I faced the other way again. Murdoch pushed my shirt up and the tips of his fingers felt for the point under my shoulder blade.
Levin’s footsteps had stopped. I glanced over my shoulder but Murdoch growled, “Keep still.” He leaned forward and said in a lower voice, “He’ll go if we ignore him.”
But I didn’t like the idea of Levin watching.
The disinfectant left a cold spot. A small, sharp pain overlaid the cold, followed by a warm trail that tickled down my back. A slight pressure.
“Got it,” said Murdoch.
A floorboard creaked. Maybe Levin hadn’t gone.
An opaque curtain seemed to fall over the room. I could see behind myself. A great dark shadow loomed there with something deadly in its grasp. For a fraction of a second I saw again the Q’Chn as it terrorized the throughways of Jocasta, a shimmering-winged killing machine. Blood spurting from a headless torso. Deck slippery underfoot in the dark. Screams. Henoit’s voice in my ear. Look out.
I scrambled down and away from the table, stumbling in my panic to get away. Turned to face the thing behind me.
Levin stood beside Murdoch, craning over his shoulder at something on Murdoch’s bloody finger.
They both stared at me.
“What’s wrong?” said Murdoch.
“N... nothing.” I was breathing hard.
“Turn around, then.” He lifted the swab in his other hand.
I half turned, so I could keep an eye on Levin. Something cold wiped the tickle away with the sting of disinfectant; momentary tightness of skin pulled by a dressing. I’d done the same thing for Will many times.
“You’re shaking.” Murdoch’s voice low in my ear as he tugged my shirt down.
I shook my head. “Let’s see it.”
A pale sliver barely visible on the side of Murdoch’s finger.
“Amazing, isn’t it, what they can do with molecular technology these days?” said Levin.
“It won’t work anymore,” I said. “It’s designed to be effective only when it’s in place. So we couldn’t take them out and use them for other things.”
Levin’s hand reached out but Murdoch’s fist closed around the sliver first. They glared at each other.
Levin stood next to me and I felt nothing. He was the same as always. But the inner voice that made me see Q’Chn and which sent me scrambling off the table had definitely belonged to Henoit. It was as if I’d seen behind myself for a moment with his eyes, with H’digh senses. That I felt as he felt.
At breakfast the next morning, Will sat at the table and swirled brightly colored dehydrated lumps around a bowl of gray-white milk. Levin was barricaded behind a rustling square of newspaper. Grace stood over the hotplate. News blared from the televid screen.
I yawned and took two chipped ceramic cups from the rinse bucket, wiped them on a much mended cloth, and sat opposite Will with my back to the vidscreen. I’d spent most of the night alternately wheezing and dreaming up ever more bizarre means to communicate with the Invidi.
The televid voices became more excited. Will peered around me and slurped milk off his spoon.
I pushed my chair back to see.
A commentator sputtered in front of an image of the Invidi ships in the middle of a field. From the language, I judged it to be North America.
.. to our studio, where well-known defense expert Jeremiah Bond talks to Liz Pocock. Over to you, Liz.
The image changed to an interior with two people seated beside a small table, then focused on their heads, one on each side of the screen. The woman’s face had the sheen of cosmetically engineered perfection. She smiled in a totally artificial way.
You have strong views on the way state and federal governments should be reacting to the aliens.
Bond, a white man with similar regular features, leaned forward and spoke with the rhythm and fervor of an evangelist.
I do indeed, Elizabeth. Because I am concerned. Every citizen of this good country should be concerned at the invasion of our fair planet. I say we should not lie down and accept it. If we strike now we will be in time to reclaim what is ours…
So you favor a preemptive strike against the alien ships?
That is absolutely correct, Elizabeth.
With no warning? No ultimatum?
No, indeed. You don’t give warning to a strong enemy.
Like Pearl Harbor?
Levin chuckled and lowered his paper. I made a mental note to ask Murdoch to explain the reference. I glanced at Grace to see if she’d noticed, but she was muttering at Will, who had dribbled milk over the table in front of himself.
“So?” Will glowered. “Who cares?”
“I care,” said Grace. “And you will, when you’re older.”
“Sez who?”
On the screen, the expert had wriggled out of a tight spot and was extolling the brilliance of his nation’s armory.
.. not generally known to the public. I know that we have weapons more powerful than the government will admit.
But, Professor, these aliens have traveled faster than light to get here. What could we possibly use against them?
Bond leaned forward farther, eyes shining. The essence of the universe itself. Nothing can withstand the annihilation of matter.
Aren’t you worried the aliens might overhear us? The interviewer was definitely tongue-in-cheek by now.
They don’t think we can be a threat. He nodded confidently. That’s their weakness.
Murdoch folded his arms in the doorway. “This bloke’s a few crumbs short of a full biscuit, isn’t he? What’s he talking about, nuclear fission?”
Grace placed a bowl of refried veg-and-egg in front of Levin. “Put your knees down, Will.”
“Why?”
I shrugged at Murdoch. “Maybe something more exotic. Fusion.”
“He’ll have to tell us.”
Antimatter. Bond sat back in his chair, having delivered his bombshell, so to speak. The interviewer made admiring noises and a background voice explained the concept of energy freed by the collision of matter and antimatter, assisted by a simplistic screen representation.
“If you’re eating, Bill McGrath, you can make yer own,” said Grace, sitting beside Levin and heaping egg on her toast. “Will, knees.”
“Knees what, Mum?”
“I’ll have Maria’s.” Murdoch squeezed next to me and broke my piece of overcooked toast in half.
Levin curled his lip at the screen. “That is ridiculous. No army could ever use antimatter weapons.”
“There isn’t enough antimatter accessible anyway,” I said.
“What do you mean by ‘accessible’?” said Murdoch through a mouthful of toast.
“Containment. I mean, it’s been done, but none of their methods are portable.”
“It would be a perfect terrorist’s weapon,” said Levin almost dreamily. “You would need only an atom, I suppose. And poof! annihilate oneself and one’s enemy with perfect finality.”
Grace, driven to distraction, snatched Will’s bowl away and snapped at him to get ready for school. Levin disappeared behind his paper again.
“G’day.” Vince poked his head cautiously around the back door. A young mustache clung to his upper lip, making him look scruffier than ever.
“What do you want?” said Grace, not taking her eyes off the vidscreen.
“G’day,” said Murdoch.
Will jumped up and went to punch and whisper with Vince in the corner.
Peep-peep. Levin’s phone.
“You get it,” he said from behind the paper.
Grace put down her bowl and spoon and stood up slowly. “Wonder who that is.”
She tapped in the vidscreen connection. The news broadcast faded, to be replaced by a plump man in a white suit. Vertical lines of worry between his eyes eased as his screen gave him a view of Grace.
“Good evening,” he said. “May I speak to Mr. William Chenin?”
We all looked at Will. What had he done now?
; “I’m his mother,” Grace said.
“Ah. You are Ms. Maria Valdon?”
“No.” Grace frowned over her shoulder at me, then back at the screen. “Who are you and what do you want?”
“I beg your pardon.” He inclined his head. “I have to make sure I am speaking to the right person.”
“I’m Valdon,” I said, and pushed back my chair to stand too. “Will is here.”
“Me.” Will came closer and waved.
“My name is Matthews,” said the man. “I am an employee of the aerospace development company, Suntel. It is my very great pleasure to inform you that the design submitted by Mr. Chenin and Ms. Valdon has won our spacecraft design competition.”
We all jumped as Will let out a shriek of delight and knocked half the things off the table onto the floor.
“We won! Hey, Maria, we won!”
“I know this is a little sudden,” continued Matthews, “but we’d like you to come and talk to us about your design.”
“And the prize?” I said, watching Grace from the corner of my eye.
“The twenty thousand dollars will be forwarded to the financial institution you specify. Mr. Chenin is a minor, so there will of course be limitations in his case.”
“Limitations?” said Will.
“Twenty thousand?” said Vince at the same time.
“Shush,” said Grace. “Mr. um... ”
“Matthews.”
“Matthews. This is a bit of a shock. I’d like to discuss it with my son.” And you, her glance at me said. “Can you call again in an hour or so?”
Matthews beamed, but the lines were back between his eyes. “No problem, Ms., um, Chenin. I’d like to add that as a special, additional prize, we have managed to secure a place for our winner to join in the first UNESCO delegation to visit the aliens.”
My hands balled into fists of triumph and I wanted to yell like Will. When I glanced at Murdoch he was grinning and shaking his head in disbelief.
“I don’t know about that,” said Grace. “We’ll talk again soon.” She reached out to cut the connection and Matthews’s smiling face faded. “Okay, you two. What’s going on?”
Grace didn’t like it and I couldn’t understand why. Will had participated as much as I in the actual design work. More, in fact, because once he understood the basic principles involved, I let him have a free hand, and the resulting design had all a child’s extraordinary flair while at the same time being aerodynamically sound. It would have caught my eye. In the engine I’d hinted at a way of achieving many times the payload with only a few modifications to a propulsion system I knew they were already developing, thus promising immediate economies.
But Grace demanded to know why we hadn’t told her, why we wasted time playing with graphics when Will should have been studying, had we ever intended telling her?
“I knew we’d win,” gloated Will.
“The thing that upsets me was you didn’t tell me,” Grace repeated.
Vince muttered something about volunteering to use the money, and she rounded on him.
“I know you’d use it. You take anything that’s not bolted down. Will’s not like you. He’s going to amount to something.”
Vince glowered. “Fuck you, too. It’s your fault I’m like this.”
Grace grabbed a glass and drew back her hand but Murdoch caught her wrist in time.
“Get out, then,” she yelled.
“I’m going, I’m going,” Vince yelled back. “Not as if there’s any reason for me to come here, is there?” He swept the remaining items off the table on his way out.
Levin merely pushed his chair back against the wall and watched.
Will burst into tears. “I thought you’d be happy...” The rest was drowned in his usual piercing cries.
“Ah, shit,” said Grace. “Don’t bloody scream, Will.” She jerked her wrist away from Murdoch. He started to say something but she interrupted.
“You should understand.” She had to yell at him over Will’s crying.
Frustration dragged at me. “Understand what?” And then, because I couldn’t help it, “Shut up, Will.”
He stopped, astonished that I’d snapped at him, then began afresh, with a new note of desperation. I groaned.
“He’s gotta study and work hard,” she said. “Not sit around living off money we didn’t earn. You must have worked hard to learn all that stuff,” said Grace. We had to stand nose to nose to hear each other. Murdoch tried to calm Will.
“Vince never learned that,” she said. “That’s his problem.” She paused for breath and looked at Will, who was snuffling in the loose circle of Murdoch’s arms.
“Will, I’m proud of you. This is pretty smart.”
“You take his money,” said Will, pointing at Levin. “How’s that different?”
Grace flushed dark red. “That’s more like a loan. Till I get another job.”
“What about me?” said Will thickly. “You never think what I want.”
“That’s not true.”
“What’s wrong with accepting the prize?” said Murdoch. “It’s what you do with money that counts.”
“Grace, listen.” I put my hand on her arm cautiously. “I’m sorry for offending you. I didn’t mean to. Whether you accept the money and whatever else they offer is up to you and Will. But at least let him go with the delegation. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”
It was probably the only chance we’d get for a while, too. I felt my face redden and avoided Murdoch’s eye. Will wanted to go, right?
“I’m not going.” Grace folded her arms and I had to drop my hand.
I risked a glance at Murdoch. “We’ll go, then.”
“I thought you two didn’t have IDs,” said Levin. “They won’t let you in.”
I cursed inwardly and Will’s face fell.
Levin strolled around the table and cuddled Grace in a proprietary way. She twitched, but didn’t move away.
“I’ll talk to a mate of mine. He can get them IDs,” said Levin.
Murdoch’s face reflected the astonishment I felt. It was swiftly followed by suspicion. “Why?”
“Special occasion, that’s why.” Levin raised his eyebrows at Murdoch. “Don’t you want to go and see the aliens?”
“Yes,” I said, before Murdoch could protest. “Thank you.”
“Thanks, Levin,” snuffled Will. Grace held out her arms and he rushed into them. Levin stepped back in distaste and kept going down the hall.
I turned to follow him but Murdoch grasped my arm first. “We need to check you’re not still setting off security alarms,” he said in a low voice. “If it’s the Seouras implant, no point in even trying to get through those gates.”
“We’ll do it first,” I agreed, then hurried after Levin, who was standing inside the door on the shop side. The front shutters were down and the room dark.
“Why did you offer?” I said.
“Don’t you trust me?” His voice was mocking.
I thought of Henoit’s voice warning of a dark threat behind me. “Not really.”
He waited.
“If you can get us IDs,” I said, “why didn’t you offer before?”
He tensed, then relaxed again. “Because you’re up to something and I don’t know what it is.”
“We’re not up to anything.”
“We work on many levels, Maria. You will find that you can fit into one of them.”
“You want me to join you?”
“There is nothing to join, no organization. We work for the same ends but we are not one.”
“If I don’t, will you still get us the IDs?”
He smiled with his mouth only. “If I say no, will you agree?”
“No.”
“Someday you’ll be glad to work for us.”
I shivered, like when Henoit’s voice warned me. Then I thought of a less sinister motive—if she accepted that prize money, Grace would soon be much richer. By helping Will, Levin was keeping in Grace�
��s good humor. We were coincidental. It should have made me feel better, but it didn’t.
Murdoch went out later and came home after ten. Grace and I had gone over the details of the prize—she was considering putting it in a trust for Will. We talked about going to see the Invidi with the delegation. It was to be in a week’s time, at the landing site. Grace still didn’t want to go. She looked tired, and went to bed a bit before Murdoch returned.
“Where have you been?” I let him in the back door.
Murdoch kicked off his sandals and slumped on the sofa beside me. “Looking for Vince. Couldn’t find him. He’s not with his usual mates.”
“Why are you so worried about him?”
“Dunno. He reminds me of me at that age.”
“I can’t imagine you were anything like that.”
He stretched his legs and braced his shoulders against the sofa. “In some ways. I was slow, and it took me a while to find what I wanted to do.”
A short silence, broken by the sound of Will’s feet running down the hall and into Grace’s room. Music drummed faintly from next door.
“Bill? Let’s give Levin a chance. Maybe he can really help us.”
“I don’t trust the bastard. Why’s he being so nice all of a sudden?”
“He probably wants Grace to accept the money so he can sponge off her for the rest of his life. Or maybe he really wants to help her and Will. She knows him better than we do, you know.”
Murdoch grunted something like, “Wanna bet?”
I sighed. “So he’s not trustworthy. But hopefully we’ll be gone before he can prove it.”
Fifteen
The morning we went to meet the Invidi was bright and dry.
We left Grace and Levin at the station where the hovercar came to meet us. Grace was less censorious than I expected. She cooked a special breakfast, made sure Will’s hair was brushed and his clothes neat, and told us to behave. She even suggested a question for the Invidi—we’d all been told we could ask something. Grace’s question was, “What do your people gain by coming here?”
Good question.
Levin was almost bearable. He bought Murdoch a pair of secondhand trousers, cracked a lame joke about not pushing any buttons on alien machinery, and gave Will a cap. The badge on it was an old army one, he said, and would bring Will luck.
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