Brother Termite

by Patricia Anthony

  Reen’s eye lit on a slender manila folder marked TERMINATION PLAN. Inside, just under the heading CARBONATED DRINK, was a large cheerful yellow Post-it Note:

  Eliminating Reen too precipitous. And too much bad karma involved. Advise first step putting Gerber out of business. See historical references re Tylenol Scare.

  –J.W.

  J.W. Jeff Womack. So the President had known all along what the Cousin plans were, knew that Reen had deceived him. And he evidently was aware of the doomsday virus.

  Setting the folder down, Reen forced himself to sort through more evidence. A photo this time. A happy group of scruffy people around a barbecue pit. The karma sellers at a picnic. Bernard Martinez smiled into the camera. His arm was around a huge man with a beard, knit cap, and smooth brown skin. To the photo was paperclipped a note:

  To J.W. Bernard M. frightened. Claims mole in organization. No proof this is true. Essential Martinez not flee from D.C. Advise funnel more money through Jonis to keep karma sellers fat and happy.

  –Agent Miller

  Bernard Martinez, a grin on his face, terror in his eyes, his arm around the disguised Lieutenant Rushing. Reen let his breath out in a long sigh.

  Quickly he leafed through the rest of the papers. An autopsy report and three postmortem pictures, photos so ghastly that Reen nearly flung them away. Then, above the bloodied, shattered jaw Reen recognized the corpse’s eyes. Le Doux. Gentle, quick-witted Le Doux, easy to laugh, eager to please. A month earlier the Secret Service agent abruptly left White House security. Reassigned, Reen had been told when he asked about his absence.

  The soles of Le Doux’ s feet were burned black. Welts lay in a houndstooth pattern across his legs, his chest. On the autopsy report the grim notation:

  Burns caused by application of electrical current. Cause of death: gunshot wound. Bullet entered medulla

  and exited center of mandible.

  The letters blurred, an order from Reen’s mind not to read further. An autonomic demand of blind love.

  With the autopsy report was a Post-it Note:

  Landis compromised. Fingered Le Doux. If they shot Le Doux, he talked.

  Reen laid the autopsy report down and waited until his vision cleared. Humans were a mix of cold murder and warm laughter. Cousins walked a tepid middle path. It was Reen’s own fault that he had underestimated them. Human violence had always seemed newspaper-story distant, television-drama unreal. Now he knew how sheltered the walls of the White House had been and how brittle and breakable they could become.

  He forced himself back into the search. More photos. Grainy black-and-white photos taken by security cameras. Photos of Hopkins and Tali. Tali and Loving Helpers entering the Secret Service office at the end of the White House’s cross hall.

  The pictures halted Reen, his mind balking before the insurmountable barrier of Tali’s own treason. Then he was searching hurriedly again, picking up memos, discarding them, their messages barely registering.

  Joint Chiefs at Langley 1/17, 1/19, 1/28, 1/30.

  –Miller

  Jonis scared to death. Afraid Tali has caught on.

  –Bernie

  Don’t you people understand? Look what you let happen to Jonis. Someone’s following me. The last time I slept was in the Greyhound bus station three nights ago. I have to get out of town NOW. Get me some money or I’ll go to Hopkins. I’ll tell him everything. I’m not kidding.

  –Bernie

  On the third page lay a wrinkled, unattached piece of paper. Reen opened it carefully. It was even more fragile and brittle than Jonis’s petition had been. In Jeff Womack’s slanted handwriting, a cryptic series of numbers: 7039713991.

  Folding the page carefully, Reen gazed around the oval room. The logs had burned themselves out, and the fireplace seemed to be sucking warmth from the air.

  He put the papers back into their envelope, hopped up on a chair, and taped the envelope again to the back of the portrait. Then he walked down the hushed corridor and the quiet stairs to the office of White House security.

  He twisted the knob and pushed. The hinges creaked. The room, which should have been manned, was dark. Patting the wall to his right, he found the light switch and flicked it on.

  On the worn carpet by the file cabinet Reen found three dime-sized drops of dried blood and four bloody parallel grooves in the beige paint–grooves that human fingernails must have scratched. Landis compromised. Fingered Le Doux. But before he gave in to the Loving Helpers, Security Chief Landis had fought.

  “You found it, didn’t you?” a voice said.

  Reen turned and saw Pearson. Pearson who knew karate, who with a nine millimeter could put out a candle at thirty yards.

  “The documentation, I mean.” Pearson’s dark eyes were somber, his voice shorn of its cheerful lilt. “Where is it?” Pearson oozed around the door and shut it behind him.

  Reen stepped back.

  Pearson’s eyes tracked him. “What did you find out?”

  Reen forced his dry lips apart. “Are you going to kill me?”

  As though surprised, Pearson lifted his eyebrows. He seemed to be gauging how much force he would need to wrest the truth from Reen. How much torture it would take.

  Reen said, “Do something, Mr. Pearson. Either kill me or let me go.”

  The dark eyes shifted in indecision. Then the agent stood away from the exit. Reen rushed past him and out the door, up the stairs, and into the dark, haunted colonnade, where the tingling smell of chlorine seeped from the open doorway of the pool.

  In the Vermeil Room, Oomal and Thural still waited, talking in low tones. When Reen entered, they stood.

  “What is it, Cousin Brother?” Oomal asked, seeing the look in Reen’s eyes.

  “Get a Taskmaster and three Loving Helpers,” Reen told them. “Bring them here now.”

  WHEN REEN pushed Jeff’s bedroom door open, the light from the study revealed the figure of Marian Cole and the large hulking form of Lieutenant Rushing. The pair froze.

  “Reen,” Marian said, pressing a hand to her neck. “You scared me.”

  The half-light was kind to her face. She didn’t look much older than she did at the time of her first rebellion, when she had run away to marry.

  “Bring them,” Reen said. Behind him was the patter of the Loving Helpers’ soft boots, the heavier tread of the Taskmaster. When Marian saw the Helpers, she shrank back against a dresser, hitting her shoulder with a bruising thud.

  “Don’t, Reen. Just listen for a minute. Jeff was murdered.” She eyed the Helpers who had drifted like ghosts into the room. “That was no suicide. The nitrate test on his hand came up negative. The autopsy showed two bruises on his jaw where someone held his head, and two chipped teeth where the gun was shoved in his mouth.”

  Jeff, his laughter ringing out from the Green Room, a sound as unforgettable as the clap of his death.

  “I found Jeff’s evidence, Marian,” Reen said. “And I read it.”

  Her face, burdened by the weight of the inescapable, sagged. “What did it say?”

  “That Detective Rushing murdered Bernard Martinez. That you knew all the time that Jeff was using the Secret Service and the karma sellers to spy on you and the FBI. Is that why you killed him?”

  Rushing edged toward a window. “We didn’t kill Womack. Hopkins did. Hopkins was behind it all: Jonis, the attempt on your life, all of it.”

  In a lockstep that was very much like the lockstep of their minds, the Helpers walked toward Marian.

  She held her hands palms out, as though she might find the strength to push them away. “Reen! Please! Hopkins made plans with Tali. He traded your murder for the assassination of Womack. Hopkins figured once Womack was out of the way, Speaker Platt would become president. He squeezed Platt with one hand, Tali with the other.”

  The Loving Helper
s stepped forward. Marian slid to the floor, hysteria constricting her throat. Her cry was that of a naughty little girl who has caught a glimpse of her father’s punishing belt. “No! Listen! Hopkins snatched Jonis, and he wanted to take Bernard Martinez, too. Jonis wouldn’t have talked, but he worshiped Martinez. He would have told Hopkins everything to save Bernie. I had to order Martinez killed before he gave himself up to the FBI. I had to.”

  “Don’t let those things touch her,” Rushing said. “Jesus Christ! Can’t you see how scared she is? Can’t you see that?”

  The Helpers stepped forward again.

  Rushing reached under his jacket. He drew his gun and pointed it at Reen’s chest. His hands shook. “Order them back!”

  Reen’s heart galloped for an instant before going numb and still.

  “No!” Marian rose to her feet with a scream. “No, Kyle! Don’t shoot him!”

  The gun barrel wavered. “How can you let him do this to you, Marian? You know how he hurt you. How he–”

  “Goddamn it!” Her face was tight with anger. She was breathing hard. “What happened between the two of us is none of your business. Put the gun away now!”

  With a brusque gesture Reen ordered the Taskmaster and his trio of Helpers back.

  Rushing slowly holstered his pistol. His voice was a low growl. “She could have had you killed a hundred times, but she didn’t. Tali and even the Secret Service wanted to get rid of you. She stopped them. Didn’t you know that? Don’t you know how she feels about you? Goddamn. And haven’t you hurt her enough?”

  Marian slumped to a sitting position on the floor. Reen knelt beside her, so close that he could feel the heat from her body. “Do you know where Jonis is?” he asked.

  Her knees were drawn to her chest, her skirt a waterfall around her legs. “Buried at Camp David.”

  Reen reeled back.

  “I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.” Her words stumbled over each other. “I told you: Billy did it. We found out where they took the body. I got to one of his agents.”

  Her eyes met his. He wondered how he had ever thought they had depth. The irises were as blank as blue paper cutouts.

  “Oh, God, Reen,” she moaned. “Didn’t I tell you that your Brother knew? Didn’t I tell you we had to find Jonis?”

  “Did they torture him?”

  Her breath was moist and close against his skin, like an exhalation from a greenhouse. “Hopkins couldn’t get Jonis to talk. He was getting sick, and Hopkins got so scared that he made a move to snatch Martinez. That’s why Rushing had to terminate Martinez. Hopkins didn’t understand Cousins. When Martinez was killed, he thought torture was his last chance. It confused Hopkins when Jonis died.”

  Reen stood. “We will get his body.”

  At his feet, Marian looked up. “My people are already there. We were going to find him and hide him again, hide him better. I was afraid the other Cousins would find out. Hopkins is stupid,” she said bitterly. “He thought Tali had told him everything. He didn’t know about the doomsday virus. Poor Martinez. He was harmless, really. I didn’t want him killed. But he should never have converted Jonis; and the President shouldn’t have tried to play detective. Womack was getting too close to the truth.”

  “And Tali?” Reen asked, gazing down at the top of Marian’s blond, disheveled head.

  “Your Brother knows about Jonis,” Rushing answered. “Hopkins told him. Tali might have gone to the other Cousins for help, but he found out the FBI could prove that the Loving Helpers had subverted the Secret Service and that Tali helped plot your murder. Tali didn’t dare turn the Loving Helpers against Hopkins. Too many in the FBI knew. Still, Hopkins was scared shitless when Jonis died. He went to Tali and confessed. Your Brother promised he’d protect him. See? He knew who got to Jonis and why, and he just didn’t care. To Tali, man, once Jonis had converted, he was just another human. And your Brother, he doesn’t like humans worth crap.”

  Reen straightened, gazed at the misty cobalt square of window to Rushing’s right. “Let’s go to Camp David,” he said.

  Rushing nodded. “We’ll drive you.”

  “You drive,” Reen told him with a heartsick sigh. “We’ll go in the ship.” He looked down at the crouched and terrified Marian. “And we’ll take the Loving Helpers with us.”

  “I HAVE LOST the only two humans I ever loved,” Reen told Oomal as he watched Marian’s car roll through the barricades, past the waiting tanks, and out into the dark rush-hour street.

  Oomal gave him a sidelong glance.

  “So now there is no reason I cannot out-Cousin Tali,” Reen said.

  “If that’s your goal, you’d best forget it.” Oomal seemed amused. “Nobody can out-Cousin Tali.” The BMW disappeared down Pennsylvania Avenue, into the river of red taillights. “Let the Helpers take over her mind, Brother. Let me ask her some questions. There are things she’s lying about.”

  “I can’t, Oomal.” Reen spread his hands and looked at them: the chubby fingers, the stubby claw. No wonder guilt-ridden Jonis hadn’t been able to manage a better penned note of apology. “I’ve begged her to let me prolong her life the way I did Jeff Womack’s, but she says she would rather die than have the Helpers touch her. I can’t put her under control again.”

  “I’m gentle with them, Cousin Brother,” Oomal replied. “You know I’m gentle.”

  Reen nodded. Oomal was the gentlest of Brothers, making the descent into Communal Mind a cushioned fall. Yet during that fall, even with Reen holding her hand, Marian had wept. Communal Mind was deep, much deeper than the shallow graves of Marian’s eyes–its depths without light, its sides without handholds.

  “So a karma seller converted Jonis? No shit,” Oomal said in wonder as they started for the ship. “Poor Jonis. There is something seductive about the humans, you know. Give us a couple more generations with them, if we had them to give, and Cousins would start wearing three-piece suits and driving Volvos. Maybe Tali knows that. Maybe that’s why he’s playing Super Cousin. And,” Oomal said, giving Reen a knowing glance, “maybe that’s why he thinks you’re dangerous.”

  “If he did not think like a human himself,” Reen grumbled, “he wouldn’t have plotted to kill me.”

  “Just my point.” His Brother paused at the lighted ramp.

  “Another generation. That’s all it would take. Two cultures don’t merge without one coming out the winner. Some of us would be driving Volvos, all right, and some would be driving Chevy pickups with guns under the seat. Now I see why our ancestors acquired the bad habit of genocide.”

  Oomal tapped the shocked Reen playfully on the arm.

  “Remember when we first landed and it looked as though things were going to go the other way? Remember you were on the Today Show, and you said the Old Ones spoke to you? Overnight it seemed as if every human became a damned spiritualist. That’s where this karma seller stuff all came from, you know–that Today Show interview fifty years ago. I’ll bet you anything that Womack was trying to call up the Old Ones and turn them against us.”

  Reen looked at his Brother with such shock that Oomal laughed.

  “Trying to hook up an AT&T long-distance link with the Old Ones. Come on,” he said, snagging his Brother’s sleeve, “what do you expect? We took all Womack’s power away. But screwing around with cardboard ghosts isn’t important. What bothers me is what Marian said about Tali. And how Tali’s been acting lately. As if he has a bug up his ass. It’s only a matter of time before the Community finds out what Second Brother was up to. And if Tali’s panicking, Reen, we have a problem.”

  Thural came out and stood in the lighted rectangle of the ship’s doorway. Reen trudged to him, and the three walked to the navigation room.

  “How many humans do you figure know about the sterilizations?” Oomal sat down and hooked an arm over the back of his chair.

  Reen fell heavily in
to his seat. Marian. The Secret Service. Certainly Bernard Martinez had known, and anyone else Jonis had confessed to. There could be hundreds.

  “And when do you suppose the balloon’s going to go up?” Oomal asked.

  Reen looked worriedly toward the tanks surrounding the White House. He didn’t reply.

  “Maybe we ought to start making contingency plans, Reen-ja,” Oomal said.

  “Why hasn’t someone leaked it already?” Reen wondered aloud. “Why aren’t we seeing stories on the news?”

  “They’re too afraid of that doomsday virus. And so am I,” Oomal muttered. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I want to follow that car and make sure they don’t duck out on us.”

  Obligingly Thural took the ship up. Extinguishing the outside illumination so they would not be seen, they located Marian’s BMW by its hidden beacon and tagged after the twin cherries of its taillights.

  Cottage-cheese clouds sailed across the moon. The road below was a necklace of tarnished silver that some careless hand had tossed on the black, rumpled bedspread of the Maryland hills. Intent on his flying, Thural hunched over the controls. In a gesture copied from the human pantomime book, Oomal pretended to straighten a crease in his skin-tight pants and then crossed his legs.

  Humanity was so seductive.

  Reen looked down at the faint red dot-dot-dot tracer of the car’s lights as it shot past the trees. Marian had deceived him with her strength, her warmth. But Reen had deceived her first.

  Come along, the Cousins had told her when the Helpers took her hand and dragged her to the ship.

  We won’t hurt you.

  The murmured assurances of a nurse with a needle to a frightened five-year-old.