by Koch, Gini
“I was. We sat on the runway for what seemed like hours but was probably only thirty minutes. Then they took us off the plane. Apparently I’m stuck in New York for the foreseeable future. Due to the terrorist attack you stopped they’ve shut down all air travel, in case it wasn’t a lone incident.”
“Oh, are you kidding me? Hang on.” I covered the mouthpiece. “Hey, Christopher! My mother is stranded in New York because of the recent terrorist activity. Any chance in the world you can stop opening doors and, call me crazy, get this taken care of so people can return to their lives?”
He spun around. “Look, you have no idea of what you’re dealing with,” he snarled. “It’s not that easy, and—”
His father cut him off. “Enough.” He said it quietly, but White’s voice carried authority when he wanted it to. He walked back over to me. “Please tell your mother to gather her belongings, go to a taxi stand, and one of our people will pick her up.”
“Oh, hell no. You are not kidnapping my mother.”
White heaved a sigh. “If you want her home, we have to pick her up.”
“Lots to do in New York. Why’s she in a rush?” Martini asked.
“She likes sleeping in her own bed with her own husband. Why should I have my mother go with any of you?”
“Safest place for her,” Reader said quietly. “Superbeings come in different varieties. We know we have some that are in control. If one of them makes the connection between your mother and you . . .” He let it hang, but I got the point.
I went back to the phone. “Mom? Homeland Security’s going to pick you up.”
“Why? Oh, God, things aren’t safe, are they?”
“Well, let’s just say it’ll be safer for you to be with them.” I hoped. “Get your stuff, go to the nearest taxi stand, wait for a gray SUV or limo. Don’t get in unless the men are really drop-dead gorgeous.”
There was a pregnant pause. “Come again?”
“Work with me on this one. Just make sure they’re good-looking.”
“There’s a whole lot you didn’t tell your father, isn’t there?”
I remembered why I’d never bothered to learn to lie to my parents. My mother never, ever fell for it. “Yes, Mom, there is.”
“Are you safe and will I be safe? And is your father safe?” I heard the worry, there more when she was asking about Dad than for me or her.
“Dad’s fine,” I said, giving White a meaningful look. He nodded his head, and so did Gower. “They’re watching the house.” More nods. “But they’re not watching you, yet, so they want you under protection.” Nods again. “They’ll meet you at the taxi stand. Just remember, gray, not black, great looking, not average or ugly.”
“Not really for us to say, but thanks,” Martini said quietly, with his usual grin.
“Which taxi stand?” Mom asked. I heard her telling someone to let her have her checked bags.
“It won’t matter, they’ll find you.”
She groaned. “They won’t release my bags.”
“They’re holding her bags,” I told White.
His reaction wasn’t what I was expecting. He spun to Christopher. “Get her and her things, now!”
Christopher nodded, and then he was gone. Literally. One second there, the next, empty air.
My stomach clenched. “Uh, Mom? Stay around people, stay away from anyone acting weird, and someone’ll be there, really, really fast.”
“Okay. Hmmm.”
“What?”
“You know, I think I just spotted weird. Kitten, I’m going to go. Hopefully your new friends will find me quickly.” With that, the phone went dead.
I tried to calm my stomach, but it was hard. “My mom’s in trouble. Someone weird was there, I think they’re after her.”
“We’ll take care of it,” White said.
Martini put his arm around my shoulders. “It’ll be okay.”
“How? And how the hell did Christopher just up and disappear?” I felt like crying, and that always made me mad. I pulled away from Martini, and I saw that two of the SUVs were gone.
“We’re at the crash site,” Gower said. “It allows us to do certain things more . . . easily.”
“What kinds of things? Time travel?”
“Not in the conventional sense.” Gower sighed. “Look, try to calm down. I promise you your mother will be fine. And, yes, we have your father under protection now.”
I was scared, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to help my mother in a dead panic. “What, I ask again, is going on?”
CHAPTER 7
GOWER POINTED. “Look there.”
I did. There was nothing, just flat earth with the occasional desert scrub brush on it, and I said as much.
“No, there’s actually a huge depression,” he said with a small smile. “You can’t see it because it’s camouflaged.”
“Okay. So? How does this help my mother?”
“Who do you take after?” Martini asked.
“What? Why is that a relevant question now?” I wanted to kick him but managed to refrain.
“Just answer me. Who do you take after?” He didn’t seem like he was playing around.
“My mother, mostly. At least so everyone says.”
“Then she’ll be fine.” He smiled at the expression I knew was on my face. “If you take after her, then there’s more risk of another woman in your family killing another ‘terrorist’ than of your mother getting hurt.”
I wanted to believe him, but it wasn’t easy. “Maybe.”
“What’s your mother do for a living?” Gower asked, in a very soothing tone.
“She’s a consultant.”
“Consultant for what?” Gower prodded.
Reader started to laugh. I turned, and he was holding a folder. He hadn’t had it before. “Acorn here did not fall far from the tree.”
“Where did you get that from? And what does it say?” I tried to read it, but he moved it away from me.
“Nope, you have to calm down and pay attention to what Paul’s trying to show you. Then, maybe I’ll let you see the file on your mother.” Reader winked. “It’s all good, you’ll be proud.”
“If I can have your attention,” Gower said.
“Fine.” I was starting to hate all of them, not just Christopher.
Gower reached out and pulled me next to him. “Put your hand on top of mine,” he instructed. I did, and then he moved our hands just a bit—and they disappeared. I pulled my hand back involuntarily, and there it was, still attached.
He brought his hand out, too. “It’s an optical illusion. We have equipment hidden here. The residue from the Ancients’ crash boosts the power.”
I thought about what they’d said in the car. “You have a transference machine here?”
“Several,” White answered. “As Christopher told you, they don’t work for us to go back to A-C, but . . .”
“They work just great to get you to, say, JFK Airport in New York?”
“Exactly.”
“There were some in the warehouse, too, weren’t there?”
“Marry me,” Martini said.
“Yes,” Gower answered. “It’s how we transport the dead superbeings back without issue.”
“Okay, but how big are these things? Because I don’t think you had one at the courthouse.”
“We all have personal models,” Gower said. But he wasn’t meeting my eyes.
I looked at Martini. “I want the truth.”
He grinned. “Say you’ll marry me first.”
“I’ll marry you before any tree on Earth.”
“Good enough for a start. We’re aliens, remember? Anyone with A-C blood has the ability to travel at what you’d call hyperspeed.”
“So you’re like the Flash?”
“No,” Gower sounded pained. “That’s a comic book character.”
“Actually,” Reader interjected, “it’s a good comparison. Look, you know how the Flash had to eat a ton because he burned
so much fuel?”
“Yeah.” I hated having to admit, right here, under these circumstances, that I was a total comics geek-girl, but I didn’t have much choice. “But he also made sonic booms, and I haven’t heard those.”
“Right. Because they don’t work like the Flash. Flash could go fast if he had enough fuel. They can go as fast as they need, but only for what they could do not moving fast.”
“And it was starting to sound so clear.” I looked to Gower. “Your turn.”
“Let’s say I can run five miles and not be dead tired,” Gower said. I nodded. “I can move those five miles as fast as I need to, blink of an eye kind of thing. But, if I can’t, say, run ten miles and not be exhausted, then I can’t run ten miles in the blink of an eye, either. I can only do whatever I’m physically in shape to do, nothing else. It’s why we all have to stay physically fit.”
“As an example, I can make love for twelve hours straight,” Martini offered. “However, I’ve never tried to make it go faster, so maybe that’s not a good example.”
“But, so far, your most winning argument.” I looked back to Reader. “So, back to the Flash. He also made the wind whoosh around you, blew newspapers, that sort of thing. They don’t.”
“Right, ’cause they’re real. Think of it as them stopping time and moving through everything in a way that doesn’t create disturbance. They don’t stop time, but the way they move can’t be seen by human eyes. They also move faster than film, video, or digital can catch. But in such a way that they don’t create any more disturbance than if they were just strolling.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. So, how did you show up where I was?” I asked Martini.
“We monitor any unusual activity. To you, it seemed like just a few seconds, maybe a minute or so, from the point the fender bender happened until you killed the superbeing. But that was enough time for me to spot the change in his body chemistry, get to a transference machine, get to the airport in your town, and get to you in time to save the day.”
I let the last comment pass. “So you’ve got a transference machine in, what, every major airport?”
“Every airport around the world,” Reader said. “It’s pretty impressive.”
“Where are they hidden?”
“Restrooms, mostly,” Martini answered. “You’d be amazed at how easy it is to just appear in a stall and go out. No one ever notices.”
“You probably land in the women’s restroom.”
He grinned. “Only when you’re in there.”
I thought about this again. “How many miles can you run?”
“Fifty, without breaking a sweat.” I realized he was serious.
“You all like that?”
“All field operatives have to be able to do twenty-five miles without a problem,” White answered.
I looked at him. “You too?”
“I can do fifty, just like Jeffrey and Christopher.” I got the feeling I’d insulted him. I decided he could live with that.
“I can do two,” I offered. I mean, I had to show I wasn’t totally without skills.
“Your mother can do twenty,” Reader said. “Damn, you’re slipping, girlfriend.”
“My mother cannot do twenty miles.” Could she? We’d never talked about it much. She’d been thrilled I’d gone out for track, just as she had. Well, maybe when she was younger she’d done twenty miles.
“Can, did, and does regularly,” Reader said, sounding impressed. “Geez, it took me months to get up to ten miles. I can do twenty-five now,” he added.
“Mr. Meets-Minimum, I see.”
Reader shrugged. “Beating your two, girlfriend. Besides, I’m the driver. They don’t drive or fly real well, as a rule.”
“Really?”
“Yep,” Martini confirmed. “Our reflexes are actually too fast. Every driver we have is a human operative. Even Paul has too much A-C blood to be able to drive or fly.”
“But fast reflexes are good for flying,” I protested. “My uncle says so.”
“Fast reflexes for a human are what you and James have,” White explained. “And all your machinery is made for humans. Believe us when we tell you that our reflexes are fast enough to destroy the machines, not handle them better.”
“Oh, my God. Christopher took my car!” I loved that car. I took better care of it than of my apartment.
“He took your keys. Someone else drove it,” Martini said reassuringly. “We roll with drivers at all times.”
“He sounds so ‘street’ when he says that,” Reader said with a laugh.
“Yeah, you’re all keepin’ it gangsta, really.” I shook my head. “Okay, so you can move fast. How do the human operatives make time, though?”
“If we’re touching you, you move as fast as we do,” Gower said. “You wouldn’t notice it, either, even if we’re going at hyperspeed.”
“You’d be too busy blacking out,” Reader said. “Trust me, I still do.”
“Is that why I fainted before?”
“Nope,” Martini said. “That was because you were overcome by my lips being so close to yours.”
“Good to know. So, other than making my hand disappear, why are we here, exactly?”
“Well, we were going to use the transference machine here to go to Dulce,” White answered. “But I’d prefer to wait until we know the situation with your mother is handled.”
“Christopher won’t take her here or the Science Center, though,” Gower said. “Standard procedure is to take her to Home Base.”
“True,” White sighed. “Okay, off to the Box, then.”
“No. I want to see this crash site, since we’re here.” I was worried about Mom, but if I believed them, the A-Cs were taking care of her. I wanted to see the crash site as a distraction, so I could focus on it instead of on what I couldn’t do. Mom’s training, as I thought about it.
“Fine, as long as you’re up to it,” White said.
“Hold onto me,” Martini said, offering his hand.
I decided not to argue. He had a good grip—it was clear he was holding my hand firmly but not so that he’d crush it. I had to admit, I felt better with him touching me.
We walked forward, and then, right there, where nothing had been before, was a huge, rounded ditch. I could see where something big and heavy had landed and then skidded for a good, long way, ending up right in front of where we stood.
I looked back. I could still see the limo and the other SUVs. “Can they still see us?”
“Lift your top. If they react, the answer’s yes.”
“You’re so suave. Can I let go of your hand now?”
“It’d be better if you didn’t, and not just because I like holding your hand.” He led me around the outside of the ditch. “If you were to slip and fall, you’d get hurt, and if you fell through an open door, you’d get sent to whichever transport point you hit. Not pretty and not safe, especially under the circumstances.”
“I don’t see anything but the ditch. I mean, at least I can see that now. But I don’t see any machinery, let alone a door, open or not.”
“It’s cloaked.”
“Like in the movies?”
“Only real, yes.” Martini was fiddling with something. He seemed to be spinning a dial in the air.
“What are you doing?”
As I asked, he stopped fiddling with the air and then pushed at something I also couldn’t see. There was a hissing sound, like an air lock opening, and then Martini stepped onto thin air. At least, that’s what it looked like. “We call it ‘opening the door.’ Come on in,” he said, pulling me with him.
As I stumbled over, I saw we were now in a dome made of glass and metal. Inside it were what looked like the metal detectors at the airport—doorways that go nowhere. There were dozens of them, and two particularly large ones, at the edges of the dome, opposite each other. I could also see more men who looked like the rest of the boys from Alpha Centauri in there. They were bigger and more imposing than Martini or Gow
er, and I got the distinct impression they were security.
One near us nodded to Martini. “You taking a trip?”
“Probably. Giving a tour.”
“Enjoy.” His tone made it clear this was unlikely.
We wandered through, with Martini nodding or speaking to most of the men there, all of whom seemed bored but completely alert at the same time. “Security checkpoint?” was all I could think of to ask.
“Yep. This site is still active.”
“What do you mean, active? Like radioactive?” I started to worry that I’d never have children.
“Well, in a way, but it’s not dangerous. Residue from the Ancients’ fuel source is still here—its half-life makes your nukes seem like kiddie toys. That residue helps power our transference gates. The Ancients had a lot of technology that was far beyond ours, which means much more than yours. That’s not an insult to Earth,” he added quickly. “You’re just a younger civilization than we are. And we’re babies compared to the Ancients.”
I felt small and very insignificant all of a sudden. “How many inhabited worlds are there?”
“Plenty, but out our way? Not too many. We live in the boondocks, spacewise. You’re even more in the middle of nowhere than Alpha Centauri is. But we’re your closest neighbor.”
“And like a good neighbor, Alpha Centauri is there.”
“If the slogan fits.” He looked down at me. “It’s always hard, the first time you find out it’s true, that you’re really not alone in the universe.”
“Why?” I wanted to cry again, but this time it wasn’t making me mad, it was making me feel like a little girl.
Martini seemed to pick this up. He moved us into an area without a doorway to nowhere or a security guard nearby and pulled me into his arms. I didn’t protest. “It’s okay. It passes,” he said, patting my back. “It’s hard for us, too. We’re taught we’re different as soon as we’re old enough to understand it, but we don’t get the full details until we’re teenagers. It’s a shock, and we have a whole extended family to help us through it.”
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to my parents. I don’t understand half of what’s happened, but I know everything’s changed.”
