“You are not in any danger!” shouted A’eiio over the tumult.
In the gallery, the odd group of people sitting near Jack shed their clothes and flesh-suits to become a small, bald creature with pointed ears, a gnarled, white-haired creature, a short winged creature like the senator, a grotesque gray-green monster . . . and an angel!
He recognized them! They were Ryan the elf, Steve the troll, Robin the fairy, Mike the ogre, and Wendy the angel!
Wendy the angel—with long golden curls, mesmerizing cobalt-blue eyes, and milk-white skin—climbed onto the railing, spread her snowy white, feathered wings, and began to beat them with powerful strokes. She launched herself out over the floor, sailing upward and circling high in the ivory domed ceiling. A humming arose in the chamber, and she was followed by Robin the fairy, who flitted acrobatically through the air.
Three senators fainted. Several began to weep in fear. Others cowered beneath their desks. Yet others stood in paralyzed fascination, jaws agape.
A’eiio’s wings became a blur, bearing her aloft. She hovered before the aghast DeLucato. “Please tell them they are in no danger.”
“Who . . . what the hell are you?” he demanded, holding his gavel like a weapon.
The doors to the chamber burst open, and a dozen guards rushed down the aisles, guns drawn. They took aim at the circling angel, at A’eiio, at the werewolf, and up at the frightening creatures in the gallery.
“NO!” shouted A’eiio. “DO NOT FIRE! ALBERT, DO NOT FIRE!” She commanded, calling the Sergeant at Arms by name. “IT’S ME! DEBORAH!”
The burly, balding man stared up at her, shocked at hearing a familiar voice emanating from this exotic, stunning creature.
“Senator Bright?” he managed to choke out. He lowered his pistol, and around the chamber, the other security men and women followed his lead.
A’eiio pivoted smoothly in midair and waved at Jack. “Send your article,” she instructed. Jack grabbed his computer and began to type out a new lead to his story:
“Today, the Senate experienced the revelation that our world has been host to numerous species of alien creatures formerly thought to be only myths. These include . . .”
She lowered herself down behind the podium, taking DeLucato’s hand. “Bill, it’s okay,” she said gently. “We’re not going to harm you. I need to talk.”
DeLucato stared down at the delicate hand holding his; at her slim, naked body; then up at her face, with its shimmering sapphire eyes. “Oh . . . uh . . . Senator Bright . . . or whatever—”
She smiled and turned to the stunned senators. “I am what you have called a fairy. In the chamber with me . . .”
She gestured at the werewolf who had once been Warren Lee, still standing imperiously on his desk, and up at the circling angel, the fairy, and the creatures in the gallery.
“. . . are other representatives of what you might recognize as mythical beings. But we are real. We have shared your planet with you for a thousand years. We are now revealing ourselves to you.
“Why?” DeLucato managed to ask.”
“We have determined that you are a terminal species.”
• • •
A’eiio paced the floor of her small senate office, her wings fluttering in anxiety. He was coming. She had taken the incredibly dangerous step of revealing the existence of Mythicals, and now he was coming.
She was also agitated by the tension of having just met with her staff. Most of them stood in stunned, open-mouthed silence, as she explained who—or rather what—she really was.
Angie, her press secretary, normally a composed young woman, began to weep uncontrollably. Alejandro, her chief of staff, a dapper, no-nonsense man, periodically took a healthy swig out of a liquor bottle he had retrieved from his desk.
“Look, this is going to be a tornado,” she had told them, gesturing at the television screen playing news footage showing her hovering before a horrified Senate. “You all decide what you want to do. Take your time. I’ll understand perfectly if you want to resign.”
They had filed silently out, but she heard an eruption of dismayed chatter in her outer office.
The talk faded, as the staff dispersed to their desks. After ten minutes, Jenny, her office manager, appeared in the doorway. Her wide-eyed staring at A’eiio portrayed her continuing consternation that what her boss of four years had transformed into.
“Uh . . . there’s a man to see you. I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but—”
Jenny was interrupted by the appearance of a tall, grim-faced older man with a head of thick, curly gray hair. “I hate these suits,” he said, walking past Jenny and into the room. “If you don’t mind . . .” He disrobed, touched his chest, and the flesh-suit sagged from his body.
“Oh, dear!” Exclaimed Jenny. “I just have to . . . I need to . . . . Oh, dear!” She fled the room, and the Warden finished shedding his flesh-suit, now standing before A’eiio as the tall, glowering fairy Warden who held her fate in his hands. He retrieved his control medallion from his jacket pocket and donned it. She stopped pacing and sat down, her knees weak, haunted by a vision of a bleak cell on a barren prison planet.
“What have you done?” he asked accusingly, towering over her. “This was not a decision for you to make.”
“You know this was the best step to take,” she said, placing her hands on her desk to steady herself. “I had to do it.”
“Well, this borders on insurrection, and you know the consequences. And you persuaded the others. You put them in danger. Of course, it’s up to their Wardens to decide what should be done with them.”
“Please ask their Wardens not to punish them. I persuaded them. It’s my fault.”
“I will not advocate for them. That is not appropriate. But I don’t think you realize what you have started.”
“I know what I’ve started.” Now her quavering voice took on a tone of defiance.
The Warden waved his hand, and a data screen materialized in midair. It showed an ornate paneled hall with rows of wizened men seated facing one another, some scrambling from their seats. An ogre stood stolidly in the middle, and a fairy circled overhead.
“You no doubt recognize this country’s hall of government. A fairy and an ogre revealed themselves there today.” He switched from scenes of one such imposing foreign government body after another, each showing various Mythicals panicking their occupants. “As you can see, the disobedience that you started has spread. Mythicals are revealing themselves all over the planet.”
Recovering from the shock, A’eiio found she no longer worried over her own fate. “Well, doesn’t it show that many of us question the wisdom of the Palliation? Let me at least tell the inhabitants what has been proposed. Let me try to help them avoid it.”
The Warden’s expression grew impassive, his face a mask, as he regarded her with cool detachment. Saying nothing, he waved his hand and the data screen disappeared.
“I will consult with the other Wardens. We will decide whether you may tell them. They will decide whether their exiles may participate. And I will decide whether you will be deported and imprisoned.”
• • •
Jack failed to suppress a cynical chuckle, as the standing ovation greeted his entrance into the sprawling, stark newsroom of the Capital Herald. He had departed just a week before to embarrassed silence, walking out the door carrying a pitiably small box of belongings.
As welcome as the applause was, it wasn’t loud because there wasn’t much of a crowd. Many of the desks in the regimented rows of low-walled cubicles were empty, and the reporters seemed to clap a little too heartily, almost desperately to make up for their reduced ranks.
Alan Roth, his editor, who had laid him off, approached smiling, and clapped him on the back. “Jack! What an amazing piece! It hit like lightning! Online page views skyrocketed!”
“Does this mean I’ve got my job back?”
Roth modulated his smile only slightly. “Of course. We wer
e terribly sad to lose you. But, you know, it was just a part of this terrible economy for news media.”
Lose me? Thought Jack. It sounds like I left on my own. Or you misplaced me. Like a set of car keys.
“Well, I’m glad to be back. We’ll have to talk about salary. This is probably the biggest story ever, and I’m on the inside. There’s much I haven’t yet written about.”
“Oh, certainly, of course, of course,” said Roth, as they walked toward his office. “But first, tell me the back story here.”
They sat in his office, while Jack described his ordeal from the first glimpse of A’eiio in the bedroom at the Congress of Nations headquarters; to his nightmarish encounter with the beasts in his own bedroom; to the drinking bout with the vampires; to the revelations in the Senate.
Roth sat back in his chair, nodding amiably, interjecting an occasional “Good.” And “Good stuff.”
But at the word “Ally,” he leaned forward, his expression darkening, his hands clasped together on his desk.
“You mean you’re actually in league with them, whatever their plans are?”
“I was forced to be. They implanted a termination chip in me. They know my location . . . they can track me, kill me at any time. Look, I’m telling you this in confidence. They have decided not to reveal the identity of Allies, for the Allies’ own protection.”
“Wow,” said Roth, but it was an expression of shock rather than amazement. He shook his head. “Jack, that means you’re not ours, you’re theirs. In fact, you might well turn out to be an adversary in all this . . . even an enemy.”
“Look, I stipulated in my agreement with them that I would be entirely independent. I would report what I saw as a journalist.”
“With a chip in your head that means they could take you out at any time? I don’t think so. At most, you’re now just another source. And a compromised one.”
“Alan, there is something going on . . . something they are up to . . . that I don’t understand. I’m willing to risk my life to find out. And I need your resources to track it down. Your investigative reporters, your clout.”
“Well, Jack, sorry, but we can’t do it,” said Roth.
Jack shook his head sadly. “Alan, this is a mistake. Something terrible is going to happen. I can feel it.” He turned and left Roth’s office, walking away yet again down the rows of cubicles to the puzzled stares of his former colleagues.
As A’eiio and the seven other Mythicals walked, stalked, and flew onto the stage of the National Sciences Academy auditorium, even the jaded reporters and television crews gasped in awe.
Seated in the front row, Jack was the only reporter with any semblance of calm. He smiled in sympathy at the stunned consternation of the other reporters. He had, indeed, been where they were now.
Standing before them beneath the auditorium’s dramatic geodesic dome of interlocking triangles was a menagerie of creatures that had, until today, been the stuff of dreams—or nightmares.
A’eiio knew how to quiet the crowd. With powerful beating of her diaphanous wings, she rose, hovering above the stage. Stunned silence fell; a barrage of camera flashes lit the hall; and television cameras zoomed in to broadcast the scene worldwide.
She settled back onto the stage. “I know this has been a shock,” she said. “I know you have many, many questions. Some will not be answered here, but they all will be answered in time. My fellow Mythicals will introduce themselves.”
One by one, the Mythicals gave their names and their species, to a continual buzz from the audience: Steve the troll, Robin the fairy, Mike the ogre, Wendy the angel, Ryan the elf, Vladimir the vampire. Finally came Warren Lee, free of his flesh-suit.
“I am Flaktuckmetang,” he declared, grinning, showing glistening fangs, at the reporters’ futile attempts to type the name into their laptops. “I am a werewolf. I am also Senator Warren F. Lee.”
A’eiio began to speak, but the werewolf gave her a dismissive wave. He folded his thick furry arms, almost seeming to relish what he was about to say.
“We are all exiles, sent to your planet as punishment for transgressions on our home worlds. As you have learned, our species have been here for perhaps a thousand of your years. But what you haven’t heard is what this experience has taught us about your species.”
A’eiio’s expression became grim, and the other Mythicals shook their heads in sad acceptance of what they knew would be said.
“You are a pathologically contradictory race. Your religions preach peace, but you fight horrific wars over those religions, killing millions. Many of your most prominent historical figures are warriors, tyrants, even mass murderers. Many of your signal technological achievements are those that enhance your ability to kill. You glorify murder in your entertainments. You obsess over it. Even my species, as warlike as our history, has not elevated slaughter to such a worshipful level.”
The werewolf began to pace the stage like a prowling animal, continuing his diatribe.
“You are devastating your home planet. You disregard the effects of the torrent of pollutants that you unleash into your air and water . . . the carbon dioxide into the air . . . the acid it is creating in your oceans. And you ignore the mass extinctions you are causing of species that have taken millions of years to evolve.”
The werewolf strode to the front of the stage, pausing, scanning the reporters, his eyes gleaming. “You are committing suicide. Our computer models predict that you are a terminal species.”
Shouts rose from the reporters, as they reacted to the declaration and clamored to ask questions.
Giving the werewolf a somber look, A’eiio took over. “But we want to work with you to avoid this tragedy,” she said. “We revealed ourselves so we could persuade you to prevent your own species’ demise through your governments’ action. We are all species that have succeeded. We have learned to live sustainably on our planets. We have avoided the very tragedies you are about to experience. Give us a chance to help you.”
“Will you answer our questions?” exclaimed one reporter.
“Yes, as best we can,” said A’eiio. “And I don’t presume to speak for any other species. So, each of my fellow Mythicals will meet with you elsewhere, to answer your questions and give their own viewpoint.”
With that, the creatures walked or flew from the stage, trailed by eager reporters, photographers, and video crews.
• • •
The elves spat out screechy-voiced epithets, as their spindly fingers skittered over the lighted controls to bring the wormhole sailing into a stationary position poised to orbit the planet. The wizened creatures hunched over the control panel outside the vacuum chamber that enclosed the wormhole and screwed up their small elf faces in displeasure and effort.
They hated releasing objects in orbit. It was no problem to accelerate the wormhole to match the incredible velocity required. The magnetic fields could propel the hole to just about any speed up to near the speed of light.
The really tricky, dangerous business was forcing a wormhole to maintain a curved orbital path. Holes had no mass, no inertia; and gravity did not affect them. So, the elves had to continually wrestle the controls to tweak the hole’s course to hold an orbit around the planet—to hover over the target continent.
Even more risky was trying to shove an object through a wormhole in orbit from one universe to another. The object, in this case a massive cylinder, would grow progressively less affected by the gravity on their side and more by the weightlessness of orbit. The elf pilots were acutely aware of past disasters, in which a cargo had been sliced in two by the infinitely sharp, transdimensional edges of the hole.
They also hated working for the werewolves on this odious project. But they had been threatened with being gnawed into bloody elfin parts. The threat was personified by impatiently growling werewolves looming over them.
Finally, they rid themselves of the werewolves by skrittering angrily that the exit had been flattened, and the beasts could n
ow depart to get on with the transfer.
One of the elf pilots gave the other an annoyed shake of the head, silently vowing to one another that once they finished the task and escaped the werewolves’ hold, they would complain to their elfin governing council. This would be the last time they would agree to aid deployment of this horrific weapon.
The werewolves began donning their spacesuits over their muscular bodies, slipping the helmets over their pointed ears and down over their thickly furred faces. They made the seals tight and checked their integrity.
They wheeled the metal cylinder over to the large airlock, opened its door and hauled it in. Two elves closed the door and made it fast. Elves didn’t allow any species to operate the airlock in space except them. A careless ogre had once left a stray bolt lodged in the airlock door, compromising its seal. Six elf engineers had been sucked through the door into the vacuum chamber, squirting as a stream of reddish paste into the chamber and through the wormhole.
Once the suited werewolves had hauled the cylinder through the airlock and through the outer door into the vacuum chamber, they paused, panting heavily in their suits, waiting for the signal. Floating before them was the wormhole, the shimmering globe that was a transdimensional portal into the void above the planet.
The werewolves circled around the hole until the planet rotated into sight, its sprawling surface an abstract image of blue, brown, and white. That surface rotated slowly below them until their target continent slid into sight. Then it stopped, as the elf pilots managed to propel the hole into a curve that would become a stationary orbit.
A squawking screech erupted over their headsets—the voices of the elf pilots demanding that they begin the transfer as quickly as possible. They heaved the cylinder into place beneath the hole, hefting it upward through a metal framework and through the shimmering globe. Even with all their muscle, they had trouble holding it steady, as it shifted back and forth, coming into the gravity-free clutches of outer space.
Then the cylinder was through the wormhole, floating weightless. The werewolves followed, climbing the framework’s ladder trailing their tethers, pushing off into space, grabbing handholds on the cylinder.
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