be another client someday and he"ll sell off me and the algorithm, just the same!"
"B-but-your mother-surely she wouldn"t let them-"