Recoil

by David Sherman

  “By the time your complaint reaches my superiors and their reply comes back here, my mission will have been completed and my Marines and I will no longer be here. And you will look like a fool, because my superiors will back me.” It looked like Daly merely flicked his fingers, but he did it with enough force to stagger Miner. He turned his back on the furious chairman and said to the drivers, “Let me know if he does anything to you.”

  Miner wrapped himself in as much dignity as he could and stalked away, snarling over his shoulder, “You’re done here, mister. You’ll be sorry that you ever crossed me, Ensign!”

  The two drivers waited until their boss was no longer looking back, then grinned.

  “The son of a bitch deserved a chewing out,” one said.

  “But you bought yourself some trouble,” the other added.

  Daly shook his head. “He doesn’t know what trouble is until he goes up against a few good Marines.”

  Before either driver could respond, Daly heard a voice on his helmet comm and raised the helmet to his head to hear.

  “Boss, we found something,” Sergeant Williams said. “Look to your eight o’clock. Use your magnifier.”

  Daly put on his helmet and looked slightly to the rear of his left through the magnifier screen. He saw Williams waving an arm at him from a couple of hundred meters beyond the razed area. “On my way,” he said. He circled the destroyed area so as not to disturb anything for the constabulary’s forensics people.

  Two Hundred Meters West of the Johnson Homestead

  “What do you have, Sergeant?”

  “They traveled by aircraft,” Sergeant Williams said. He pointed at marks on the ground.

  Daly squatted to get an up close look at one of the faint marks on the hard ground, sighted along them to see how far they went. They were about sixty meters long, traces left by skids rather than by wheels. Toward one end there was blown debris in the kind of pattern thrown out by breaking engines; scorch marks in the other direction were those of thrusters launching an aircraft. The twin skid marks were roughly six meters apart.

  “How long is the aircraft?” Daly asked.

  “Hard to say,” Williams answered, “but look here.” He led the way to the central area of the skid marks. “The marks are very slightly deeper from here to there, like something sat there for a while.” He used a laser pointer to pick out “here” and “there”; they were almost distinct, about fifteen meters apart.

  Daly considered the marks for a moment, then asked, “What kind of aircraft is six meters by fifteen?”

  Williams shook his head; he’d been wondering the same thing.

  “Or it could be wider or narrower, depending on where the skids are under it. And the skids probably aren’t the full length of the aircraft, so it could be twenty meters long or even longer.” He checked his comp. It didn’t have data on an aircraft with skids six meters apart and fifteen long. “What about footprints?” he asked.

  Williams showed him what his squad had found, which wasn’t much. The alluvial plain was hard enough that it didn’t take footprints very easily. What traces there were seemed to be of smallish feet. “Women, or adolescents?” the squad leader wondered aloud. His squad hadn’t found any prints farther from the homestead than the midpoint of the deeper skid traces, or any beyond a path that indicated whoever made them went directly to the homestead and back again. Nor had they found any that had a high probability of having been made by the missing homesteaders. There weren’t enough prints, or any distinct enough, to make an educated guess as to how many individuals there might have been in the raiding party. For that matter, it was only an assumption that the marks had been made by whoever had destroyed the Johnson homestead, and made seventeen people disappear—but that was a reasonable assumption.

  Daly got on his comm and called Sergeant Kindy. His squad hadn’t yet found anything to the east of the razed area.

  “Keep looking,” Daly ordered.

  The Marines kept searching, but didn’t find anything else by the time the forensics team finished its work and was ready to return to Sky City.

  “We’ll head back now too,” Daly decided. “I want to examine satellite, radar, and any other surveillance data available for this location over the past several days. Then we’ll come back with better equipment to see what more we can learn about these tracks.”

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  FIFTEEN

  Government Center, Confederation of Human Worlds, Fargo, Earth

  Every visitor to any government office in Fargo was required first to pass through an ultra-sophisticated biomedical scanning system. The individual was identified by fingerprints and retinal and voice scans which were compared to readings already on file in the vast database maintained on all citizens over the age of twelve. If for some reason that information was not already in the system, as sometimes happened with people born and raised on distant worlds, it joined the billions of others already on file there and the Ministry of Health and Human Services was duly notified and in time the planetary administrator on the unrecorded person’s home world was goosed to do a better job imprinting citizens’ personal data.

  But the main purpose of the system was for security. Each individual was subjected to several kinds of scans and minute quantities of moisture were collected from the person’s hands when palm prints were taken. This was subjected to instant blood chemistry analysis. Bone and tissue scans determined if a person might be carrying an implant of any kind. Spies with miniaturized transmitting and recording devices had been detected in that way, as well as would-be assassins. In one notorious case, a well-endowed woman carried a powerful bomb embedded in her breasts. It detonated in the screening station, killing her and everyone else within a radius of ten meters.

  The woman had been on her way to testify before a congressional committee investigating a well-known criminal organization. After that incident guards did the screening from behind bombproof barriers.

  Blood chemistry analysis was done to determine if visitors had any mind-altering drugs in their system that could make them a danger to other persons, or otherwise affect their conduct or embarrass politicians. Wags often joked that none of the members of Congress would ever notice any difference.

  One of the recent visitors to pass through the system was Jimmy Jasper. He had been admitted with a clean bill of health to visit President Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant.

  The results of his scans were provided routinely to several government ministries, among them the Ministry of Justice.

  Office of the Attorney General, Confederation of Human Worlds, Fargo

  Attorney General Huygens Long sat at his desk, scanning the lab analysis on Jimmy Jasper. “Gobbledegook. What’s it all mean, J.B.?” he asked, waving the report at his chief of forensics, Dr. Hans Jeroboam.

  J.B. leaned forward and gestured at the report with a long index finger. “He’s on something, AG.”

  “Well, what? There’s a question mark in the column where all the other stuff, natural, harmless stuff, is identified. What’s he on?”

  “That question mark is there because we don’t know what it is or what it does.” J.B. shrugged and pulled at his short beard. “It does not match any known substance, natural or manufactured. There is nothing in our formulary like it.”

  “Hmmm. Anything else?”

  “Look at the MRI. It’s the right-hand column on the sheet.”

  Long frowned. “Okay. So what?”

  “Enlarged thyroid lobes, AG, that’s what.”

  “So? Plenty of people have them. Nothing unusual there. Is there? J.B., stop playing these games with me. Come right out and tell me what you are driving at.”

  “We’re getting there, AG,” J.B. said, grinning, “and no, enlarged thyroids are not that unusual. But upon closer examination we determined Jasper’s lobes had been surgically altered. Something was grafted to the gland, AG. Surgically implanted.” J.B. grinned again, as if that explained everything.<
br />
  “But our agent on Kingdom, I’ve read his report. Jasper’s never been in the hospital, never been sick a day in his life, J.B.!”

  “Right. Now, attached to the lab analysis are two printouts we took off a trid of Mr. Jasper preaching the Gospel to the faithful. Take a look at them.”

  Long flipped over the lab report. Attached were several full-color printouts, the first two of Jimmy Jasper’s neck and throat. Someone had circled two tiny scars over the trachea. “Holy jumpin’ Jehosephat,” Long whispered. “Never been in the hospital, never been sick a day in his life. J.B., the Skinks, they did this.” He tapped the printout with a finger.

  “Yep. I’ll bet that substance in his blood is being released by those implants. We don’t know what it does, but I’ll also bet it blocks his memory of whatever it was the aliens did to him while he was in captivity, and it also may be helping him ‘see Jesus,’ if you get my drift.” J.B. sat back triumphantly.

  Long glanced at the other printouts. “Who’s this? Looks like a woman.”

  “Sally Consolador. She has the same marks.”

  “So she does! They’ve both been fixed.” Long rubbed his hands. “We’re on to something here, J.B. Now, I’ve had people reviewing the reports coming back from the survey teams sent to Kingdom to interview the people taken by the Skinks and later released. They haven’t been subjected to any biomedical scanning, but none has much memory of what happened while he was a prisoner, and they all are acting normal, or as normal as anyone on that world ever acts. Except for the other preachers, like Jasper, who’ve shown up on some of the other member worlds, and we haven’t been able to get to all of them yet.”

  “Call them in and have them scanned.”

  “No, no, J.B., we start doing that and Senator Maxim’ll be standing up in the Congress and accusing us of religious persecution. I have to tread lightly here.”

  J.B. nodded. “I understand. Can’t have you playing Pontius Pilate to his Messiah, can we?”

  Long laughed and patted his stomach. “Some already are calling me ‘Paunchy Pilot.’ But fuck anyone who can’t take a joke. We get the goods on this guy, we’ll go to the president and arrest him. Can’t crucify him though. That’s gone out of style.”

  “Seriously, AG, you know some people are already comparing Jasper to the Messiah, some of them believe he is the Messiah and that the Second Coming is upon us.”

  “That would sure solve all our problems,” Long answered archly.

  “Seriously, AG, we’ve got a real problem on our hands with this guy. If this is the doing of the Skinks, they’ve really figured out a way to fuck us over but good. He’s got to be stopped before too many more people buy into this Messiah stuff.”

  Long nodded. He was silent for a moment, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on his desk. “But the president ordered everyone taken by the Skinks to be interviewed. We don’t have anything on this Sally Whatshername, Consolador, Jasper’s assistant. She’s not in our database either. Those Kingdomites never cooperated with us in getting their people’s vital statistics into the system. But that has turned out to be a good thing, J.B.” He grinned. “I’m going to get her in here for that interview; good excuse to run her through the scanner, see what’s floating around in her bloodstream. I want you to sit in on the interview with me. If she has the same alterations as her mentor, all these preachers will probably have them too.” He looked at the printouts of Sally’s throat. “Nice neck on this girl. But why have some of the abductees been treated like this and not the others, J.B.?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it didn’t take on some, maybe the candidates weren’t susceptible to the drug, maybe they felt they didn’t need to convert everyone they took. Only the Skinks know the reason for that. I suspect all they wanted from most of those prisoners was information about the human species, and they selected a few likely specimens out of all those people for infiltration. And you know, plenty of the people on Kingdom who were taken have never come back. Maybe the Skinks think they’re doctors and bury their mistakes,” he said, chuckling. “However you cut it, AG, our Jimmy Jasper is a damned traitor; they all are.”

  “Well, J.B., maybe not. Maybe the poor bastard doesn’t even know what he’s doing.”

  Senator Maxim’s Villa, Outskirts of Fargo

  “What shall I do, master?” Sally asked Jasper. She was referring to the summons issued for her appearance at the Ministry of Justice to undergo an interview. Jimmy had recently begun to insist that his assistants and acolytes refer to him as “master.”

  “Child, thou must render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” Jimmy smiled, laying a hand on her shoulder. He fixed her with his hypnotic, compelling eyes, something he had only recently started doing, as if an inner light had begun to burn inside him that had not been there before. She had to blink to get away from that gaze. “Go now, woman, and prepare thyself. Upon your return, thou shalt accompany me into the city this holy night, where I shall preach to twelve learned men whom my disciple, Luke, will have gathered to hear me.” Luke was the Confederation’s powerful Senator Maxim.

  Sally had begun to have her doubts about Jimmy’s ministry of late, and she was beginning to fear him. He had not yet come out and said to anyone, even her, that he thought he was the Messiah, but he had started acting like it, and many of his followers had started talking as if the Second Coming was already upon them. Worst of all, the daymares, the frightening visions, had started occurring with much more frequency and vividness. The faces of her tormentors in those visions were becoming clearer, and she was horrified that they were the visages of the devils whom men called “Skinks,” the creatures that had ravaged her home world. In her visions, they were not angels, and they were hurting her, putting things into her, doing terrible things to her. She was terrified that one day the visions would not go away and she would find herself sucked down into the bowels of hell.

  “Then I shall prepare, master.” She bowed in resignation. Jimmy said nothing, just stood, regarding her with a beatific, all-knowing smile. She turned and rapidly left the room, leaving Jimmy staring after her. Her heart skipped a beat. She realized that he knew what was happening to her, knew what the visions meant, knew everything about her. He knew that her faith in him was slipping as if it had been foreordained.

  Getting into the landcar the Ministry of Justice had sent to convey Sally to her interview was like breathing fresh air. She sat back and closed her eyes as she was driven away from the villa. The farther she got from Jimmy Jasper the better she felt. She looked about her as they entered Fargo, at the soaring buildings, the crowds teeming in the streets, all the brightly lit shops and stores, the happy crowds vibrant with life. Clearly, it was not the Sodom Jimmy kept calling it; Fargo was a great metropolis, a thriving, dynamic city full of normal human beings going about their normal human business, enjoying the fruits of their honest labor.

  Sally covered her face with a hand. What is happening to me? she asked herself. What has happened to me? Why am I being punished like this? Back on Kingdom, in the small town where she’d been raised, where she’d spent her whole life until she had been taken, Sally Consolador had been a happy, carefree girl, a believer, yes, but not a zealot. She wept silently behind her hand.

  Ministry of Justice

  Passing through the biomedical scanner proved to be a simple, noninvasive process. Sally was asked to place her hand on a pad, look into a camera, and state her name. She then stepped into a very ordinary-looking doorway, was asked to stand still for a moment, and then a smiling female guard walked around the barrier, gave her a visitor’s pass, and escorted her through the corridors of the Ministry of Justice to Huygens Long’s office.

  Two men rose to greet her as she was ushered in. “Good morning, Miss Consolador,” a man with a heavy paunch greeted her, coming forward to take her hand. “I am Huygens Long, the attorney general. Call me Hugh. Please have a seat. This gentleman here is Dr. Jeroboam; we all call him J.B. because nobody can pronounc
e his name correctly.” The fat man chuckled. He had pleasant laugh lines around his eyes and his hand was warm and dry and held hers firmly, reassuringly.

  “I am very pleased to meet you, miss,” J.B. said. He gently brushed his lips across the back of Sally’s hand. He had long, tapering fingers with big knuckles, the hands of a man who used them in his work. He held her hand gently, like a precious porcelain. His lips brushed its back ever so lightly. To her he seemed an elegant, old-fashioned gentleman, and she found herself enormously flattered.

  “Are you any relation to the king who caused Israel to sin?” Sally blurted the question out inadvertently and then grinned as her face turned red with embarrassment at her forwardness. She surprised herself with the remark because it was the first attempt at humor she had made since returning from—them.

  Jeroboam started and looked intently at Sally for a moment, then he too smiled. “In First Kings, somewhere, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir, 1 Kings 14:16. ‘And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.’ ”

  “You do know your Bible.” J.B. smiled. “Please have a seat.”

  “Refreshments, Miss Consolador?” Long asked, rhetorically because he’d already ordered coffee. “You do drink coffee, miss?”

  “No! Oh, yes! Yes, I would like some, sir.”

  They sat around a low coffee table in comfortable chairs, almost like friends having a chat. They talked for over an hour.

  The longer she sat there the more comfortable Sally Consolador grew in their presence. It was the first time since leaving Kingdom that she had felt such ease and pleasure in talking, even though they kept asking her questions about her abduction. She tried, unsuccessfully, to skirt around the visions she’d been having, but both Long and Dr. Jeroboam sensed her resistance.

  At one point they were interrupted by an aide who laid a computer printout on Mr. Long’s desk. He glanced at it and smiled at Sally. “Are you ready for a refill?” Long gestured at Sally’s coffee cup.