“I don't think Bryce is going to enjoy delivering this bit of intelligence to the President.” McNickles said, but there was no sympathy in his voice. Bryce was the kind of career military man who caused unnecessary wars. He had tunnel-vision and could only see things from one point of view.
“Bark like a dog.” Sonafi said. Bryce barked, to quiet snickers heard around the room.
“You will become complacent.” I told him, and then I released him. His eyes cleared and he looked around confused.
“What happened?”
“You were given a demonstration of telepathic control.” Special Services Sector Branch Supervisor Brian McNichols said. “I have video. I'll be sure you have a copy for the President as soon as this meeting is adjourned.” Then he turned to us, and almost discreetly; “You have a way to defeat this control?”
“A vote will have to be taken.” Sonafi spoke up, giving me a look I understood all too well.
“I understand.” McNichols said. “It is a big decision. In the meantime, we have some of your personal property we wish to return. That and our heartfelt gratitude for your cooperation. I hope that this meeting has been as informative for you as it has been for us.”
“It's been informative.” Sonafi agreed, but she had something else on her mind. “You mentioned returning certain items of our personal property?” She asked.
“Of course.” McNichols said. “Every single item will be returned to you. To be honest, we had not even begun the process of cataloging all of it. They are still packed the way they were removed. But where will they be delivered?”
Here Sonafi looked at me and I knew what she was thinking without having to read her mind. “It will do as well as any place.” I said. I meant the attack we would try to mount against the Others. Where we would try to infect one and send it back, a secret double-agent.
“All right.” Sonafi said and then to Brian McNichols; “You may return it whence you found it. It is from there that we will try to launch our attack against the Others.”
Our first peace talks had come to an amenable conclusion.
Chapter 22
True to their word and without wasting any more time we were driven home, the second house of the three we had inhabited in just such a short span, and our belongings followed soon afterward. The Agents who had formed our escort party at the Federal Building were also those who showed up delivering the boxes.
“I wonder what our neighbors will think of us?” Sonafi asked as we stood watching the Agents move our things.
“In this neighborhood I'm sure we will hardly seem out of the ordinary.” I said. It was a rough area no matter how you sliced it.
Brid materialized out of the darkness as the last of our things were being carried inside. We had called him on our ride back to let him know we had survived. Not surprisingly, Volga and Nikita were both with him. They walked up to us where we stood on the sidewalk.
“You said you had something important you wanted to discuss?” Brid asked. He knew the meeting had gone well but not the specifics. I wondered if he had already guessed what this was about. If he had, he was not letting on.
Sonafi explained it to him. “But this is entirely up to you and the rest of the Community.” At this she looked at me; “We would not presume to make that decision for the Community.” She pulled out the card Special Services Sector Branch Supervisor Brian McNichols had given her and gave it to him. Brid smiled as he accepted the card.
“We actually already discussed this!” Brid said. “We had a feeling this was going to come up, but we honestly did not expect that you would be asking our opinion.”
“We are prepared to share everything we have!” Volga said, producing a small device from somewhere about her person, very much Sonafi-like and handing it to us. Sonafi took it. Volga continued. This is a portable HD. It contains the schematics for Brid's Field Generation technology. It also gives a brief breakdown of our efforts to organize and how we think we could incorporate them into our counter plot. Into our attempt to capture one of the Others.”
“The understanding is that they would follow the orders that they are given.” Brid said. “We will in effect maintain command. They will in essence provide us resources, recon, intelligence and covering fire when we actually engage. These are our demands.”
“I think they have come to the point where they are willing to do anything, even take orders from Vampires!” I agreed. “They have no choice. Our only chance of defeating the Others at this point may be in joining forces, but what happens afterward is anyone's guess.”
“That thought has not been lost to us,” Volga said, “but we decided, and not without some dissension, that we would fight that battle later.”
“That's the conclusion we came to.” Sonafi said. “But we decided it would be best to cross that bridge when we came to it.”
Brian McNichols arrived several minutes after Brid and the girls had departed and we gave him the hard drive which had been given to us to deliver. He had come to be sure we had received all of our things and the hard drive was a surprise.
“What's this?” He asked as Sonafi handed it to him.
“It's the schematics for Brid's Field Generation technology.” I told him. It's what I told you about. The way to defeat the Others telepathic control. Brid and the rest decided to give it to you. I hope our trust has not been misplaced.”
“As long as the decision lies within my power…“
“We understand.” Sonafi said. “That is the risk. We accept it.”
“You called it Field Generation technology?” Brian asked. “And you said it was Brid's? This Brid invented it?”
“He's the engineer.” Sonafi agreed. “He's also our son, so we'll take a very personal interest in his welfare, if you get what I am getting at.”
“I understand.” Brian McNichols said, in nowise missing the threat implicit in Sonafi's voice.
“We gave him your card.” I told him. “I have no doubt he'll be calling you shortly, wanting to know what your scientists think of his work.”
“Probably even before your scientists have a chance to go over it thoroughly.” Sonafi said. “He'll be more than just passingly interested in what the best and brightest of your scientists think of it.”
“I'd better get this to my technicians, then.” Brian McNichols said, holding the device reverently and almost with unbelief. “You have no idea what this means to us.”
“I think we do.” Sonafi said. McNichols did not fail to note the tone of Sonafi's voice. He nodded with understanding and made his departure, thinking it prudent to do so before we changed our minds. What he had been handed was the weapon which would equalize his species nearly to the level of both of those which threatened. Sonafi was also correct. We well knew what this meant. We had just given our enemy the means by which he might thwart us. Peace treaties were seldom worth the paper they were written on, and ours was not even written.
“From the frying pan into the fire?” I wondered aloud.
……….
Brid's voice was excited on the other end of the mobile connection. I cannot remember the last time, if ever there had been a last time that Brid had called me only moments after sunset. I had never known him to be an early riser. He was normally sluggish and slow at sunset, but he was not so this night. “They want to meet with me.” Brid said. Alarm bells rang immediately in my head.
“They would not be so foolish, Marcel.” Sonafi said knowing my thoughts. “We've given them the perfect opportunity to learn our deepest secrets. Learn how to defeat us. They'll welcome this opportunity with open arms. If there is to be treachery, it will come later.”
“Mother's right!” Brid said at the other end of the connection. “They'll use us until we are used up, if that is their intention, but they won't go off halfcocked. Of that I am sure.”
“I wouldn't be too sure of anything.” I said. “You'll live a lot longer that way.”
“I'm going down to meet with
their scientists at the Federal Building. I must.” Brid said. “But I wanted you to know where I was going.”
“Agent Irving is going to be there?” I asked.
“He is the one who called.”
“Good luck.” I said. “Call when you get out of there.”
“I will.” Brid said, and the line went dead. If Brid did not get out of there, nothing would save them from Sonafi's wrath. For their own sakes they had better play by the rules, because once the rules no longer applied…! Sonafi began to unpack.
We spent the rest of the evening in restless agitation until, near dawn, Sonafi's phone rang and it was Brid. Far from having been concerned for his own welfare, he was excited and enthusiastic.
“There isn't time to go into all the details,” he said nearly breathlessly, “but suffice it to say they opened up the vaults to me. They showed me everything they have on the Others. All the technology. Everything. You would not believe what they have!”
“I think we can imagine.” Sonafi said, even though it was I who was holding the phone.
“I'm not sure if you can!” Brid's said. “They are far beyond what I had expected, but I'll be able to tell you more tomorrow, after I've had time to look at everything they have given me more closely. Suffice it to say there is enough here to keep me busy for years!” Then the line went dead.
“I dislike it when he does that.” I said. Sonafi could only laugh.
……….
There was no call from Brid the next sunset. I don't know why I thought there should have been, other than that maybe I would have liked to hear the phone ring. Know that my son thought about me, maybe. Am I a sentimental fool?
“Yes. An old sentimental fool.” Sonafi said. “The Humans just opened their technological databases to him. I wouldn't be surprised if he was so engrossed he forgets to feed!”
“I suppose that's a possibility.” I agreed, remembering how Brid had been glued to our computer nearly from the day he had been born until the very day he had moved out. “He may not even have slept!” I added. Sonafi gave me a look that said that though as hard as that would be to imagine, it just may have occurred as I suggested.
“So what do a couple of outdated old Vampires do with our time now that we are no longer needed?” Sonafi asked. “Now that we are just in the way.”
“We relax and enjoy ourselves?” I opined.
“That's a very good idea.” Sonafi agreed.
We went out into the cloaking night and moved through its warm embrace as only a Vampire might. Ensconced within its concealing precincts we moved where we would, did as we might, with no one or no being to stop us. We sometimes played a game with unwitting Humans, flitting past them close enough to touch them yet leaving them unaware. Sometimes a premonition took the more conscious of these and they would turn to look but not very often. In the time it took a Human to turn his head, we could run around behind him or vanish up the street. We exulted in the here and now. In the joy of life. Everything that it had to offer us.
We fed and then strolled down to the murky river. As always its ageless meandering length held a mesmerizing power over us that could not be matched by any other of Mother Nature's great wonders. Its old power and majesty and the ageless hidden life within its depths, yet carrying the promise of renewal and rebirth to all which it touched. Its story was our own.
“Yet it will still be here when we are gone.” Sonafi said, responding to my thoughts.
“We will be going nowhere!” I said. I thoroughly meant it.
Chapter 23
We moved through the night, two shadows dancing from one brief bit of darkness to the next, elusive and foreign, derived from other planetary matter and set here for a time, unknowable. Even those who did know us could not really know us. Not even our own kind. That was the strange nature of our existence. Aloof, alone, some bit omnipotent, yet our existence still fleeting.
We moved about the city as if it would be our last night on this planet, within this life, and maybe it would be. Our ruse was exposed. The Others had become tired of the game and now even the Humans knew our every secret. So we enjoyed ourselves as if it would be our last opportunity. On this evening we had no particular duties. We were the heavy guns. We would be called in when the enemy had been pinned down, to pound them, but which sat idle until that time.
It was a bit of an embarrassing state to be the two oldest Vampires, the most powerful in every other respect, yet to be nudged to the side by the younger generation as they took the steps necessary to our survival.
“That's called Evolution and we have played our parts marvelously.” Sonafi said. “It's time to make room for our evolutionary replacements!”
“What if I don't want to make room?” I asked.
“Then we’ll be pushed aside.” She answered, but she was smiling.
I heard a ringing in my pocket and took the instrument of that interruption out and answered it. “Hello?” It was Curt Irving and he sounded breathless.
“I just received a report that we have sighted a number of unidentified flying objects over Metro St. Louis.”
“Brid?” I demanded.
“Another Agent is speaking to him right now.” Irving said, and then I heard no more as I closed the phone, slipped it into my pocket and leaped to a hyper-accelerated sprint back towards the city. We were less than a mile from Brid's present home and moments later we were there.
'Brid!' I yelled out telepathically into the void. Then I saw one of the Others. Its head snapped around to look at me, fully aware of who and what I was. Mutual recognition flashed between us like a striking bolt of lightning.
It was as at home on the wall as any Vampire. I raced across the intervening distance and threw myself into the air at it, kicking my shoes off as I leapt. I landed on the wall just below it.
Brid did not answer me and I had to accept the fact that he was dead. The agony of that loss washed through me but I would have to grieve later. Flitting forms told me of other Others fleeing my approach. They leaped from Brid's roof to that of his neighbor and vanished into the night. I could feel them as they fled. My concentration was entirely on the creature in front of me, however, and everything I have just described occurred while I seized that individual. As I landed I stretched out my hand and grasped the ankle of the Other as it tried to slip away up the wall. Then I yanked with all of my strength.
I ripped the Other from its perch but its free foot lashed out at me and caught me flush on the side of the jaw. Even as we fell a hiss of pain momentarily drew my attention to the roof line of the house adjoining Brid's, and I was in time to see the blood splashed visage of one of the Others falling back from the roofs edge. It had turned to see what would become of its companion, possibly even to come to its aid, and had found itself an easy target for one of Sonafi's home-made thrown missiles. Even as I fell towards the ground, still fiercely gripping the ankle of the Other I heard the thump of the one Sonafi had attacked fall to the roof it was upon and the thrashing as it kicked out its death throes. It would not survive.
As we fell the creature twisted and swiveled upon me, its tiny mouth twisted into the rictus of hatred with which I was so familiar with the Others. In its right hand was a shiny object. The moonlight glinted momentarily from its reflective surface. A small blade. As it turned on me, its right hand came across its body, the blade plunging at my face. I slapped it aside in mid-strike but its speed was like that of an uncoiling spring. The blade went spinning away and bounced against the wall before vanishing into the night. This all at hyper-acceleration. We had barely begun to fall.
It stared its hatred into my eyes. Its large teardrop eyes inscrutable, yet within them, through them was the channel to its soul and when our eyes locked I felt every bit of its awareness. Instantly I followed that thread of awareness back to its source, back inside its mind, and like I had done to Nikita, I locked onto it like a vice. It screamed out in rage and defiance! The first vocalizations I have ever heard one o
f the Others make, other than in physical pain.
It fought me mentally as we fell physically. It doubled over again and this time tried to reach the Katana on my back, but I snatched its wrist in mid-reach and held it back. All the while our eyes were locked. And then its free hand reached for my neck and I let it have its grip. I rabbit punched it where its solar plexus would be in a Human and was rewarded when its a breath harrumphed out of its tiny mouth. I could feel its grip upon my throat but it was much too Juvenile to affect me. I had been right, my strength had grown.
Our physical battle was only the façade of the struggle occurring between us. This being was no newborn. Nor was it a Vampire. It was much Juvenile to me but not so young I was able to take control of it without a fight. Its mind was filled with hatred. I have never touched anything so angry, so utterly hate filled, so close and intimately. I nearly recoiled in revulsion at this the closest I have ever been to the mind of one of the Others.
Its hate was unreasoning, unthinking, the result of the Others racial assurance of their superiority. It understood that I was Elder but it could not see me as its Elder. It did not see me as a Palag Elder!
Palag! The Palag! They were the Palag. This was what they called themselves. This was their name. They were the Palag. I delved deeper into its mind, forcing my way in. When it realized that it could not hold me out I felt the first panic I have ever felt come from one of the Others, the Palag, in any of our encounters. So sure of their superiority, of their Grand Purpose and the meaning of their lives that they were willing to give those lives for their Grand Purpose without reservation, but not this! Not this subversion of its mind! Not this dominance by a bastard creature they had created!
We hit the ground as I took full possession of his mind, his faculties, as I felt the last of his defenses give way before my assault. I had fully penetrated him now and like a vast panorama his mind unfolded before me. A tiny microcosm of the Universe but built to scale.
The Alien Agenda Page 18
