by Tanya Allan
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She had no make up to spoil, as even if the aliens had been able to manufacture the stuff, she had no idea how to apply it; besides, she was stunning without any.
The police vehicle turned down the M4 spur towards the airport, pulling up the ramp just prior to the tunnel into the central terminal area.
“I’m going to ask the local police what to do,” Rob said, as they entered the secure police station yard at the top of the ramp.
He parked in the yard.
“Wait a moment, I’ll just ask in their control room,” he said, leaving Colin with a miserable Michelle.
Colin, feeling slightly uncomfortable at being left alone with the tall attractive girl, tried some small talk to pass the time.
“So, Michelle, what do you do?”
“I vas a student, boot has not enough money to study. Zis man, he say I go to England und verk and zey pay me enough to be rich.”
“Bastards,” said Colin, with some feeling.
“Do you have any money?” he asked.
“Da, a little. I has twenty American dollars,” she said, omitting the fact that there was $50,000 under a rock in a woodland near the motorway embankment not far from where she was dropped off. Mind you, it was all counterfeit.
“That won’t get you far,” he said.
Rob returned.
“Right. I spoke to a DS who was interested in her story. He knows a bit about the job that is at court at the moment and wants to talk to her. He says he’ll contact immigration, and will take her from here.”
Michelle took hold of her bag, and Colin opened the door for her. Only when he got out and stood next to her did he realise just how tall she was. She had taken her jacket off and her damp blouse clung to her breasts, displaying her large nipples.
Colin swallowed and averted his eyes. Michelle smiled and licked her lips.
“Stank you. You haf saved me,” she said and kissed the already embarrassed officer on the lips. She enjoyed the feeling of power she had, but felt a little sorry for the obviously uncomfortable officer.
They took her into the custody block, where a plain-clothes officer introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Bill Richardson. The traffic officers reluctantly took their leave, returning to their motorway patrol.
Bill looked at the bedraggled, yet spectacularly attractive girl, and was drawn under her spell. Within moments, she was out of the custody block and sitting in an interview room with a hot cup of coffee in her hand.
She went through her deliberately vague story and the officer took copious notes.
She told him how her parents were dead and she had no family left. She had no home, as everything she possessed had been paid to a man who was going to get her a very well paid job in England. Bill wrote down everything she said. After a while, another woman in plain clothes arrived, upon whom Michelle saw a circular badge on a fine chain round her neck. She was an Immigration Officer.
“Hello, Michelle Czakan is it?” she asked.
“Da.”
“I am Helen McMorran, I’m an Immigration Officer. Do you have a passport?”
She handed over her passport, which the woman examined closely.
The woman then broke into very good Russian; not fluent, but good.
Michelle answered in the same language, fluently with a marked Ukrainian accent.
The woman went through all the expected questions, so Michelle answered them all with ease. She realised that she could actually read the Immigration Officer’s mind, so she knew the questions before the officer asked them; therefore she also knew which answers she should give. While the Immigration officer was interviewing her, the police officer left, obviously to check her story.
“I was brought here under false pretences, but would like to claim asylum. If I go back to Ukraine, the men will kill me for running away,” she told the woman.
The woman had the unenviable task of the initial screening of asylum seekers, so could enter a suitable recommendation on each application. She took Michelle’s photograph with a Polaroid camera and then took her fingerprints. Michelle wondered whether these prints really would be different from her old body’s prints, but thought that there was little risk of a crosscheck being run, particularly as she was now a different gender in any case.
When Helen finally left Michelle and submitted her forms, she had written on the bottom of the form: ‘This subject fulfils the criteria for asylum, I recommend asylum be granted to this subject, she is temporarily landed with permission to undertake employment.’ She even stamped the passport, giving Michelle permission to enter the UK with a work permit.
She gave Michelle a card with an address near Croydon, which was a reception centre where temporary accommodation and social security details would be arranged.
The police officer came back. He was frustrated because the girl had given him all the right information, but not quite enough to work with. The green truck on Hungarian plates was sufficiently vague to be of little value.
The girl was patiently sitting in the room, wearing her still damp clothes.
“Do you have a change of clothes?” Bill asked.
“Da, but I do not vant to poot my vet cothings in zer case.”
“When did you last have a shower or eat a meal?”
She smiled and shrugged, so Bill felt dreadfully sorry for her.
“Look, we have a drying room here, why don’t you change, and I’ll buy you some food?” he said.
Bill had never bought an illegal immigrant a meal in his life, but she was so helpless and lost that his heart went out to her. He went into the custody block and returned with a towel, some shampoo, soap and a disposable toothbrush. He gave them to Michelle and told her to follow him.
He took Michelle to the ladies locker room and waited while she showered and changed. A couple of female officers entered and were surprised to see the very tall and attractive Michelle changing in their locker room. The detective had to explain, so one girl called Sarah Ross asked Michelle if she was all right.
In the end, she allowed Michelle to ‘borrow’ some of her mascara for her eyelashes, and helped her apply some lipstick and eye shadow.
The girl appeared wearing her leather trousers, a clean white blouse, and leather jacket. She had gone in looking like a displaced asylum seeker and came out looking like a film star. Her hair was dry and brushed, framing her face beautifully. The little makeup accentuated her amazing eyes and gorgeous lips. Bill was rendered speechless literally.
He decided against taking her into the police canteen, instead driving the short distance into the central terminal area, taking her to a restaurant in Terminal One.
Bill was a tall, thin man, who was often embarrassed by his six foot four inches. However, now he stretched himself to his full height, as the girl was a good inch taller than he was, in her high heels. Her generous mane of honey blonde hair made her seem even taller. Bill noticed that every male eye in the restaurant watched each step she took.
She walked like a model on a catwalk and, to her own surprise, she had no trouble coping with the high heels and the unfamiliar attachments to her chest. It was if she had always been a girl.
She was well aware of what she looked like, so her spirit soared. Never in her last life did she ever experience such a feeling of control or power over anyone, yet here she felt she could walk up to a complete stranger, make any demand she wished and, in all probability, he would undertake it on her behalf happily.
Every now and again, she caught her reflection in a shop window or mirror. The very tall and very attractive girl smiled back at her with a curious glint in her blue eyes. She felt joy bubble up in her throat and a small laugh almost escaped. She managed to change it into a cough at the last moment.
Michelle was starving, as the aliens had fed her sufficient vitamins and nutrients to keep her sustained, but she had yet to have a decent meal.
She ordered a steak and all the trimmings, demolishing
it so fast that Bill was yet again astounded at his glamorous companion.
He joined her in a dessert, watching fascinated as an apple pie disappeared in a matter of seconds.
“So, I understand that the Immigration officer has landed you in the country?”
“Da, it ees good, no?”
He smiled. He loved her accent and her broken English. He was aware that his wife would not approve of the thoughts that found their way into his head, as he struggled with the overt sexuality that the girl exuded so naturally. To see her was to desire her, and she knew it.
“What will you do?”
Michelle shrugged, as she genuinely had no plans at all.
“Did the immigration officer give you a card?”
“Da, boot I do not vant charity. I vill get a job.”
Bill smiled.
“You need money to survive until then. You only have $20, right?”
“Da, it is all I haf.”
Bill then did something that he had never done before, and would never repeat. He opened his wallet, took out £50 and passed it to her.
“Look, it isn’t much, but it will be enough for you to get a bus ticket to Croydon and some food until the social security payments come through. You will need to register as you will need a National Insurance number in order to work legitimately.”
Michelle had exerted no mental pressure to cause this man to do this, and she realised that he was just a good man who felt sorry for her. She felt a pang of guilt as she was tricking him all the time. However, she took the money, leaned over and gently kissed his cheek.
“Tank you, Beel. I pay you back ven I can.”
He smiled, as he was pretty sure he would never see the money again.
He paid the bill and they left. He drove her back to the police station, to find that her clothes were now more or less dry. She packed them in her small case. Then he took her to the bus station. She got out of the car. He stood there, feeling awkward. She smiled and looked at him.
“Where will you go?” he asked.
“Eet is nor your problem, Beel. You haf done a lot for me. I vill never forget you.”
He smiled self-consciously. “Goodbye Michelle, and good luck,” he said.
She kissed his cheek, turned and walked to the ticket office.
4.
Lt. Colonel Jim Robertson was frustrated. He returned from the Pentagon in a foul mood, as the joint chiefs’ budget committee had cut his funding by 25%. He stared out of his office window at the Nevada mountains, trying to rationalise his thoughts.
He had been in Project Gopher since its conception. He had been a Captain in intelligence then, and as it had grown, so had he.
Ever since the first discovery in Arizona in 1980, the primary concern was secrecy. He had been the second officer to attend, and had been utterly amazed at what had literally been unearthed.
A team of scientists from UCLA were in the desert, testing a new design of seismograph in order to assist in the prediction of earthquakes. L.A. and the Californian fault was a real concern, so money was available to improve the early detection and hopefully the warning systems for the west coast area.
Professor Frome and his team were camped out in a remote area not that far from Phoenix, and were setting a series of small charges at different depths to test the accuracy and sensitivity of their equipment.
They had been operating unmolested for three weeks, and were planning a final huge charge to conclude the experiment. In order to test the equipment fully, the last charge was a random one, the equivalent of a conventional ton of H.E.. Loaded onto a remotely controlled vehicle, the charge was set to explode at some time over the next 4 hours, and anywhere within the declared area.
The buggy set off, reaching speeds of around six miles an hour. The small onboard random timer was unpredictable, and the team only knew that it would detonate sometime in the next four hours, and anywhere inside the programmed area.
When it finally exploded, some two hours and twelve minutes later, the equipment worked perfectly and they managed to pinpoint exactly the point of detonation, and the severity of the shock.
Two technicians were deputed to go and clear up the wreckage, as that had been a condition of their permit to use the area.
Richard Cummings and Walt Barrie arrived in their Jeep to find an enormous crater.
They were perplexed, as they expected a crater, but not as deep or irregular as the one they now looked at.
Then they noticed the workings or cave formations, and the bodies. The bodies of several, non-human creatures, which now littered the desert.
Richard was a Lieutenant in the Air Force reserve, so immediately called it in. Captain Jim Robertson sent a team of security Police, and followed in a chopper within the hour.
The area was sealed, declared a national emergency area. The scientists were all sent back to California, and Richard and Walt were ‘retained’ at the site for some time.
They recovered two hundred bodies, and an extensive underground community was unearthed. None were found alive, yet several members of personnel reported weird experiences.
Jim himself actually experienced a ‘black moment’, when he was at the site and the engineers were excavating a newly discovered tunnel. One minute he was watching their progress, and the next he was staring at a blank wall of earth. The engineers were all wandering about having forgotten what they had been doing.
Jim walked rapidly away, conscious only of a feeling that someone, or something was manipulating his mind. He had all the service personnel interviewed, and nearly everyone had experienced similar ‘black moments’.
The site was finally declared empty, as the bodies were recovered and placed into sealed metal coffins. Somehow, they all vanished whilst being shipped to Base X by truck. The trucks arrived with all the seals were intact, all coffins were still in the trucks, but each one was empty. The vehicles had not stopped, as their tachographs showed continual movement from the minute they set off.
Jim was convinced that there were more of the aliens left alive, and their mental powers were such that they could manipulate humans in order to prevent discovery.
He completed his report and his Colonel agreed. Funding was authorised from the highest level to continue the investigation.
Jim had managed to acquire three highly qualified para-psychologists who were experts in the field of E.S.P., and they were trying to recruit personnel whose telepathic ability was sufficiently strong for them to at least attempt to discover a little of their illusive quarry.
The last sighting was at the end of the 80’s, and they had nothing since. Until now, and the facemask from New Mexico he now held in his possession. It was too little, too late, as the committee was not impressed, for in this era of value for money, plans were afoot for a possible Manned Mars Mission, so Project Gopher was no longer in favour.
Kyle knocked on the open door.
“Come in Kyle. They actually did it,” Jim said.
“You thought they might. How bad?”
“A quarter.”
“You thought they might have taken a half.”
“Yeah, but still, that’s over a million bucks.”
“We need some results.”
“True. Look, have you a map of the New Mexico desert?”
“Sure, why?”
“Well, if there was a ship, why was it there? I think they could have been looking for a site to dig in another colony.”
“It’s possible,” said Kyle as he extracted a large map of the area. They laid it out across the desk.
“Here’s the highway, and here was where we found the dead cop. The tracks of the 4x4 came from a point about a quarter mile upstream, so let’s say the cop first saw the one in the water here. That means he was swept away from a point anywhere up from here, to say here,” Jim said, pointing at each location on the map with his index finger.
“Send in a team to examine this area, and I want satellite and aerial pictures, both
infra-red and conventional photographs.”
Kyle nodded and left. Jim stared at the map.
“Where are you, you little grey bastards?” he said aloud.
Several thousand miles to the east, an overworked clerk was trying vainly to clear a backlog of forms.
“Michelle Czakan?” he shouted.
A very tall girl approached the desk. He remembered seeing her when she had first arrived some ten days previously. He had instantly been attracted to her then, and apart from being the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, she was always polite and respectful; something that most of the asylum seekers were most definitely not. As a result, he had sent her forms off very quickly, with a pink ‘URGENT’ slip attached. Somehow, they returned in just a few days; this was unheard of, but he was pleased for her.
He smiled, so Michelle rewarded him with a lovely smile in return.
“Your papers have been processed. Here is your National Insurance Card, and your National Health card. You need to report to a police station where you end up living, and register with them. We need to have an address where we can contact you, and, if approved where we can send your papers relating to your permit to stay in the country. Your application for naturalisation has been received, so hopefully you will get confirmation through in due course. You will then be issued with a UK passport.”
Michelle signed the forms, so he gave her the cards. They had supplied her with some money, and she had been able to buy some essentials. Some of these were feminine hygiene products, as a few days ago an unexpected, unwelcome, yet natural little visitor had visited her, which indicated that she was a normal, fertile female.
She detested the reception centre, but acknowledged the necessity of being as normal as possible. Several other Ukrainians were here, but she tended to avoid everyone. However, they had sought her out, and actually she found them no risk to her at all. They were from Kiev, so knew little about the area she claimed to be from. Her accent was perfect, so raised no suspicions. Indeed, they only reinforced her story as they accepted her for who she purported to be.
Her English ‘improved’, and she deliberately joined an English class to make her improvement appear natural. It also allowed her to pass the time, as there was little to do except watch TV, play table tennis or read. They were free to come and go, yet with little money, there was little point. The local people were antagonistic towards the foreigners in any case, so it was better just to wait and hope the bureaucracy wasn’t too long.
