"No!" came the heartier return cry from many more voices now. Mark noticed that Shawn had looked away, apparently uncomfortable with the subject. But the Leader pressed on.
"Of course they did not. Who would choose to be an outcast? Who would choose to be called a dreg?" She shook her head with consummate sadness and distaste. "I tell you, my friends, that word is anathema to me." She looked up, solemnly presenting a new concept. "Let us show what a great society we are by never speaking it again. I urge human and Visitor alike to join me in laying prejudice and intolerance aside. I urge you to embrace our half-breeds even as I do. They are a great resource, for these vigorous offspring physically unite our two magnificent races." A low groundswell of applause had begun to build within the coliseum. "They are blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh." The Leader's voice grew in passion, shepherding the audience's growing response. "And they deserve to be equal partners with us. So please, I beg you . . . Will you let them be!"
The crowd roared its approval. Half-breeds around the world looked at each other in wonder, feeling a powerful new allegiance to this remarkable and caring Leader.
On the dais, the Leader soaked up the generosity of the multitude. She responded with humility and an appreciative bow. "From the depths of my heart, I thank you all." Again the applause continued for a long time. People of all races were entranced by this incredible female. How could they not be? She had made them feel at one with her and with each other.
As the Leader rose back up from her bow her tone darkened, growing more portentous. "I thank you, my friends. Particularly because we need the help of all our people to defeat a devious enemy. They are a willful race of warmongers descended from horrid insects. They are called the Zedti."
The tight ranks of Visitor Patrollers in the stadium hissed angrily. The Leader nodded her agreement. "Yes. My people know them well. We have witnessed firsthand the Zedti cunning, the Zedti lies, their total lack of honor, and the horrendous Zedti brutality." Her eyes slowly scanned the huge stadium, her words came echoing from the loudspeakers, "And now they are threatening Mother Earth."
The Leader heard tense whispering stir through the crowd. She confirmed it and built upon it. "Yes. Their advance scouts are already among us. They have united with Earth's criminal scientists, determined to destroy us all." She felt the crowd's unease increase and she fanned the flames. "Oh, yes. It's true. Let me give you proof. Just look at some of their nightmarish handiwork . . ." She pointed toward the huge screens positioned high around the arena. On those screens and on television screens across the planet appeared grisly images of the grotesque chrysalic husks to which some photogenic blood and gore had been artistically added for effect. Everyone watching, both in Candlestick Park and in their homes everywhere, gasped in shock.
The Leader spoke reverently, "These were our comrades, humans and Visitors who fought alongside one another to preserve our future." Then her voice grew more intensely challenging, "Shall they have died in vain?"
From a hundred thousand throats came shouts of "No! No!"
"Or"—the Leader's voice grew stronger still—"shall their martyrdom inspire and strengthen us?"
The crowd before her and all the Mothership captains on the dais behind her shouted affirmation. And still the Leader's voice intensified. "Shall we avenge their deaths, a thousand times over?" The positive cheers of outrage and determination swelled throughout the arena, but the Leader's voice boomed the loudest, "Shall we begin tonight?"
The massive crowd roared, "YES!"
Then families across the world watched as a small circular cage with vertical laser bars slowly rose up from the stage floor near the Leader. Like many watching, Emma drew a sharp breath when she saw the prisoner within. It was Bryke. She sat cross-legged on the cage floor, very composed. But it was clear to Martin and to Emma that the Zedti female had been badly brutalized. Sections of her blue-black, shiny skin were blistered from burns. The close-cropped curly black hair on her head had many bare patches where it had been scraped off and raw skin showed through, some of it oozing her yellow blood.
Diana had not known about this demonstration and glanced sharply at a smugly smiling Jeremy, who had obviously orchestrated it.
The Leader pointed at Bryke in the cage. "This is the beast who did these foul deeds. This is one of the demons from the despicable race known as the Zedti." The Leader pointed again at the close-up, frighteningly gory images of the husks. "These are just their first acts of terrorism against us. The Zedti do not cherish life as we do. They are aggressive, vicious, deadly."
The Leader's sincere eyes looked out across the thousands of faces in the dark arena before her and the billions of others she knew to be watching. "Be assured, my dear friends, that I would never put any one of you into harm's way unless there was a clear and present danger. But that is precisely what we are facing." Her words became measured and specific. "We have solid, irrefutable intelligence that the Zedti are creating new weapons—chemical, biological, and nuclear—that can cause even more mass destruction than those they already possess. We know for certain that they pose an imminent threat to all of us. We cannot have true peace and security in our homelands until the Zedti are destroyed. We must join together to launch a preemptive strike against them. And since their planet is heavy with water, Earth's oceans can be restored much sooner!"
The masses roared their approval.
Nathan heard their cheers as he guided his nearly invisible airbike past two Visitor fighters, which were making slow patrolling circles around the half-mile-wide coliseum. He eased in for a landing on the roof of the stadium, choosing its southwest side that put him slightly behind and to the left of the dais. He slung over his shoulder the three pulse rifles that he had charged to their maximum potency before he'd left the warehouse. Then he climbed off the bike and out of its stealth shield. He moved carefully across the dark metal roof toward a firing position.
In the Flagship Centcom at that moment, the Resistance's female Visitor spy, Lee, ran her hand through her short black hair, trying to hide the tension that was tightening her face. She wanted to remain nonchalant and not attract any undue notice from the other technicians who worked at the various consoles near her. She was watching the vid screens sending the transmission out to the world while monitoring the up-link feed from Marin County. Right next to her there was a much smaller screen from a security camera mounted inside the Marin control room. She kept her fingers near that particular monitor so she could turn it off instantly if any other Visitor approached. On the little screen she could see Margarita, Julie, and the others holding the Marin staff at bay and awaiting the right moment to interrupt the rally telecast. Lee knew that they were waiting for the assassination attempt to begin at Candlestick.
Lee had secretly repatched the outgoing circuits making them redundant six times over so that other technicians would have great difficulty in finding and cutting off the Resistance telecast once she began transmitting it.
But then a worried Willy eased in beside Lee, whispering, "Big trouble." He pointed at Margarita and Julie on the small screen. "We need to warn them."
Lee snatched up a communicator and keyed a switch on her console. "There, see?" Lee was pointing at the image from the Marin security camera and to a phone line that was blinking in that distant control room. One of the Marin Visitor techs reached for it, but a wary Margarita stopped him.
Willy agonized, whispering, "No, no, Margarita. Pick it up. Please." But the critical call blinked, unanswered, as Willy and Lee watched helplessly and the rally continued on the Centcom screens.
"To defeat the Zedti and protect humans and Visitors alike," the Leader was saying, "Team Visitor has created a powerful new biochemical weapon. It is harmless to Visitors and humans, but it can and will exterminate these Zedti vermin. Another triumph for our wonderful Team Visitor!" The crowd responded with healthy and appreciative applause. Then the commanding female smiled proudly. "To demonstrate it, please help me greet a
young person whose inspiring loyalty and dedication to our cause is unsurpassed. He is the youth who actually captured the brutal Zedti you see here. He is the first of our wonderful half-breeds to become a Teammate. Please welcome with me . . . Teammate Ted!"
Jeremy watched the great crowd applaud enthusiastically as the Leader went to the front of the dais and beckoned Ted up from the seat of honor Jeremy had arranged for him in front of the dais. The boy looked extremely nervous.
Ted had been excited at being a party to capturing the Zedti and pleased how his action had instantly elevated him among his fellow Teammates as he had always wanted. But the extraordinary attention of the crowd and the presence of the Leader had very much unsettled him. In spite of the Leader's eloquent words about half-breeds and about him personally, Ted felt that he had become something of a pawn in a grand drama, which was suddenly sweeping along so quickly that he didn't entirely comprehend where it might lead.
Sitting in the Centcom control room, Willy's stomach knotted painfully as he saw his son take the Leader's hand. Lee glanced at her friend sympathetically. She knew that Willy was feeling sickened by the sight, by Ted's betrayal of everything Willy and Harmy believed in so deeply.
In the midst of the Candlestick crowd, however, Debra Stein was elated and beaming. She shouted to all the Teammates around her, "He's my partner! Yeah! Go Ted!" Debra whistled and cheered along with the others.
The Leader, being an extremely keen student of psychology, discerned Ted's unease. She whispered to him, coaching fondly, "Wave to them, Ted, and watch what happens."
The teenager glanced into her deep blue eyes, then turned and raised his hand high in the Visitor salute. The crowd went wild, cheering madly for him. The Leader turned him in a slow circle, taking in the adoration of the entire audience. It was an Earth-shaking experience for the scaly-faced half-breed with mismatched eyes who all his life had been spat upon. As the roar of the crowd filled his scaly ears, elation and exaltation of oceanic proportions such as Ted had never imagined stirred and nearly overwhelmed his young soul. But something deep within Ted seemed to prevent him from entirely embracing it. His brow, which normally clenched tightly during times of anxiety, was strangely numb. His father's words whispered faintly to him: beware what you wish for.
Images of the grotesque husks had again appeared on the screens and when the Leader completed the circle with Ted her voice grew solemn as she called her audience's attention to them. "Those lifeless husks could be your family. They were gentle, living, breathing creatures just like you." Her voice rose powerfully again as she challenged the gathering, "Can we let this continue to happen?"
The crowd was roused, shouting, "No! No!"
The Leader grasped Ted's hand and pressed into it a small pistol. She spoke with a low but muscular voice that everyone could hear, "Teammate Ted, I am placing into your hand the means to render justice. Do you have the will?"
Ted looked uneasily at the spray weapon in his hand and then at Zen-like Bryke who was watching him from within the laser cage. He saw that her pink eyes were swollen from bludgeoning, but she was extremely calm.
On the top level of the stadium, Nathan had lain down into a firing position, his two additional weapons at the ready beside him. He brought the Leader's head into the crosshairs of his pulse weapon's vid sight as he murmured, "Say good-bye, bitch." He eased his finger onto the trigger, took a breath, and held it. He was squeezing the trigger as a fiery electrical pulse burst slammed into his side. It blew him onto his back and disabled his rifle. He looked up dazedly to see a Visitor fighter hovering silently a few yards behind him with its cannons aimed at him. The faint light of the fighter's control panel illuminated the pilot gazing at him with a cobra's smile. It was Gina.
On the dais, the Leader guided Ted closer to Bryke, who was completely at peace, until a Patroller unexpectedly prodded her sharply from behind with a laser spear. Bryke's head instinctively jerked around 180 degrees, the proboscis tubes lashed out from her nose, her arms hinged inhumanly backward to grasp at her assailant.
The assembled thousands gasped at her startling alienness and shouted angry encouragement to Ted. But he hesitated. The Leader felt his reluctance and smoothly placed her hand atop Ted's, aiming the weapon for him. Her finger pressed onto his, forcing him to spray the orange mist directly into the Zedti's face.
Bryke immediately seized up, unable to breathe. Her skin began to crack with thin, spiderwebbing fractures. Yellow blood oozed out from the hairline fissures. She turned and looked directly into Ted's wide, frightened eyes. Veins in her throat stood out under intense, mortal stress. He saw that her agony was extreme beyond measure, coursing through her in surges of splintered glass and icy fire, yet not the faintest sound emerged from the noble creature. Ted stared into her eyes as Bryke gazed back at him with consummate grace. Then her body shuddered horribly once, and remaining immovably upright, she died. Her sightless eyes remained open. They stared through Ted and into infinity.
Like millions of others, a huge wall screen on a San Francisco street had carried the image of Bryke's death. Among the many watching it was Ayden. He was on the rooftop nearby where he had landed after being blown from the airbike. His stoic, amber eyes stared at Bryke's lifeless body. Ayden brought his hands up in front of him and interlaced his fingers tightly.
On the dais, the Visitor Leader raised Ted's hand as though he were a champion, demanding an answer from the crowd, "And do you have the will?"
Her frenzied followers roared, "YES!"
Diana leaned close to Jeremy. "Nicely arranged." He nodded at her haughtily, then Diana continued. "It was a wonderful prologue for my part of the show."
In the control room in Marin County, Julie was glancing worriedly at Margarita. "Something's gone wrong with Ayden and Nathan."
Margarita nodded. "Let's broadcast now."
Julie sat at the console and readied the disk to play.
Ted had been guided to one side as the Leader rode the swelling wave of enthusiasm. "Now look at the screens, my friends, because history is being made at this moment: the worldwide leadership of the criminal conspiracy who called themselves the Resistance—are being arrested!"
On the stadium screens and on vid screens around the world Margarita, Julie, and their team at the Marin Communications link were seen being suddenly surrounded by Patrollers who sprang from hiding within the Marin control room. The Resistance vid disk that Julie was about to broadcast with the weight of the Secretary-General's revelations was pulled from the machine and destroyed.
Standing at the side of the dais, Ted saw his mother Harmy on one of the screens. She was with the others in custody outside the Resistance warehouse headquarters.
AMONG THE BILLIONS VIEWING THE ARRESTS ON HOME SCREENS Stella Stein watched with conflicted emotions while her son Danny was outright angry. In the Sci Section, Charles Elgin and his father were very worried. Charles glanced over and realized that Mary had never rejoined them. He called to her, "Mary?"
THE DOOR TO GARY LAVINE'S APARTMENT FLEW OPEN AS HE CAME running in, breathless and fearful of why his lover had summoned him so urgently, "Eric? Eric! What is it?"
The Visitor doctor appeared and embraced him, holding on tightly. Gary was confused, then he saw on their TV that his Resistance compatriots were being captured. "Oh, Jesus," he murmured, his heart fluttering. "You saved my life again."
But not the lives of his comrades, Gary painfully saw. Eric held him and Gary returned the embrace, but each of them was suffering gravely mixed emotions and confusion of loyalties.
IN THE DARK SKY NEAR THE MARIN COMMUNICATIONS LINK KAYTA had slowed her airbike to a hover. She had engaged the bike's stealth mode, but was concerned about being discovered because of possible microwave interference to her stealth shield from the fifty-foot dish antenna below. Along with Ruby and Mike, Kayta was looking down with great distress at the scene on the hilltop beneath them.
They could see Margarita, Julie, Street-C, and the othe
rs being herded into a Patrol shuttle with their hands on their heads. Ruby's bravado crumbled. She overflowed with tears of grief that trailed down her scaly cheeks as she whimpered, "Mom! No! Not Momma . . ." She wanted to shout out in anger, but Mike held her tightly as she sobbed.
WILLY AND LEE SAT DISTRAUGHT AND HELPLESS IN THE FLAGSHIP Centcom as they watched other images from around the world of international Resistance leaders and their compatriots being arrested. Young Jon had edged his custodial unit into the Centcom to be nearer to Willy and Lee. All the other Visitor technicians in the control center were cheering and clapping each other on the back, so Willy pasted on a false smile as he said to Lee, "It'll be much worse than '99."
Lee pretended to smile back at him and Jon, though she was so near tears she could hardly speak, "All of our best. All of our brightest. All of . . ." Her voice broke.
Gentle Willy completed her thought, "All of our friends."
CHARLES ELGIN STOOD OUTSIDE THE OLD FIBERBOARD DOOR TO their bathroom. He was knocking urgently on it. "Mary? Mary? You've got to see what's happened!" Getting no response he opened the door. "It's terrible it's—"
The bathroom was steamy and suffused with the fragrance of flowers. Charles saw that Mary was lying in the bathtub, unconscious. The water was bloodred.
THE THOUSANDS AT CANDLESTICK PARK HAD BEEN EXPRESSING THEIR approval boisterously. Martin, from his seat just in front of the Candlestick dais, had been watching and expecting at any moment to be arrested himself. But so far it had not happened. On the dais he saw Mark watching Emma and saw that she looked pale and stricken. Martin saw that Ted's mismatched eyes were riveted on the lifeless Bryke.
The Leader had been enjoying the crowd's enthusiasm. She flashed a glance of approval at a triumphant Diana, then she turned to the assemblage and began building toward her conclusion. "Tonight our first mission has been accomplished! The criminal Resistance has been finally and completely crushed! They have been swept aside because it is our responsibility—our destiny—as the Chosen Hyper-power—to make the cosmos safe and secure for all the generations to come!"
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