by Wen Spencer
For his brother, at least, this was the true thing, a love to die for. Did Indigo feel the same? Ukiah would give Indigo access to the Pack. It was easier to imagine her using his brother than her falling in love with him. Her strong self-control eliminated the obvious attraction: Ukiah's lean, well-defined body and handsome face. He was wolf silent with all-seeing feral eyes—what would they talk about?
"Distract Ukiah away from Indigo."
Ru looked at the two, isolated in a universe of their own making. "How?"
"I want five minutes alone with her. Think of it as a challenge."
Ru scoffed at the idea. "You owe me."
Atticus watched as Ru got Ukiah's attention by touching the bare skin of his wrist. With a smile and a nod toward the Explorer, Ru suggested that Ukiah change his torn and bloody shirt and get something to eat. Ukiah wavered, the suggestion of food fighting with his desire to be with Indigo.
With a glance toward Atticus, Indigo let go of Ukiah's hand. "Go on; I want to talk to Atticus."
They watched as Ru got Ukiah to the well-stocked Explorer before Indigo turned to Atticus.
"What is it you want?"
Uh-oh, busted.
"I want to know—do you love my brother, or are you just using him?" When she didn't react, he added, "I can promise you, one law officer to another, that anything you say to me won't be repeated."
"Normally I would say, one law officer to another, that it's none of your business."
"He's my brother."
"That's between you and him," Zheng said in her calm, unreadable way. "But your brother asked me to marry him. Last week I told him I had to think about it. This week I've been praying that I would have a chance to tell him yes." She gave him her Mona Lisa smile. "That makes you my brother-in-law. I'm telling you because that's between you and me."
She was marrying his brother? "What the hell do you see in him?"
"Only people who don't know him ask that question."
"I don't know my brother."
"Obviously." She considered him with a level look not unlike Ukiah's. "I can outthink, outshoot, outfight, plain out-brass ball most men. But men have this unwritten rule: The only women who are allowed to be stronger than them are their mothers. If you don't do the mothering routine, then they call you a grade-A bitch. With most men you can see it in their eyes as they try out the labels: hot babe, possible mother, bitch."
No, we don't have issues, do we?"And Ukiah doesn't."
"When I first met Ukiah, he looked at me, and saw me.Not the babe, the mother, or the bitch, just me. And I was hooked. The more I got to know him, the more I wanted him. He's the gentlest, most compassionate, wisest man I have ever met."
"Ukiah?" Those were three words that Atticus wouldn't ever have thought to apply to his brother; nor were they words that described Atticus either.
"If you spent any time getting to know him, you would see that for yourself." She said it as if it were a challenge. I double-dare you.
"How did you end up spending time with him?"
"He saved my life," Indigo said, and explained no more, except to add, "Believe me, there is nothing sexier than having a man save your life and then never mention it."
"So it is the hot monkey sex?"
She actually laughed and then sobered. "Sometimes it's like dating the Dalai Lama in the body of a young god. There might be a lot he doesn't know about the world, but his soul is old and patient."
"If he's so great, why didn't you say yes?"
She looked away to hide the sorrow in her eyes. "For reasons that seemed so trivial when the cult killed him and took his body."
It made him uncomfortable that he understood too well the terror that held. Of all the people who were trusting Ukiah just because he was Atticus's brother, the one he worried about most was himself. Atticus's world was too fragile to entrust it to a stranger with dangerous connections—FBI fiancйe or not.
"I'm glad he went to you for help," Indigo said. "If he'd been here with the Pack, he'd have been arrested."
"He didn't want my help."
"Yes, he did; otherwise he wouldn't have come to you." Indigo reached out and took his hand. At the point of contact, Atticus felt Ukiah on her, but then lost the sense of his brother under his own touch—they were too identical for Atticus to keep separate. "And he needs you."
Atticus pulled his hand free. "I think you're confusing me with someone who gives a damn."
"Oh, this isn't the same man who no more than three minutes ago was asking if my intentions were honorable or not?"
Sometimes keeping silent was the only safe answer.
"He's about to collapse. You're hurt too. If we're to stop these monsters, I can't take time to care for him, and if I leave him alone, the Pack will take him."
"So? He's a Dog Warrior."
"And so are you." "
He glared at her, unsure of the truth. Was he?
Her eyes were gray as gunmetal. "He has a clean record, but if he'd come here today with the Pack, he'd have been arrested instead of praised. Please take care of him tonight."
All things considered, she was a good match for his brother in her ability to stare a person down.
"He can come with us. We've got an extra bed back at the hotel."
She rewarded him with a smile, and put away her steel-gray weapons. "Thank you."
***
Atticus decided they couldn't wait for food until they returned to the hotel. Changing shirts, they stopped at the first place at hand, a seafood place called Naked Fish on Totten Pond Road. Done in a decor of mustard yellow and splashes of purple, it featured Cuban cooking. The place was crowded with a wait for tables, but Ru—with the judicious use of a ten-dollar bill—got them seated immediately. Atticus didn't bother looking at the menu, knowing Ru would order for him. Ukiah scanned the menu with tired bewilderment while Kyle directed pouting glares at him. Obviously Kyle had also seen Indigo with Ukiah and wasn't taking the loss of his dream girl gracefully.
Ru looked up as the waiter appeared with a basket of rolls to take drink orders. "We know what we want. I'll take the crispy calamari salad, and they'll both take the empanadas criollas de carne, gambas al ajillo,the valencianapaella, and side orders of the plantains."
"They have plantains?" Atticus picked up the menu to scan it.
"What are plantains?" Ukiah asked.
"You'll like them," Ru reassured him, and ordered clam chowder and steak for Kyle. He finished with, "Two root beers, a Coke, and an iced tea."
The waiter eyed Atticus, who was clearly in pain, Ukiah on the verge of collapse, and Kyle pouting and then looked back to Ru. "Ooookay. I'll go get that order right in and bring your drinks, but we're really backed up. It's going to be a while."
Ukiah surrendered the menu. "What did you order us?"
"A beef turnover; shrimp; and a rice dish with shrimp, scallops . . . chicken and sausage and probably some stuff I've forgotten. Atty loves it; you should like it too."
Ukiah sighed, leaning his head against the wall behind him, eyes closed. "We don't have time for this."
"You're not up to anything but this," Atticus snapped.
After a long delay, Ukiah grunted, acknowledging it. He considered his bloodstained fingers. "I should wash. I have Ping's blood on my hands."
"I'll go with you—I need to go," Ru lied, probably guessing that in his condition, Ukiah would have a difficult time finding his way through the restaurant to the bathroom and back.
Atticus took advantage of their absence to fix Kyle with his gaze. "Kyle, I'm sorry about Indigo—but we've talked about this before."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Someday I'll meet the girl of my dreams. Just got to keep looking. Blah blah blah." Kyle seized one of the hot buns and angrily tore small pieces from it. "It's not fair. The hot chicks are always already taken or they never even look at me. All you have to do—all your brother has to do—is walk into a room and they watch you."
Kyle jerked his head towa
rd Ukiah, following Ru to the bathroom. Indeed, every woman who noticed his passing continued to, follow him with her eyes. Atticus had always been somewhat aware of the attention he received, but this time, being separate from the focus, he saw how profound the effect was. Ukiah seemed completely oblivious.
"You know it's nothing we can control. You just have to deal with it."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it." Kyle sighed. "You don't know how lucky you are to have Ru."
Across the room, Ru paused at the bathroom door and glanced back to the table. When their eyes met, Ru smiled.
"No," Atticus said. "I know exactly how lucky I am."
***
"If Ping is dead," Ukiah said once he and Ru returned to the table, "we're back to square one in finding the Ae."
"What about this word that Ping wrote onto the wall?" Ru asked.
Ukiah shrugged. "I think it's zaeta,which roughly means 'transmitter,' but that wouldn't make sense. She must have gotten the word wrong."
"Why?" Atticus asked.
"The zaetaworks on a quantum level to achieve instant communication between star systems. It was developed by a race that had achieved three colonies in nearby star systems."
"Cool." Kyle's pout slipped away in the face of far-flung alien civilizations. "Why doesn't 'transmitter' make sense? E.T. phone home." This got a blank look from Ukiah. "They're sending messages back to the home world."
Ukiah shook his head. "No. You don't understand the Ontongard."
"Pretend we know nothing," Atticus said. "That shouldn't be much of a stretch."
"The Ontongard can't stay on one planet," Ukiah said. "Eventually they wipe out the ecology by becoming the ecology, and cannibalism follows. So they gear all the planet's industries toward building seed ships. They build thousands, until the planet's resources are depleted, and then they leave, each ship traveling on a different vector. It's completely blind. One ship might travel one light year to the next star system, and the next ship could travel thousands."
"So the transmitters are used to keep the scattered colonies connected," Kyle guessed.
"No." Ukiah shook his head. "There is no home world. There is no plan. This isn't an effort to build a civilization to span the universe. The Ontongard is just one organism, reproducing mindlessly. After they find a suitable planet, they pull their ship into orbit and dismantle it, parachuting everything down to the surface in an all-or-nothing try to take over. If they succeed, they reproduce until they wipe out all life on that planet and then leave. If they fail, who cares?"
"The ones that die." Atticus felt the need to poke holes in Ukiah's theory. He found his brother's knowledge annoying in the face of his own ignorance. "It might be a long shot, but the ones here on Earth might be desperate enough to take it. Why not send out a message saying there's a perfect planet here, waiting to be plundered, if another ship was so inclined to head in this direction?"
Ukiah gave him a lost look, uncertain.
"These translations the cult had you do." Ru gave Ukiah a nudge like he would if they were questioning a witness. "They never mentioned the transmitter?"
Ukiah closed his eyes and sat still for a minute. Atticus sensed that he was flicking back over hours of spoken conversation. "A lot of the same equipment goes to building a lot of things: computer controls, monitors, switches, gauges. They could be building anything—but they areall things found in a transmitter. The Ontongard would have needed years to bring everything together, and I listened only to a few months of recordings."
"They're still building it, or they wouldn't be talking about parts," Kyle guessed. "Any indication how close to finished they are?"
Ukiah made a face. "It could be done now and still be useless."
"Huh?"
"Well, these things are more like cell phones than radios, if I understand human technology right. The transmitter isn't like a radio tower, where it broadcasts out and anyone out there with a radio can pick it up. It's like a cell phone, where there's two-way communication set up. There's what Max calls 'the handshake' going on—signals that go from sender to receiver and back."
"What's the protocol?" Kyle got a blank look. "How do they initiate a message?"
"They would have to . . ." Ukiah said slowly, grinding through the process, ". . . detect another transmitter first, which might take years . . . unless they know something that the Pack doesn't—like the Ontongard on the last world or two decided to set one up at a certain location, or knew of one they were going to take over."
Atticus blew out his breath in exasperation. It sounded like lots of unknowns, maybes, and dependings. He wasn't even sure why they were talking about it, since only finding the Ae mattered.
Kyle, however, was intrigued. "Let's just assume they are building this transmitter. How do we find it? What does it look like? Is it bigger than a bread box?"
"It's massive. The housing for the containment field would be, like, thirty feet tall, and waveguides are very long and straight. It's not something they'll be able to hide."
"When you say very long, what measurements are you talking here?"
Ukiah thought for a minute, translating out the measurements. "They would have to be nearly half a mile in length."
"And how thick around is the waveguide?"
Ukiah measured it off with his hands. "But there would have to be, like, twenty-five feet of earth acting as a buffer from outside interference."
"How do you know all this stuff?" Atticus asked him.
"I have Rennie's memories."
"What does that have to do with it?"
"He's Coyote's Get, who was Prime's only Get." He saw Atticus's blank look. "Ontongard store their memories in their genetics because in essence, each cell is an individual, but they function as one vast creature. The Ontongard pass mice back and forth all the time to keep all of themselves on the same page. They all remember back for thousands of years."
"But what does that have to do with you and Rennie?"
"Pack is just like the Ontongard, only completely different," Ukiah said.
"Well, that's completely clear."
"Have you ever seen the movie Blade Runner?"
"Can we have a straightforward conversation? One without all these weird jumps?"
"Max has this big-screen TV and surround sound and Blade Runneron DVD. When you watch it, you're immersed in that world, and throughout the entire movie it rains and rains. So at the end, when you go outside and the sun is shining, you think—for one split second—wow, it's stopped raining."
"It never was raining." Atticus refrained from asking who Max was, since it would derail the conversation even further.
"Exactly."
"Just get to the point."
"The movie infringed on your reality, but only so you're disoriented for a moment, just a second or two, and then it all goes back to being just a movie you watched. When Pack trade mice, they can tell what is the movie and what is the real world. Where the other person's memories end, and theirs start."
"A good book that you can put back on the shelf?"
"Yeah. For the Ontongard, both your world and the movie are equally real. You are yourself, and all the characters in that movie, and all the movies ever made in the history of the art. A million lives, all equally weighed."
"How can they think that way?"
Ukiah shrugged. "But that's really the only difference between Pack and Ontongard. We have a mutation that lets us remain individuals, with all the hates and desires and free will that implies—but the 'me' of an Ontongard host is lost under the flood of 'them.' You say that humans should deal with this. The Pack were all born human. They were infected by Coyote with Prime's mutation. They're genetically aliens, but in their hearts and souls, they're still human."
"As far as I'm concerned, the Pack are nothing but low-life slime deluding themselves that they're saving the world. They're no different from the cult. The Ontongard are convenient bogeymen to excuse the Pack's criminal behavior."
It took Atticus a moment to realize what Ukiah meant. "I already had my mind raped."
Ukiah ducked his head; if he were a dog, he'd probably be flattening back his ears. "Not like that. You read me, like the Pack read you."
"No."
Ukiah locked his feral stare onto Atticus. "You want to stay blind to the danger until it kills you?" And he thought, but did not say aloud, " Kills Ru?"
Twin spikes of guilt and anger hit Atticus. He matched Ukiah's gaze, until he realized that Ukiah was offering to give Atticus free access to his memories. The offer spoke to him of sincere trust. "I don't know how."
Ukiah leaned close, locking Atticus with his intense gaze. "Just look."
Atticus never considered howhe remembered before—how he could focus on a nearby wall, and yet in his mind, like transversing some invisible dimension, walk through the houses of his childhood. Vaguely he knew it was neurons firing, replaying stored information, only his recording was perfect. At some point, the past would crowd the present out of his sight with things recalled.
He looked into his brother's dark eyes with their vaguely Asian shape, marked with exhaustion. He could feel the fearlessness with which Ukiah opened himself up in a way that seemed both trustingly childlike and patiently wise. One of them took a breath, and Atticus wasn't sure which body moved.
Ukiah's thoughts traveled to a distant time and firmly guided Atticus there too.
All his life, Prime had been caged. Loose pellets of nutrients were dropped into the feeding bowl. Water flowed endlessly in the drinking trough. He and the others in his cage had learned sometime in their pasts to use the trench in the back to urinate and defecate. Their language was a dozen words, all that was needed to explain their limited world. To count was meaningless— nothing ever was added or subtracted. Day was light. Night was dark. Only their bodies changed, growing taller; things that had been challenging in the play area now seemed too simple, and they invented complex games to take up their endless time. At one point they'd learned that to copulate felt good, so they did it often. The timeless imprisonment ended after the bitter-smelling air that made him sleep. They woke with identical angry red marks on their arms. Soon afterward he felt the change work through him, a whispering of a million voices, trying to crowd him out . . .
