* * * Stripes, who had been pouncing alternately on her sister, the fronds of a fern rustling in the draft from the fireplace, and her own tail, skidded to a halt with a sudden confused expression. After a moment of whatever pa.s.sed for consideration in her young brain, the kitten skittered off in the direction of the nearest litter box. She thundered up the worn wooden stairs making noise in total disproportion to her size.
Swelk almost hoped the kitten would be too late. Tending to the Girillian menagerie had begun as a ploy; caring for them had become enn.o.bling. She yearned to regain that quiet satisfaction of being needed. There was a flurry of unseen digging noises, and then Stripes returned at full gallop to the salon.
With a leap and a midair twist the cat was off in pursuit of something only it could see. Swelk waggled her sensor stalks in amused confusion . . . the thing Kyle called a poltergeist baffled her translation program.
With thoughts of him, her momentary good mood vanished. The human to whom she felt closest had not stopped by in two days. And it was not only Kyle-none of her most frequent visitors had come by.
Even an alien newly arrived could tell from the demeanor of her guards that the subst.i.tute questioners were of lesser status than those who had disappeared.
What Kyle and the others were doing, she could not imagine.
* * * "It seems clear-cut enough to me," said Kyle. He didn"t entirely feel that way, but the other summiteers were erring in the opposite direction. "Either Swelk is a defector or she"s not. Which do we believe?" Everyone began animatedly speaking at once, stopped, then all started up again. On the next random retry, the ex-spy got the floor. "The ET could be a real defector-and delusional. She could be entirely sane and sincere, and unaware that she"s been filled with disinformation. She could be lying through whatever she uses for teeth, for reasons fathomable only to celery-eyed monsters, and still reveal . . .
with whatever encouragement is appropriate . . . incredibly valuable information. We need to understand her motivations to have any hope of making sense of anything she tells us."
From nowhere came a memory of Swelk dangling a sc.r.a.p of yarn above leaping kittens. "Delusional? A
secret agent? Erin, have you ever actually met Swelk?""No, by intent." Fitzhugh impatiently flicked a potato-chip crumb from the table. "My people have. I talk to them; I read their reports. I"m objective. It"s the professional way to handle supposed defectors, even when the stakes aren"t so high."
Ryan Bauer popped open another c.o.ke. "It"s just too convenient that nothing in Swelk"s story can be confirmed-short of what could be a suicidal attack on the F"thk vessel. She claims she"s some kind of outcast and dilettante social scientist, excusing her not knowing anything helpful. The lifeboat she came down on is melted slag. Her computer can"t be experimented with, because it contains her translator. Her so-called bioconverter can"t be fiddled with because that would put at risk her food supply." He rolled his eyes. "Could the little monster"s story be any more convenient?"
"Oh, please," Darlene snapped. Beside her, Britt"s head swung back and forth, like a spectator at a tennis match. And just as unuseful."Excuse me," said Kyle, stunned by the unexpected disbelief. Swelk had specifically sought him out. Was he too close to, too influenced by, the little ET? "Maybe we can approach the problem another way. The most critical of Swelk"s disclosures, whatever her motives, is the nonexistence of the mother ship. If we can corroborate that, if we can be sure there"s "only" the so-called F"thk vessel to handle, her story would be valuable."
Ryan shoved back his chair, its legs grating against the floor. "Come on, Kyle. Small telescopes see it.
Radar shows it."This time, Kyle had six copies of the images that had almost convinced Britt. He pa.s.sed the prints around the table without explanation, letting the pictures tell their own story.
"Holy c.r.a.p," reacted the CIA exec, her eyes bright. "The microwave and visible-light images don"t match." Ryan, nodding in agreement, looked chagrined. The USAF s.p.a.ce Command could have made the same observation . . . weeks ago.
"Why haven"t we seen a discrepancy before?" asked Darlene. "I know the mother ship has been scanned
by radar.""Radar"s ordinarily used to locate and identify an object, not to create a detailed image of it," Bauer explained. "What Kyle"s showing us took a lot of computation. Why bother when it was so plainly visible to telescopes?"
Kyle rapped the table confidently. "The reason, my friend, is because our defector said there could be no mother ship. I"m saying the optical image is a hologram, and the featureless glob must be the echo of a radar buoy we can"t see."
Darlene, for some reason, refused to catch his eye. What was going through her mind?She didn"t give Kyle long to wonder. "You know I like Swelk. I trust her, too. That said, the stakes are too high to go with my gut. Like Reagan famously said of the Sovs and disarmament, I think we have to "trust, but verify." "Dar was the last person he"d expected to object. "What other explanation is there?"She tipped her head, tugging a lock of hair in reflection. "I defer to every one of you about technology.
Without knowing much about tech, though, I can concoct another explanation for what we"re seeing. Kyle, you"ve explained before that the aliens have radar stealthing. Their satellites that upload recordings from the souvenir orbs, the satellites that we watched destroy that Russian rocket . . . they were stealthy."
"Go on," encouraged Britt."So imagine for a moment that Swelk"s account isn"t true. Whether she"s purposefully lying or has been filled with disinformation, someone, in this scenario, wants us to believe her. They want us to mistakenly conclude that the mother ship is fake." Darlene swept a hand grandiloquently over the pictures, her words tumbling out in a rush. "Couldn"t they enable a stealth mode on their small craft? Then those smaller s.p.a.ceships would be seen visually but not by radar. Isn"t it at least possible that a real, physical mother ship could use a stealth mode to prevent a true radar reflection and, whenever pinged, emit a synthesized signal that matches a featureless large blob? Wouldn"t those stratagems also explain your observations?"
Scientist, general, and spy master exchanged surprised glances. Erin Fitzhugh found her voice first. "If
you ever get tired of working at State, there"s a spot for you at the Agency."
Discussion continued-of Swelk"s debriefings, of a.n.a.lyses of her salvaged equipment, of the international dangers posed by recent F"thk secretive whisperings-but the decision-making part of the meeting had ended. Whatever their opinion of Swelk, no one could be certain her story was true. There
would be, for now, no disclosure to the Russians of her arrival and claims. Unwilling themselves to recommend a desperate attack on the F"thk ship, they dare not risk influencing the Russians to try.
Would they be ready to share, Kyle wondered, before a nuclear miscalculation obliterated them all?
CHAPTER 21.
Stinky humphed with satisfaction, leaning into the pushbroom that now served as his brush. Swelk groomed the swampbeast with long, smooth strokes, quietly pleased at the glossiness of his leathery skin. As Swelk worked, Smelly b.u.t.ted her head, first gently, then insistently, against her. "Your turn is . . . "
Smelly"s importuning was not simple impatience for her turn. Swelk plummeted, only then realizing they had all been suspended in midair. Stinky and Smelly shrank as she plunged, until only their fading fearful trumpeting remained. A recess of her brain noticed without explanation that the animals had not fallen.
She shuddered awake, intertwined digits rigid with fear. Bellows of unseen swampbeasts filled her mind.
After forcing her digits to relax, to unlace, she tried but failed to stand. Visions of terrified swampbeasts overwhelmed her as she toppled, overcome by dizziness.
The nightmare did not surprise her-as much as she already loved the kittens, she missed the
swampbeasts terribly. For the intense vertigo, however, she had no explanation.
Blackie and Stripes tumbled into the room, curious, perhaps, at the unexpected nighttime noises from Swelk. She preferred to think they had come to console her. As the exile stroked their soft fur, she could not help but wonder, What is wrong with me?
* * * It was not yet 9:00 a.m., and four new pies were already cooling on the counter. The kitchen sink overflowed with mixing bowls, measuring cups, and utensils Kyle couldn"t name. Hours before the Thanksgiving turkey would go into the oven, his seventy-year-old, gray-haired, stooping mother kept bustling.
Britt had more or less insisted he take a break. "Juggling knives blindfolded while riding a unicycle at the cliff"s edge isn"t instinctive behavior. A few months of it gets to most people. You should take some time away." To Kyle"s rejoinder that he didn"t exactly work for Britt anymore, the politician had answered, "Then accept it as advice from a friend. You"re fried. Go away for a few days." So here he was.
He"d offered to help Mom and been refused. He"d been shooed away when he started to wash dishes without asking. He"d proposed in vain that she sit for a while. With Mom it could"ve been a gender thing; he suggested that she save the potato peeling for Carol, Kyle"s sister, whose family was due around noon. Nothing worked. Dad no longer tried; he was in the den reading the morning paper.
Fine. Kyle knew from whence came his own stubbornness gene. "Say, Mom, you mentioned a sc.r.a.pbook? I thought I"d take a look." The St. Cloud Times was generally hard-pressed to find a local angle to national, let alone interstellar, affairs-they had covered Kyle"s stint on the Galactic Commission with (to Kyle) embarra.s.sing fervor. Mom couldn"t get enough, and had the fat binder full of yellow-highlighted clippings to prove it. She"d brought it up repeatedly since his arrival last night, undeterred by all changes of subject. He knew she"d sit beside him on the parlor sofa whenever he picked up the sc.r.a.pbook-and she did. As he leafed through it, he caught from the corner of his eye a self-satisfied smile. Maybe he wasn"t the only one smug about an exercise in applied psychology.
Living as he did at the epicenter of events, none of the main articles were surprising. The sidebars were more diverting. Upstate Minnesota was not without its share of cranks-two had accosted him at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, and the F"thk arrival was all the proof they needed. That no facts tied the newcomers to supposed UFO sightings and alien abductions seemed not to matter.
The important thing was that Mom was off her feet. He proceeded to read, slowly.
* * * The 7-Eleven was mobbed. Not only was the convenience store the closest approximation to an open grocery this Thanksgiving Day afternoon, but it was half-time in a tied Cowboys-Vikings game. Two men in line ahead of Kyle wore Vikings caps with soft stuffed horns. As inane NFL headgear went, he preferred Green Bay cheesehead hats. He kept the opinion to himself.
He looked randomly around the store, killing time. A full head of white hair, glimpsed in an overhead
security mirror, caught his eye. Was the stranger watching Kyle? The man began studying his boots selfconsciously as Kyle turned toward him. With a shrug, Kyle shuffled to face the checkout counter again. Thinking, This would be easier if I were Swelk, he glanced over his shoulder at the dairy case"s gla.s.s door. The somehow-familiar reflection peered back at him, the guy"s expression a mix of brooding and expectation.
h.e.l.l, after many years out East, Kyle was a Redskins fan. He stepped out of line.
His observer was short, maybe five-six, with a gaunt face dominated by a hawklike nose and piercing
eyes. Up close the man"s hair was a pale, pale blond, not unusual here in Outer Scandinavia. Dark brown, almost black eyes with that hair were. "Do we know each other?""Um, no." Uncomfortable grimace around the chewed b.u.t.t of an extinguished cigar. "Anyway, you don"t know me. I feel I know you, Dr. Gustafson."
"Oh. Media coverage of the commission. My fifteen minutes of fame." It didn"t explain why Kyle
thought he did recognize this guy. "Sorry to have bothered you. I"m sure you have people to be with today."As grief flooded the stranger"s face, Kyle realized why the man looked so familiar.
* * * "This will only take a few minutes," shouted Darlene over the keening of the air popper she"d brought from home. The loud whistle of the appliance"s blower was soon punctuated by the rat-a-tat salvoes of exploding corn kernels. Melting b.u.t.ter sizzled in a pan on the stove top. Darlene warmed to the familiar sounds and scents. What could be more normal than movies and popcorn?
The venue was far from normal: Thanksgiving in a safehouse with a fugitive ET. The microwave-free kitchen seemed to predate the Eisenhower administration. Cooking involved a freestanding gas range that would be used that evening to reheat the CIA-provided holiday dinners. The agents would eat, in ones and twos, at their convenience. They were invariably polite to Darlene, but at the same time intensely clannish. If she bothered with a reheated meal, she figured it would be eaten with Swelk.
Swelk lacked holiday expectations, and in any event she would synthesize her own dinner. The usual feedstock for her bioconverter was pizza crusts and leftover takeout Chinese. So, as the popcorn popped, Darlene was "cooking" for, and feeling sorry for, only herself. Her folks, G.o.d bless them, were on a cruise. Fail to make it home for three years running, and suddenly there"s an expectation. She couldn"t say why she"d declined Kyle"s invitation to Minnesota.
On second thought, she could: confusion over what, beside professional, her relationship with Kyle was supposed to be. Darlene wasn"t seeing anyone at the moment, nor did she care to. Her last relationship, with a partner at a cut-throat DC law firm, had ended badly when he forgot how to leave the go-for-the- jugular att.i.tude at the office. Not that a covert war against interstellar aliens and the approach of Armageddon put one in the mood for a social life . . .
She had to laugh as Stripes sauntered into the kitchen from the hall. White markings around the kitten"s eyes gave her an expression of permanent surprise. Cats for Swelk-sometimes Kyle"s instincts were dead on. She valued Kyle as a colleague and thought they were becoming good friends. Unfortunately, his Gobi-dry humor and flirtation-impairedness had her at a loss about his intentions. Who knew what signal she"d have sent by going to meet his family? She"d think about sorting it out in a few months if civilization still existed.
Plastic popcorn bowl in one hand, a warm Diet c.o.ke in the other, Darlene backed out of the kitchen, b.u.mping the door open with a hip. "Ready to start . . . " she began. She turned to find Swelk splayed out on the dining-room floor, twitching. The din from the air popper had clearly obscured the thud of the ET hitting the planking. Nothing m.u.f.fled the crashes of her bowl and soda can. "Swelk! What"s wrong?"
Two agents burst in from the hall as she spoke.
"I don"t know." The computer took forever to translate. "I suddenly could not stand on all threes. The room was spinning around me." Swelk arose shakily, her second utterance put more quickly into English. "Whatever it was, it is going away."
The delayed translation was scary, bringing to mind slurred speech. Did Krulirim have strokes? "Is there anyone we should call?" That any human physician could treat the alien was implausible, but Darlene couldn"t bear not acting.
"Yes." Sensor stalks bobbed in amus.e.m.e.nt, involuntary tremors marring the wry waggle with which Darlene had become familiar. "My doctor is unfortunately light-years away." In the awkward silence that followed, tremors subsided into mere tics.
"Ms. Lyons?" asked an agent economically.
"I don"t see what we can do," she told the guards. One shrugged. They left. "Swelk, maybe we should
skip the movies." A whiff of b.u.t.tered popcorn rose as she cleaned up the worst of her mess. One species"
aroma was another"s toxic fumes. "Does this smell bother you?"
"It was not the smell." The digits of an extremity clenched momentarily in Krulchukor negation. "Make
more, if you would like. As to the movies, it would comfort me to watch."
"Okay to the movies. I"ll skip the food."
At Swelk"s command, a hologram formed over the dining-room table, projected by the alien computer.
Indistinguishable Krulirim milled about a packed circular room, as writhing spiders scrolled around the bottom of the image. Opening credits? Captions for Swelk"s benefit, Darlene decided, as the translator intoned, in a voice unlike what it used for Swelk, "The Reluctant Neighbor."
She watched from a slat-backed Shaker chair, rapt but unhappy. Fascination with the alien film was understandable. Ditto her unhappiness with Swelk"s unexplained episode.
She knew she was overlooking something of extreme importance. But what?
* * * The rolling pasture was bleak and windswept, its dormant gra.s.s brittle beneath Kyle"s shoes. The flapping wings of a crow breaking cover made the only sound. Then it was gone, and stillness returned.
He was a good mile from pavement. How stupid was he to let embarra.s.sment bring him here? Too late he"d realized why the man at the 7-Eleven looked so familiar: a press photo in Mom"s sc.r.a.pbook.