by K. W. Jeter
Albert shrank farther back into the chair.
“What our investigators found was a gentleman named Marty Balfe, who runs a small print shop and bindery in downtown Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, Mr. Balfe produced the first run of GIT publications, before anyone other than your friend Captain Grazer got involved with the promotion and sales of these things he’d written and recorded. The printing had been done largely on credit; Mr. Balfe was still holding some fairly substantial IOUs from Grazer, and he wasn’t too happy about it. So he wasn’t averse to spilling the beans about the business dealings between him and the captain. Apparently, a few months ago Grazer had assured Mr. Balfe that he would get all the money that was coming to him, inasmuch as Grazer had found a sure-fire way of making GIT into a roaring commercial success. Grazer even told Mr. Balfe how this was going to come about, that he had a close personal friend who was the chief ‘picker’ for a major market-research and prediction firm, and that he had convinced this friend to tell his employers that GIT was going to be the biggest thing since sliced bread. And of course, after that everything would be easy; the whole world would rush out to buy these wondrous products, Mr. Balfe would get paid the money owed him plus interest, and everybody would be rich and happy. Except it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way, has it?”
“No . . .” With his voice small and mournful, Albert shook his head. “I guess not . . .”
“Because your friend Grazer,” continued Vogel, his voice turning to thunder, “overlooked one small factor. Namely, that his goddamn tapes and books are total crap. God Himself could come down out of the sky and recommend these things, and people still wouldn’t buy them. So they’re not very likely to do it based on the recommendation of ace picker Albert Einstein, are they?”
Albert decided it would probably be better if he didn’t remind Vogel that he had looked at Grazer’s stuff when it had first been brought into this office, and had said all kinds of nice things about it. It would probably just make Vogel even angrier.
“We trusted you, Albert.” A look of wounded bafflement appeared on Vogel’s face. “Everybody here at Precognosis figured how the hell could one of you special dim-bulb Newcomers ever have enough on the ball to be anything except perfectly honest with us? And then you turned around and hosed us like this, Albert. We never thought you’d even be capable of pulling off a number like this.”
“Well . . .” He managed a shrug. “I won’t do it again.”
“Oh, you got that right.” Vogel tossed the sheet of paper back onto the desk’s surface. “You’re not going to be doing anything—good, bad or indifferent—for Precognosis anymore. That’s why I called you in here, to tell you that our need for your services is at an end.”
That puzzled him. “But I’m still a good picker, aren’t I?”
“You’re the best, Albert. Even with figuring in this GIT disaster, your successful prediction rate is still way up in the nineties. We could probably all go rolling along forever, getting more picks from you, the way you did before this whole mess came along. But there’s a problem. In dealing with our clients, we haven’t been just selling them your predictions; we’ve been selling them your reliability. And now, we don’t have that to sell anymore. There’s only two ways to explain what happened, and neither one of them looks very good. If we tell our clients that you picked this GIT stuff to be a big money-spinner and it turned out you were completely, one-hundred-percent off-base, everybody is left wondering when you might do that again. And if we tell them that you were dishonest with us, that you gave us a bogus prediction to help out one of your old friends—then that’s even worse. That’s why we’re not going after Grazer for the damages he’s caused us. If we’re going to keep Precognosis going as a market research and prediction firm, we can’t let it get out that our top picker entered into a conspiracy to defraud us. That would make us look like idiots. How could we get any clients to hire us in the future if it looks like we can’t even run our own company without taking it in the shorts?”
Reliable—that was what George had used to say about him, back when he was still mopping the floors at the police station. And that was something he’d been proud of, that everyone could always count on him. It was better even than being smart, or good-looking, or anything else people could be. And now—since he knew that what Vogel said was true—now he wasn’t reliable anymore. What he had been, he wasn’t anymore. Albert frowned, trying to figure out what that meant. If he wasn’t that, then what was he? Or was he anything at all?
From somewhere in the office’s echoing immensity, Vogel’s voice continued. “We’re in the process of drafting the corporate press release that we’ll be sending out to all the business papers and trade journals. Basically, what the announcement will say is that in order to pursue other avenues of endeavour, blah blah blah, Mr. Albert Einstein has resigned from his position as chief market prediction analyst, and that all of us here at Precognosis wish him the best of luck, every success, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Does that mean . . .” Albert tried to figure out the rapid string of words. “Does that mean I’m fired?”
Vogel gazed at him in silence for a moment, then sighed one last time. “You can keep the car, Albert.”
“Hey, I thought there were going to be trees and stuff up here.” With one hand, he shaded his eyes against the flat yellow sunlight. The landscape was just as flat, but a deracinated brown, as though the sun had baked it to the distant horizon. “This is kinda . . . harsh. You know?”
“Get with the program, man.” Standing beside Noah was the member of the HDL assault team who had driven the truck all the way north from L.A. “This part of Oregon is high desert, from here into Idaho. You want trees, you gotta head west.” He slammed the door of the truck cab shut. “You think it’s mean-looking now, you oughta be up here in the winter. There’s some snowstorms come barrelling across the flats, you think you got hit by a runaway deep freeze. Need a snowplow just to get around to your front gate and check your mail.”
Noah and the other man walked around to the rear of the truck. “I can believe it.” His boots crunched into the dry sand and gravel. “Jeez, this really is the middle of nowhere. Why the hell would Bryant have a camp put up here?”
“That’s exactly why.” The assault team member flipped open the latch above the truck’s bumper. “Out here, there’s no one to come snooping around what you’re doing. And that’s the way the people in these parts like it. You don’t poke your nose in their business, they keep theirs out of whatever you’re doing. And that’s the way we like it.”
The segmented door went clattering up, revealing the truck’s interior. Sunlight bounced off gleaming chrome surfaces and white enamel. The space was filled with as much equipment as the truck that had been used for the raid on the hospital, and then stripped and abandoned, but this array of gear wasn’t weaponry. The rear of the truck looked like a segment of the hospital itself, scrubbed and sanitized, and crammed into the cargo area. A compact replica of a neonatal ward, but set up for just one infant. The most important baby in the world right now, at least as far as Noah and the rest of the Human Defense League were concerned.
Nurse Eward looked up from the high-tech cradle in the middle of the space. “It’s about time,” she said irritably. She still wore the white uniform she’d had on when the raid had gone down. “I was about ready to start climbing the walls in here.”
The woman’s voice grated on Noah’s nerves. She had dropped all the pretense of concern and warmth, the masquerade she had carried out for so long. There was no denying that it had worked: Eward had been the HDL’s deep agent for a long time, first in Dr. Quinn’s clinic and research facility, then in the heavily guarded hospital ward that had been set up for this baby to be born in. Everything that the authorities, the Bureau of Newcomer Affairs, and the LAPD, had done to ensure the child’s security had been reported out to Noah and the other planners of the raid. Thanks to Eward, everything had gone smoothly,
right up until Noah’s second-in-command had flipped out and tried to kill the kid. Noah had been relieved when the radio newscast they had heard on the way up here had stated that the man had died from the bullet he’d caught in the action; that was one less loose end to deal with, one less way the police might have been able to figure out where they had gone. Noah figured he could put up with Eward’s newly-revealed abrasiveness for as long as they all had to hole up in this godforsaken place.
He reached a hand up to assist her, but she knocked it aside and jumped down from the back of the truck without help. “Somebody else can take care of this kid for a while.” Eward pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “I’m sick of the brat.” Carrying a small suitcase of her own things, she headed for the group of low, single-story buildings at the center of the camp’s fenced area. In the distance, the points of the razor wire topping the wire mesh glittered like small knives.
“You heard the lady.” Noah glanced around at the other HDL members who had gathered around. “We got the kid here alive; let’s see if we can keep him that way.”
Two of the men climbed up into the truck and lowered the chrome cart out to the others. The bundle inside the cart emitted a weak cry; two small pink fists fought the air.
“Hey! You can’t just put him out in the sun—jeez!” Noah held his arm over the cart, to shade the baby’s face. “What’re you trying to do, make a raisin out of him?”
“No skin off my ass if this little mongrel dies.” One of the other men shrugged, displaying his lack of concern. “Maybe it would’ve been less hassle if you had let it get plugged back at the hospital.”
“Can that crap.” Noah shot a narrow-eyed glare at the assault team member who had spoken. “Bryant gave us our orders, and we’re going to make sure they’re carried out exactly the way she wants. Got it?”
Another shrug. “You’re the boss.”
“That’s right.” With his other hand, Noah gestured toward the jeeps and off-road vehicles, all painted in desert camouflage, that filled one corner of the fenced compound. “One of you go over there and bring back a tarpaulin—now. I’m not gonna stand here like this all day.”
While he waited for the tarp to be fetched, Noah looked down at the small face in the shade of his upraised arm. During the raid and in the switching of vehicles immediately afterward, and during the long drive up here from Los Angeles, there hadn’t been time for him to get a good look at the baby. He remembered its face being redder before, but then that had been within just a few hours of it having been born. Now its face was more of a mottled pink, the skin appearing soft as rose petals. Damn thing looks almost human, thought Noah. He could just see the light dusting of spots beneath the fine wisps of hair on the scalp, and the way the infant’s ears, what there was of them, was more like a Newcomer’s than like his own. But other than that . . .
The baby’s small eyes opened, as if it knew somebody was right above, looking down at it. The pupils were two tiny flashes of blue; for some reason, Noah hadn’t been expecting that. He frowned, feeling puzzled but without knowing why. The miniature hands—just like a human baby’s, right down to the almost microscopic white flecks of the fingernails—made disjointed semaphore gestures, the face puckering and the hiccupping gasps turning into a faint wail. Noah wondered when had been the last time that Eward had fed him.
“Ugly little shit, ain’t it?”
Startled, Noah turned and saw one of the other assault team members with a smirk on his face and a wadded-up green tarp under his arm.
“I don’t know about that—” Noah’s arm had started to ache from being held so long over the cart. “If somebody didn’t know, they might think it was one of ours. Human, I mean.”
“Yeah, well, I think human kids are pretty ugly pieces of work, too.” The man handed the tarpaulin to Noah and walked away.
He organized a procession with himself and another assault team member holding the tarp over the open cart and pushing it across the gravelly, weed-stubbled ground toward the buildings that looked even scruffier and more neglected the closer they got to them. A couple of dusty windowpanes had been broken out and replaced with flattened cardboard boxes, warped and made ancient by the bleak landscape’s sun and rain.
“What did this place used to be?” Noah studied the complex with growing distaste. Behind him, the short parade of team members carried the rest of the supplies and equipment from the truck. “I mean, before the League took it over.”
“Gun club.” The other man smiled evilly at him across the tarp. “So if a few rounds get let off now and then . . . nobody around here gets too excited about it. Convenient, huh?”
Noah pushed open the door of the main building with his boot. When the cart had been rolled inside and the tarp tossed back out onto the wood-plank porch, he looked around the space. It had the appearance of a low-rent bachelor pad gone seriously downhill, a place where a group of men had been living with no one to get on their case about their general slobbishness. The pent-up air had the aroma of sweat-stained clothes piled into the corners and the charcoal-like scent of burnt food on an encrusted stove. He couldn’t see the kitchen, and assumed it was somewhere in the rear of the building. A couple of doors opened onto sleeping areas, with a few broken-backed Army cots and sleeping bags strewn in a haphazard non-pattern on the bare floor.
“Jeez, this place smells like the zoo or something.” Noah shook his head in disgust “How can you guys stand it?”
“So it’s not the Ritz.” One of the other men shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be. We’re not going to be hanging around here that long.”
“We’ll be here as long as we need to. And that decision is going to come from Bryant.” The camp’s disorder offended Noah, from a strictly military viewpoint. It radiated carelessness and a slackening of standards—and these men were supposed to be an elite corps, the best that the human race had to offer in its struggle against the alien filth. Right now, the place didn’t look like much of an advertisement for the wonderfulness of humanity. “So okay, how many people we got up here now? With the crew that was already here, plus the team that came up with the truck—let’s see, that makes twelve of us, right?”
The other nodded. “Plus that nurse.”
“Her job’s full-time already, looking after this kid.” Noah pointed to the cart. “But we don’t need her anyway; we got plenty enough manpower already to get this place pulled together. And as long as I’ve been put in charge here, that’s the way it’s gonna be. So round up the rest of the men, I don’t care if they’re sacked out or what, and have ’em all here in fifteen minutes. We’ll get a duty roster drawn up—”
“What about Aalice?” A small group had already gathered in the room. One of them stood with his arms folded across his chest. “You gonna have her pitch in? She’s big enough to swing a broom.”
Another man snickered. “Yeah, she oughta earn her keep.”
“Alice?” Noah didn’t understand. “Who’s Alice?”
“Not ‘Alice’—Aa-lice.” The man put a slight drawl on the first syllable. “With two A’s.”
“Okay, fine,” said Noah with growing irritation. “Whatever. So who are you talking about?”
“You mean nobody’s told you about her?”
“Nobody’s told me squat.” Noah glared at the other men. “So somebody better let me in on it right now. Who’s this Aalice?”
As if in answer to his question, he heard the door open behind him. A little girl peered around it; she looked to be about five or six years old, dressed in faded jeans with the cuffs rolled up and a t-shirt with some cartoon character on the front. Noah watched as the girl caught sight of the chrome cart in the middle of the room; her eyes widened, then she ran over and looked down at its tiny occupant.
“It looks just like me!” The girl turned around, a smile of delight on her face. “Just like me!”
“That’s Aalice,” one of the assault team members said simply.
He had already figured
that out. And Noah had to admit the little girl was right: she could have been the baby’s older sister. The ears, that were like a human’s and a Newcomer’s at the same time, and the head spots that were just visible beneath light blond hair . . . it was all there.
Nobody had told him that there was another one, another hybrid child. And now here he was, in charge of both of them.
He wondered what that meant, what Bryant might be planning. An odd, uneasy worry moved in Noah’s gut. He didn’t like surprises.
“What’s the deal?” He turned toward the closest of the other men. “What’s going on? Who is she?”
“Hey, don’t jump down my throat, buddy.” A smug grin showed on the assault team member’s face. “Isn’t it obvious? She’s our other little guest here. That’s why we’ve been running a crew up here for the last year or so. Just to keep an eye on her—and make sure nobody else knows about her.”
“And she’s a hybrid? Like the baby, I mean?”
“Just look at her.” The other man gestured toward the child. “You got any doubt about it?”
Noah looked back toward the girl. Half human, half Newcomer—part of him could believe it right off the bat, just from the visual evidence. Another part of him was pissed off that he hadn’t been told about her before.
