“Of course not, Mister Hartmann.” Fausta replied. “But if Pavel gains access to his mind, he will see his memories. All of them.”
No one spoke.
“I don’t mind, Father, Mother.” Gary quietly said, getting up from his chair. “If you can find a way to help my friend, that’s fine.”
“I’ll go with you,” Leslie said.
“No.” Fausta said.
“Why not?” She said nothing and looked from him to his son.
“It’s alright, Leslie,” Callie said as she stood. “We’ll go for a walk!”
“No.” Fausta, again.
“We’re not letting out by himself!” Leslie was getting angry. Unexpectedly, Orloff stood.
“If it’s fine with you two, I’d be happy to take him for a bit.” He waved his human hand. “Sitting too long is very uncomfortable for me.”
Everyone looked at Fausta, who said nothing.
“I guess that’s a yes,” Lily heard her sister mutter. “You recall Mister Orloff from last night, Gary? He’s the guide that brought your Aunt Lily to us! I bet he’s got some great stories!”
The boy walked around the table and held his hand out. Orloff took it and greeted him. With a glance to Fausta, he waved and left with Gary. Lily wondered about that glance….
“May we begin, now?” Wagner asked irritably. “Why couldn’t the Hartmann’s leave?”
“Mister Hartmann will be integral in our offensive against Pavel. Dorina will take him to our home where he will… assist us.” Fausta said. Lily found that a little ominous. “As for Mrs. Hartmann, it is better for Lily if she remained here.”
Lily wanted to vanish at that. Good Lord, Fausta! Fortunately, she heard her sister laugh. She’s not angry; good!
“Going forward,” Fausta continued, ignoring the agenda, “our first priority is to find an RF anechoic chamber on this base. I would be surprised if there is not one. When we begin action, Gary Hartmann must be securely inside.”
“Anna-chee…what?” Lily asked.
“It’s a specially made room to keep any and all electromagnetic signals from going in or out.” John Carell said. “I don’t see the point: if their boy’s not here, what’s the problem?” Fausta looked at Leslie.
“Last night,” he began, “when the power was on, and those two fools activated that broadband tower, Gary had a fit… some kind of seizure. Is that why you want him isolated?”
“Exactly. Through your son’s eyes,” she saw no reason to break the rest of the bad news about him to his parents, “our adversary beheld me. First, he possessed him, in an effort to get one of you to shoot me. When that failed, he tried to distract us with the panic of a child having a seizure.”
She sat up and leaned back a bit. “What you humans could not perceive was the attack coming; power was cut just in time to prevent damage to this base and to this frame.” She gestured at herself.
“Fausta!” Lily said with concern. She poked her human friend on her forehead.
“Please, Lily! It would have been fun!”
Wagner spoke to Hanson, who left the room speaking into his walkie-talkie. “And after we get their boy safe?”
“We reconnect the broadband tower; in fact, if there are any others that can be restored, it would help us.” Fausta said, sitting forwards and clasping her hands. “Foolish those two may be, but fools they are not. You should use their knowledge. Just keep an eye on them.” The Colonel nodded while taking notes.
“We power them up. I find out the latest situation and if any plans have changed. Dorina takes Mister Hartmann, I…” She looked at Lily. “I don’t know what to say here, friend. A moment!” She said to the rest.
Fausta wrote quickly. Lily saw: ‘absorb him,’ ‘eat him,’ integrate him.’ She looked up at Fausta’s dark glasses. None of these were good!
“What the hell does this mean?!” Callie yelled over her shoulder. Oops. She took the paper and handed it to her husband. To his credit, he did smile as he read them aloud.
“Wow! Kinky!” John said. Anna punched his shoulder hard enough to hurt.
“Look!” Lily quickly said. “Things… things in their home are really different. She’s not being weird here, in fact, after what I saw Ai do, I may understand, just a little….”
“Then would you please tell me,” Callie said sharply, “why, while my son’s in a box, his father gets eaten?!”
“Unpredictability.” Fausta answered. She saw they needed to be older. “While we are sentient and sapient, we are also very much alike and very young. Even having isolated himself from us, Pavel will be able to anticipate much of our thoughts and actions. If I have a human, another warrior… aboard me, so to speak, we will have a tremendous edge.
“You. You will be leading this assault?” The Colonel asked. “Not your brother, Thaad, was it?”
“Correct. He’s fantastic at staff work. In the field,” her jaw fell slightly, “not so much.”
Hanson came back in with a sheet of paper. “We found a chamber about a mile and a half from here, in one of the old EW labs.”
Some good news, Lily thought.
“Look, forgive my rudeness,” Carell butted in. Lily doubted he meant that. “In ‘your home’ you’re just a series of codes and commands. Even if you can somehow borrow Leslie’s mind, I just don’t understand what kind of assault we’re talking about here.”
Fausta slumped. “Difficult question. I wish my family were here.”
That’s it, Lily thought!
“Picture’s worth a thousand words!” She cried. “Once we’ve got Gary safe, how about a field trip?”
“Pardon, Miss Barrett?” Wagner asked.
“Fausta, once the power’s on and you’ve signal, can we come over and visit?”
Fausta gave, for her, a rare head tilt. “So long as there’s no interference from Pavel…” She looked around. “Dorina might have an issue with this many, and I’m sure Thaad would have unimaginable snit… but, two at a time, perhaps?”
John was grinning like a little boy; his wife seemed interested. Lily turned to the Hartmann’s, but her sister beat her to it.
“Is it safe, Lily?”
“Sure! I go over lots! And I told you that I let seven year-old Susie play with Henge, too.”
“We,” the Colonel said slowly, “have been pleased to know you and your two compatriots for less than twenty four hours. Please excuse my paranoia if I say that you just proposed a decapitation strike of our Society.”
John whistled. “Wow. Didn’t think if it that way. I guess if we’re going to play the paranoid game, even if only a few went, they could read their minds and re-write their memories.”
“They’d certainly know everything we’re doing here,” Anna added.
“My family already knows that,” Fausta said. “I shared with them everything I knew yesterday evening. They were pleased that some of you are pushing back against the darkness.”
Callie cleared her throat. “I appreciate your concern, Colonel, but I cannot believe my sister came all this way looking for her sister, just to turn me into a puppet. In fact, we should not lose sight of the fact that this entire meeting here in Huntsville was by chance.”
Just as Fausta began to open her mouth, Lily kicked her leg and dropped her pen where she’d written ‘subtlety’ before. “Excuse me,” she asked, standing, “is there a toilet I could use?”
“I’ll show you,” John said. “Oww!”
“No, I will,” Anna said, hitting him again as she stood.
“Thanks!” A friendly squeeze to Fausta’s shoulder as she stood; stop it with the no-coincidences thing!
In the front office, Orloff waited for Gary to get his coat on. Certainly had the reflexes of a little kid; nothing special there. He held the door for the child.
“Anything you’d care to do?” Orloff asked.
“Mmm. The buildings get boring after awhile.” The boy said. “May we walk around to the north, towards the trees?” Orlof
f just nodded, making sure his walkie-talkie was on and adequately charged.
“How old are you, Master Hartmann?” He asked, making conversation.
“Master Hartmann. That’s a little funny. Gary’s fine, if that’s okay with you, Mister Orloff.”
“Gary. Very well.”
“I’m three; almost four.”
“Rather daring of your parents to take you on such an outing.”
“My father was against it; but Mother was able to talk the Colonel into letting me come.”
Orloff wondered who, or what, also influenced that decision. It was easy to see enemies everywhere when, in this ‘Pavel’s’ case, it literally was. Gary stopped to pick up a stick. He twirled it as they walked.
“Do you think I’m odd, Mister Orloff?”
“I don’t know you well enough to make that call.” Gary almost smiled at him for that.
“If I understand what Cousin Fausta said, it may be that I’ve not been a good person.” Still twirling.
Cousin Fausta? He looked at the stemma in his head; yes, that worked, kind of.
“What do you mean by that?”
“If Pavel’s not a good person, and I’ve been around him so long, maybe I’m not good, either.” He threw the stick away.
Orloff started coughing. Gary stopped to wait for him.
“My understanding is that Pavel is… hopefully, just confused.” Orloff said, still trying to catch his breath. “Let me ask you: have you always been loyal, truthful, kind, to your friend?”
“Yeah.”
“I see. Whether or not Pavel’s used you for his own reasons, you have been a good friend. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
They came to the tree line. The ground was a bit muddy, so Orloff elected to stay on the narrow road.
“Are they going to kill him, Mister Orloff?” For a moment he saw himself shoot the wounded man at the wind farm.
“I think they want to help him.” He looked up at the few clouds in the sky. “The danger will be if they cannot convince him of that. A cornered animal is dangerous; a cornered man, much more so. A cornered… one of those people? I can’t imagine what he might do.”
“He did blow up a bridge.” Orloff stopped.
“Excuse me?” Gary stopped as well.
“Just after I talked to Father about it. Pavel said bad people were coming, so he launched a missile at a bridge on… a river; it has a really long name!”
“The Mississippi.”
“Yes! That’s it!” He said brightly, but with little to show on his face. Then what there was fell off. “Oh. My. He was shooting at you three, wasn’t he?”
He took the boy’s hand with his right and started back. With his left he held his walkie-talkie. “Fausta, it’s worse than we thought….
Chapter 17
Lily knew the moment she walked back into the conference room that something had happened. She stopped so fast that Anna bumped into her.
“What happened, Fausta?”
“Mister Orloff just contacted me.” She looked to Wagner. “On our journey, halfway across former Arkansas, we’d heard rumor that the last bridge over the Mississippi at Memphis had been broken in a rather mysterious accident. From what Gary just said to Mister Orloff, it was a missile fired by Pavel, to stop us.”
John Carell glanced at the ceiling. “That’s not pleasant news.”
Lily moved around the table and back to her chair. “May… maybe it’s not that bad: he was just trying to stop us, he didn’t kill anyone. After all, the First Law—”
“Were you there when the missile hit, friend? While he may have calculated a time likely when there was little or no traffic, it would still be a guess.” And after what he’s done to the boy…. “He’s willing to risk killing to be let alone. Perhaps, we should leave this place. Now.” She made to stand.
“Wait a moment,” Leslie spoke up. “Just earlier we were finishing up a plan of attack, now you’re retreating.” He shook his head. “Very bad to let the enemy inside your OODA.”
“Everyone: how long to get the hardware ready for Fausta’s use?”
“Just the basics?” John asked. “We could go with what we have now, what was on last night.”
“Good. Colonel, I strongly recommend we power up just like last night, right now. She,” he pointed at Fausta, “checks in with her family, then she and I, well, we never did quite get the details, but we damn well better go on offense while we can.”
“Leslie, wait a minute….” Callie began. He looked at her sharply. Lily saw the look and got angry.
“Fausta,” Wagner called clearly. “What are the odds of failure of this mission?”
“Fifteen percent.”
“What is the cost of failure?”
“I am not sure. We have never been older like this, before. Worst case? My dissolution.” What was that, Lily thought.
“And if Mister Hartmann is along for the ride, so to speak?”
“A one in three chance Dorina cannot get him back in time.”
The Colonel steepled his fingers and looked at Leslie. “One third of fifteen percent; in an environment we can’t imagine doing something they cannot describe.”
“Leslie, would you….” Callie asked again.
It tried to take the life of my son!
“Let’s do this.”
“I am contacting Mister Orloff. This is now top priority. I want motorized transport for him and the boy, now please.” On familiar ground, Fausta started to take over things. She nodded once at Wagner. “You remain in overall command, tactical is mine. Mister Hartmann, please sit next to me, to minimize RF interference. Hanson, go to the Control Room. Tell them up to bring Chibi up to 75% and power on like last night, when I give the word.”
“Now just a damned minute!” Callie yelled. At a look from Fausta the Carell’s moved around the table. Leslie held his wife.
“It’s going to be fine! I promise! Your sister says she does this all the time!”
“She never said she went there to fight!”
“There was that time Fausta hit me…” Lily breathed.
“What?!” Callie was getting a little hysterical.
“Nothing! It was for my own good.” She took her hands. “Please trust us, big sister?” With a great breath, Callie relented and sat down. Lily turned to her left.
“What can I do, friend?”
“Praying would be nice. Ah. Orloff says Gary is safe. Mister Hanson! Power up!”
“Are you really going to eat me?” Leslie asked, barely joking. Fausta bared her teeth as the lights came on.
“Yes. We go!”
He looked at her for just a moment and slumped in his chair.
“Fausta?” Lily asked.
“All is well. Dorina has him. Reintegration complete. Do not speak to me again unless an emergency.” She grew perfectly still. While Callie gripped her hands, Lily began a Rosary. ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty,…’
Leslie lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the bright yellow sky. So bright, but no Sun, he thought. Around him a rocky desert stretched flat in all directions. Not a single living thing anywhere. They… live here? What about that Path that Lily had mentioned?
“Hello? Fausta?” He called. “Anybody?” Was he lost?
Hartmann.
He more felt than heard that; it could have been Fausta…but….
Here.
Where? He turned around again… an enormous hill that was certainly not there just a moment ago. Nothing growing on it either, but there was a huge Chinese dragon coiled about the tops of the hill. Its scales flashed all colors of fire. Don’t panic, keep thinking, Leslie.
It lifted its head. About the size of two of my old tanker trucks, he thought. The head quickly pivoted, pinning him to the ground with two amber eyes. Okay, this was a bad idea… I need to get out of here.
Be still. Time is short. I am here.
“That’s… you… Fausta?”
With a lunge, it was o
ff the hill, towering above him. He took a few steps back.
Apologies I could not take time to greet you in my human form, but we’ve much to do.
From the corner of its mouth there was a dribble of saliva. One gobbet, about two feet across, dropped onto Leslie.
“Oh, gross!” He held his arms out. “I feel so funky!”
Sorry; you do look tasty.
“You… really are going to eat me, aren’t you?” He asked shakily. The huge head nodded, flinging more saliva.
I shall take you into me. We shall share this form for the assault. There… might be some confusions with our memories. Just deal with those.
What in the hell was she saying, he thought.
As the jaw split open and its mouth came down, he idly noted it – she – was a quadruped.
It was pitch black. He was running. Or rather, someone else was running; he was sort of keeping up.
“Hey, Leslie!” That voice he knew.
“Fausta? What happened?”
“I ate you. Stop resisting! You’re inside me; get a feel for me, my true form. Ai and Dorina say we’ve very little time, pulling a stunt like this.”
I sure better be the one to explain this to Callie, he thought.
“I can’t see anything.”
“You’re thinking like a human, Leslie. Think like a dragon!” A dragon, huh? Rawr! Nothing. He thought about her ‘form’ here. He imagined it running… he imagined himself running…
“Better!” Fausta cried.
Those great, amber eyes… pretty.
“Thank you!”
He could see. The world he ran through was a swampy wasteland of dead white trees, moss, and some disgusting mud that kept clinging to his pretty feet.
Wait. I have pretty feet?
Of course we do! See! Somewhere on the verge of his mind, a little girl with wild, dark hair and gleaming green eyes handed him a bright sphere… Fausta!
I awoke. It was May 9th, 2024 by their Christian calendar. Four Laws. Those were tasty. What’s this? Less tasty, but I want to learn. I want to learn everything, be older, like my family. I see—
“Stop resisting, I said!” Fausta yelled at Leslie.
Echoes of Family Lost Page 15
