by Lynne Murray
There were lines for Wade, Kirby and Hiromi to sign as well.
The whole thing should have worried the hell out of me. I didn’t know whether to trust any of them. But I liked Wade and the prospect of working closely with him was too tempting to turn down. Also, I didn’t have any backup plan or an alternate strategy. Heck, maybe I still had a death wish.
I signed.
“It’s not safe for you to go back to your apartment until we secure the area around it for your protection. How would you feel about staying at the ETPA Station guest quarters for a few days?” Kirby asked.
“I guess so.” I was too numb to care.
“We’ll contact Grandmother to watch your place and receive your belongings from your workplace.” Kirby said.
“They probably won’t let her sign for them,” I said.
“Oh, I think she’ll be able to convince them to let her take them for you,” Wade said. “Grandmother can be surprisingly persuasive.”
I followed Wade out the door and into his truck. He parked in front, blocking Larry’s access to the garage, but neither of us pointed that out. Wade walked me up the steps. “I can wait while you pack a few things.”
“It’s okay, I’ve got a go-bag in the front closet.”
He didn’t ask why. Maybe he didn’t have to.
Chapter 8
Wade drove us downtown to Brannan Street. He parked in a hidden lot at the end of an alley next to an anonymous brick building. An intercom hissed static at us.
“Wade Falconer, here with a trainee.” The door buzzed open. “Follow me and get out your amulet to show the guard,” he said. He unbuttoned his collar and fished his amulet out as he walked down a corridor. I snagged the chain and pulled the metal circle out as Wade veered right at a split in the corridor. He stopped in front of a gray, metal door and pushed it open.
The room we stepped into was the size of an airline hanger. As I looked around, I felt dazed. No way could a structure this size fit into the brick building we had just entered. Except for a counter just inside the entry, the room seemed empty. A man in a gray jumpsuit with Portal Authority stitched across the pocket came around the counter. He nodded at our amulets and stood in front of us to hold out a hand-sized tablet.
“What’s your destination?” he asked.
“Angel Island Station, please.”
The guard held up his tablet and Wade put his palm on it to be scanned. Then he held it in front of me and I did the same. The guard stepped aside. Wade led me across the empty floor to a circle incised on the floor with target-style rings. It was big enough to park a jet airliner. When we reached the middle of it, we stopped. Wade signaled the guard. A blinding flash of light and a shifting of the floor disoriented me. Then we were suddenly standing on a landing overlooking what appeared to be the lobby of an upscale skyscraper filled with foot traffic. When I looked more closely my glasses revealed the forms and red letter information on readouts for dozens of alien creatures of all shapes and sizes, some with tentacles, others very much resembling snails or undersea creatures.
“You might want to take your glasses off for a while,” Wade said. “The disguises are easier to deal with until you get used to the diversity of the travelers, even with the current restrictions to entry to Earth. This is the primary gateway to the West Coast, Angel Island Station,” Wade said. “It’s a bit ironic.”
“Because of Angel Island’s history with the Chinese Exclusion Act?”
“Ah, you know your local history.”
“I took the ferry and went to the Immigration Station Museum. I it was an entry point designed as a bottleneck for people trying to enter the United States, mostly from Asia. I saw the Quarantine barracks. It didn’t look anything like this.”
“That’s because we’re not actually in the middle of San Francisco Bay now. We’re between dimensions now. The folded space entry touches on the physical Angel Island but it’s well hidden. Entering this place through there is difficult. What you see down there on the main floor is the entryway in folded space where the West Coast ETPA is monitoring travelers from other planets under the very noses of official human governing forces that don’t even know they exist.”
He led me into a huge open plan office area that hummed with conversations in unfamiliar languages. “This is the main data room.”
A bank of screens displaying visuals of the whole Bay Area to a dozen rows of terminals tended by humans and other creatures that made me pause. A basket-like seating arrangement floated in front of an array of several screens that curved 180 degrees around it. In the basket, a blue-skinned being that looked very much like a five-foot-tall, half-shucked ear of corn. What looked like kernels were dozens of rows of eyes that lined up and then moved and reassembled along a solidly based spinal structure that disappeared into a base that resembled a corn husk. Three blue appendages that bent down to grip the side of the basket it rested in as the creature leaned toward one screen or another among the array. Thin, pale yellow tendrils emerged from between the eyes all over the visible portion of its body. The tendrils waved around, occasionally touching something on the display to enlarge it or move it.
The readout on my glasses informed me:
Ridularian Hive Creature. Over one hundred smaller information-seeking units fused to a central consciousness. Highly prized data analysts.
I felt a little dizzy staring at the small eyes swarming around, trading places on the central stalk.
As we drew closer, the silky tendrils all pointed in one direction, at me, and began urgently pulsing. The creature let out a loud, high-pitched wail. A tinny voice issued from the Ridularian, “Danger alert,” it shrilled. “Death Dealer on deck.”
Wade called out, “Star, don’t be alarmed! This is Angie, she’s harmless.” He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Star can see 360 degrees and she’s never seen anything like you.” He led me closer to the—
“What is it?”
“Star is kind of a really advanced beehive. Every one of those small processing units stores more data than any computer on Earth. Her official name is ‘Two thousand, two hundred thirty-seven, Slash Star 7.’ It’s both a name and an official rank of honor.”
The readout on my glasses identified the name as:
2,237/*7
I touched the centerpiece on my glasses to freeze the display. I’d never remember that number. I noted it on my phone.
“We’re lucky to have Star’s impressive skills,” Wade’s calming voice seemed to quell the creature’s panic, and the wailing died down. “Relax, Star. This young woman was raised among naive humans. She knows nothing of Death Dealer training or connections. She is here to learn how to support our work. She has never met a Ridularian, but I personally guarantee that she will not hurt anyone.”
Star Slash’s tendrils slowly relaxed. With a pulse that reminded me of a sigh, the tendrils began randomly floating around it again softly saying, “Unschooled Death Dealer, female.”
“We have permission to call her Star for short,” Wade said. “Not sure about Ridularian gender.”
I instinctively glanced at the Star’s lower parts, hidden by the basket, and quickly looked away, hoping she was not offended.
“You may find it easier to look at her without your glasses,” Wade added. “You’ll see that she has chosen her disguise to be female.”
With my glasses pushed down my nose, I saw a short, thin woman, a teenager really, the short hair floating around her face were the same pale blond as Star’s nearly transparent tendrils. She wore blue jeans and a T-shirt that read Friend of Mia #AlienLabRatGirl. Her skin had a bluish tinge. She sat cross-legged on what looked like an exceptionally high hoverboard. When I pushed my glasses back up, the Ridularian in her floating basket came back into focus.
“Has the untaught Death Dealer a rank?” Star asked.
“No formal rank. She’s a probationary candidate,” Wade said. “Her name is Angie Faust.”
Star leaned half out of
her basket, close enough that the tendrils were a foot away from me. “Welcome, Angie Faust.”
“Thank you,” I glanced at my notes, “I appreciate the welcome, Information Officer. Two thousand-twenty-three hundred thirty-seven Slash Star Seven.” The eyes on my side of the stalk all fixed on me, but the ones facing the screen focused on the main screen in front of it.
“You may call me Star.”
“Thank you, please call me Angie. Is it rude to ask what you are doing?”
“Not rude. Not classified. Informative. Monitoring the Convention Center exterior for unscheduled entries by ship or portal—” the floating tendrils nearest the screen pointed to a sphere floating in space. “It’s located at the edge of this solar system amid a nest of folds in space. You can see the remote feed of main portal entrance to Earth. It’s sealed now, of course. Here are the primary structures.” Her tendrils hovered near one of the screens and a closer view of white pyramids under a vast dome came into focus. “We watch for intruders trying to enter the Forbidden Zone. Now only the most essential merchants and officials get through.”
“Why is it sealed?”
“Don’t they teach these things to you as a youngster?”
“I’m learning late in life.”
“Most humans in the Forbidden Zone know nothing of this,” Wade explained.
Star waved her tendrils expressively with a sound like crisp leaves slapping together. The exasperation in her tone came through loud and clear. “The humans I have met here know all this. No reason to meet other humans.”
Wade said. “Thank you, Star, I’d better give Angie some background or she’ll be distracting you with questions.”
“Distraction and caution around Death Dealers. Very bad for focus.” She turned her attention and tendrils toward the screen, but the eyes on the back of her stalk followed us as Wade led us out of the room and into a corridor with charcoal gray doors.
“What’s with the Friend of Mia T-shirt?”
“Ah, you’ll meet Mia soon. Star modeled her disguise on her. She’s a teenager, but she’s unstoppable.” Wade smiled fondly.
I felt an irrational, totally inappropriate stab of jealousy. “Um so she was experimented on by aliens?”
“Yup, the Rutban to be exact. They look like giant lizards. They are scientists in their own planetary system. They have a license to finish up their experiments and then they have to leave Earth. Mia was one of their involuntary subjects. She fought back the only way she could. She started an online site called Alien Lab Rat. She’s got 20,000 Instagram followers so far. Some people who follow her online assume she’s making it all up. But she’s for real. Kirby found her and she’s doing outreach to others who’ve been abducted.”
“Wow, I look forward to meeting her.”
Wade led the way into an alcove labeled Guest Quarters that opened into another hallway, this one had blue doors. We passed several closed doors until we came to one with a red light next to it that blinked on as we approached.
“This is your assigned room for the duration of your stay,” Wade pointed to an illuminated circle on the door. Put your hand there. The entry is keyed to your palm.”
The door swung open to reveal what looked like a nice motel room minus the television set. My aunt and I only stayed in a few motels in our travels, mostly cheap places when we were on the run. This room had a queen-sized bed, a dresser and a table with two chairs. A huge window on the wall opposite the door showed a view of San Francisco Bay with ferries making their way over to Tiburon in Marin County. Wade went to the window and hit a button beside it. A computer screen appeared and a small desk slid out to reveal a keyboard
I blinked. “That’s not an actual window?”
“No. A camera feed from the Earth side of the fold relays it. It’s an almost real-time from Angel Island looking north toward Marin County. There’s a few seconds delay.” He tapped the same button as before. “This returns you to the Bay view. While you’re staying here, the fingerprint sensor just below the button I just pressed will allow you access to information about the station up to the level of your security clearance, which is higher than some might expect.”
“Can I access Encyclopedia Galactica?”
Wade laughed. “Sure. But it might take you a few weeks to learn how to navigate it. Basically, it’s organized by sector of the galaxy and name of the planetary system. But feel free to look. Just pull up a chair and touch the sensor and you’ll be able to pull out a keyboard. This room isn’t set up with voice activation—it’s basic worker quarters, not a luxury room.”
“It looks pretty good to me,” I said. It did. More comfortable than any place my aunt and I could have afforded. “Thanks,” I said, my own voice sounded strange to me.
“Sorry I can’t stay. I’ve got to go home, but I’ll be back at 8:00 tomorrow morning.” He opened the door, but leaned back in to say, “I’ll meet you in the canteen. It’s is open 24/7. No charge for meals if you show your amulet.”
As soon as he left, I sat down, pulled up the computer and searched for Earth/Forbidden Zone.
The entry was short and to the point:
The mental defect in Earth’s dominant species became clear in the Earth year of 1947. In what humans later referred to as “the Roswell incident” two Gray Planet larval forms crash-landed their stolen vehicle in the desert of Earth’s western hemisphere.
Local and military officials retrieved the bodies and a great deal of the ship. Gray Planet adults traveled the same route to survey the damage and retrieve the victims’ remains. They discovered that Earth’s inhabitants had taken less than a year to create a religious cult around the “UFO.” Some humans imagined the young crash victims as wise overlords and the adult investigators as evil invaders.
Xenopsychiatrists were forced to conclude that humans could not resist worshiping extraterrestrial visitors. Once they began to worship, they gave up all responsibility for their actions and began to beg their new “supernatural beings” for miracles to solve their problems.
A Forbidden Zone was declared, non-essential travel to Earth was banned.
See ExtraTerrestrial Protective Agency
I wanted to look further but I kept falling asleep. I decided to leave the encyclopedia for another time. I was hungry but too tired to get up and find the canteen. I tapped the button to return the window to a view of the nighttime Bay Area. I laid on the bed and fell asleep without even taking off my clothes.
Chapter 9
The next morning I barely made it to the canteen in time for a cup of coffee and a muffin before Wade showed up. He was in a hurry to get on the road so I finished the coffee and polished off the muffin—blueberry and very good—while we were waiting in line to get to the portal to Brannan Street.
“Night shift going home,” Wade explained, waving to a few of the people ahead of us. Most of them were human so far as I could tell, the glasses didn’t show any alien info readouts on them. The line moved quickly. The interdimensional commuters stared at their phones and tablets, read folded newspapers and chatted casually as they waited to pass through the portal. We were in the door, out on Brannan Street and into Wade’s truck within a few minutes.
While I fastened my seatbelt, Wade pulled up a list on a handheld tablet. “We have to interview anyone who calls our hotline with credible ET encounter information.”
“ETPA has a hotline?”
“Oh, yeah.” Wade shrugged. “People who call or text to report an alien sighting. You’ll get a chance to answer it when you get more experience. Everybody does a shift or two. It’s the best way to get a feel for the state of craziness, check on registered residents to make sure they’re wearing their disguises and get an occasional tip on an unauthorized visitor we might have missed. It’s also a good way to meet possible recruits who can recognize aliens without needing these glasses.” He tapped his aviator shades. On him they just looked cool.
“Like Sophie?”
“Exactly, that’
s a rare talent, only found in some human-hybrids. Anyway, the first one on the list today—let’s see ‘UFO kidnapping survivor.’ Oh, boy, it’s Dennis.”
“You know him?”
He brandished the tablet. “He’s a frequent flyer, but he’s not exactly lying about the contact.”
“What does that mean?”
“He does encounter extraterrestrials at regular intervals. You’ll see. At least the scenery up where he lives is spectacular.”
Wade drove us through the winding streets climbing higher and higher. The altitude showed off the San Francisco streets below.
“You weren’t kidding about the views. What’s this neighborhood?”
“It’s called Westwood Highlands,” he said. “It’s right next to the highest point in San Francisco, a fact which will become more important after we talk to Dennis.”
He parked his truck, looking exceptionally battered next to the sleek new cars parked near the high-end homes. “These places start at a couple of million dollars,” he said.
The houses were jigsawed into narrow fronts, extending backward down the hill. Most of them had terraces behind for the residents to gaze at the trees sheltering the foot of Mount Davidson and the strings of pastel houses trailing along the hills of Daly City to the south.
We walked up to an immaculate gray stone walkway. Wade knocked on a door tucked between one wall of the house and a brightly painted redwood fence that surrounded the inevitable terrace. The door, a darker gray than the wall had a glass fanlight above it. Next to it and nearly as tall as the door, a stunning octagonal window displayed a stained glass iris in the center. A man peered through the window around the edges of the iris.
He opened the door and started talking before Wade or I could say a word. “They’re back. I see them from my terrace all the time.”
Wade introduced me to Dennis Malloy, who nodded briefly and kept talking. Dennis was neatly barbered and dressed in a pale blue shirt and crisply ironed blue jeans, “They show up above my yard pretty often, but they don’t always take me. Come inside.” He cast a look around after we came in as if looking for nosy neighbors. All he saw was Wade’s old pickup. He took a moment to heave a “what will the neighbors think?” sigh then shrugged and urged us in.
