Firechild

by Jack Williamson

  Another chopper came out of the east. Or perhaps the same one, circling the perimeter. He dropped again into a thicket until it was far away. The release of tension nearly overwhelmed him. His whole body aching, he needed all his will to drag himself back to his feet and stumble on. The sun was low before he came in view of the fence, barb-spiked wire strung on tall steel posts, glass insulators gleaming. He stopped on the crest of a barren hill to look for anything he could recall from the dream, but the land still looked strange. Perhaps—perhaps she had crossed farther ahead.

  He tramped on west, staying away from the marching fence, following the bottom of a brush-tangled valley. The day was still hot. He needed a cold beer. A beer and a rare steak and a hot shower and a good night’s rest. A sticky bitterness filled his mouth. His skin felt parched as if from fever. The bare hills looked strange around him.

  The chopper came back. He fell to the ground, listening to the fading thud of its blades. The rest felt too good. He lay there too long, and the sun was down before he could spur himself back to his feet. In the twilight, he failed to see a rain-cut gully until he was sliding into it.

  But he recognized its shape!

  The same arroyo into which he had fallen with Meg in the dream. He clambered out and stopped to look around him. No chopper near enough to hear or see. No sound or motion anywhere. Perhaps—perhaps his luck still held.

  The stony slope ahead was the same one he recalled. And there—there was the mass of brush where she had tried to hide. It had grown up around a broken concrete slab and a few twisted sheets of rusting steel. Relics of a stock tank, he thought, that once held water from the well.

  He found the well. A narrow pit, half hidden under the brush. Dropping on his face to peer into it, he shrank back from a cold reek of stagnant mustiness. The flashlight picked up its wall, not quite straight but falling forever, shrinking down toward a small dark point. Nothing at the bottom that he could see.

  “Meg! Meg! Can you hear me?”

  A strange hollow echo came back from his hoarse yell. When that faded, there was nothing else. Uncoiling the rope, he fed it into the pit. Coil after coil, it went down, down, down. Now and then he stopped to shine the light after it. It dwindled into darkness. Listening for a cry, for breathing, for any hint of life, he heard nothing at all.

  A hundred feet of thin nylon, and still no sign. When it was all paid out, he began to pull it up again. It came too easily, lifting nothing. Yet he knew this had to be the spot. He knew Meg was down there. Dead?

  The rope tightened!

  Trembling, he pulled on it. Gently at first, slowly harder. Too hard, at last. Something held the rope, a force too much for her weight, too much for her strength. Unless, perhaps, she was really more than human. Frightened, trembling, he pulled with all his own strength.

  The rope went slack. Staggering backward, he almost fell. If she had somehow caught the rope or tied it to herself, he had lost her.

  But no!

  He felt weight on the line. Carefully, fearfully, chilled with his own sweat in the thicking dust, he hauled and hauled and hauled, still wondering at the strength he sensed, wondering how she could be alive, wondering if Vic had really launched a new human evolution. Could she be the first specimen of a wholly new species? Homo ultimus?

  Something came out of the well.

  Something he failed to recognize till he blinked in the dimness and knew it had to be Meg. Nothing like the fat pink worm he had known. She had the look of a human child, aged three or four, but far too small for that age, her head too large. She had grown long hair, very fine, cotton-white except where mud had clotted it. Her eyes were closed. She wore a thin cotton dress, torn and soiled, too big for her. Her feet were bare, bruised and lacerated.

  Her arms were stretched above her head, her hands knotted into tiny fists on the rope, her teeth clenched on it. Her skin looked deathly white, scratched deep by the walls of the well, yet with no blood showing. She felt very light when he lifted her, her body stiff and cold as if already in the rigor of death. He heard no breath, felt no pulse.

  Yet she had been alive to clutch the rope—

  The chopper was sudden thunder overhead. Its wind was a hot engine-reek. A blinding light glared down on him, and a bullhorn was bellowing: “Don’t move, Belcraft! Stand where you are!”

  27

  Tradecraft

  Old Martha Roman’s funeral drew even fewer mourners than her husband’s. A handful of loyal servants and aging family friends. The tearless daughter and her lawyers. Attorneys for the dismantled corporation and the new foundation. An officious mortician who was probably reporting to the CIA.

  For Anya and Shuvalov, the occasion offered cover for a twice-delayed contact. They stood in the cemetery with the foundation attorneys, well apart from the glaring daughter. When the service was over, Anya drove Shuvalov back to the airport.

  Sitting under the Florida sun, the car was stifling. The air conditioner took a long time to cool it, and Shuvalov’s strong cologne failed to mask the reek of his sweat. He looked jittery and haggard, dark stubble showing on his heavy jowls. Fingers twitching nervously, he lit a rank-odored Russian cigarette and sat staring at her in a wary silence.

  “We’re safe,” she assured him. “Unless the CIA is keener than I think. They could have got to the Avis car I had reserved in Miami, but I dropped it off at Ft. Lauderdale and picked this one up at the Hertz counter there, with no reservation. It can’t have been bugged.”

  “Safe?” A harsh grunt. “Comrade, I have news for you.” He waited, but she wouldn’t ask what it was. “The Center is recalling us.”

  Startled, she glanced at him and shrank from the level malevolence in his dark-circled eyes.

  “I am flying to Moscow tomorrow,” he told her. “You will receive orders to follow as soon as that can be arranged. I doubt that you’ll ever be sent back.”

  “Your own withdrawal is probably advisable.” She tried not to show her own old antagonism. “Since it seems you are under such heavy surveillance.”

  “Advisable?” A savage-toned explosion. “It’s the end of my career!”

  “Not necessarily—”

  “You’re a bungling failure, comrade.” He cut her off, speaking with a bitter force. “You lack the tradecraft we expected in you. The hard fact is, you have led us into a whole string of failures. You induced us to trust that snake Scorpio. You let him murder our best informer at EnGene, and then escape with documents you had promised us. You have failed to eliminate Bell craft’s brother, or Belcraft’s genetic monster. In sum, you have become a stupid tool of the Americanski. “

  Glancing again, she caught a glint of satisfaction in his quick, feral eyes.

  “On my advice,” he finished, “the Center is recalling you for a final accounting. If the story of your blundering has made a stupid fool of me, if I’m going to the wall for it, I do not intend to go alone.”

  She took time to pass a delivery truck and regain control before she could trust herself to speak. “Boris, part of what you say may seem true. Our craft depends; on luck as well as on skill. Luck is often bad, a fact I think the Center ought to understand.”

  “Don’t depend on it. We do expect occasional miscalculations. But, comrade, your own bad luck, if you want to call it that, has been remarkably consistent.”

  “I’ll let you speak for your own career.” She managed to smile into his cold hostility. “I have news, however, for the Center. News that I have not failed.”

  “Da?” An ironic snort. “Make your boasts to Bogdanov.”

  “When I do, he’ll send me here again to finish up my work.”

  “Not likely. A klutz who never learned the trade. Why should you be trusted again?”

  “Because I have made progress. I recently established a new contact. A man who was employed at EnGene before the disaster. He knew Scorpio and Carboni—he was in fact perhaps the best friend Carboni had. It was a warning from Carboni that enabled him to esc
ape the disaster. He is close to General Clegg, in a position which gives him freedom of movement inside the military perimeter and excellent access to confidential information.”

  “Who is this unexpected ally?”

  “Comrade, that is extremely sensitive information.” She paused to enjoy his baffled mixture of doubt and wrath. “I see no reason to reveal it now. Or to you at any time, not if you are to be replaced as my superior.”

  “Not yet replaced.” She felt his cold eyes probing as if to disrobe her. “I can still warn my friends at the Center of your skill with all these cunning fabrications that have allowed you to wallow in the luxuries of a Romanoff czarina.”

  She drove on, not looking at him.

  “I’ll be seeing Bogdanov before you return.” His tone turned grittily sardonic. “Have you other such incredible facts to report?”

  “I believe Scorpio should receive attention.” To steady her voice, she drew a deep breath. “It’s true he should never have been trusted. I never liked him, but he was sent to me as a faithful and efficient agent. He is now at large, I don’t know where.

  “He killed Carboni. It is possible that he escaped with Carboni’s photocopies of Belcraft’s research notes. I believe he also has another document the Center will be eager to recover. That’s the letter Belcraft wrote his brother in Fort Madison just before the disaster. We have traced Scorpio there. I think he got into the brother’s office to take the letter—and then booby-trapped the brother’s house.

  “A stupid beast! He lacks brains to understand whatever the letter and the photocopies may reveal, but our efforts to obtain them must have let him know their value. If he should sell them to somebody who knows genetic engineering, the result might be a new Enfield disaster, spreading—I’m afraid to think how far. I imagine the Center will want Scorpio hunted down.”

  “Da?” He mocked her. “Comrade, do you expect Bogdanov to swallow such fantastic fiction—and choose you to be the exterminator?”

  “Boris, I’d rather leave killing to you.” She contrived to smile. “As for myself, I expect more appealing missions.”

  Watching for road signs, she made him wait.

  “You see,” she resumed at last, “my informer on Clegg’s staff has been passing on new information that I think will be of great interest to the Center.”

  “I know you, Ostrov!”

  She saw that she was getting to him now.

  “Still the scheming whore you always were.” His dark, fat face had turned even darker, and his high voice shook. “You’ve no command of tradecraft. You have built a career on cunning invention, the way your gangster father did. You lied to make yourself the mistress of that .senile capitalist and get your red-painted talons into his fortune.”

  She shrugged at his anger.

  “In any case, comrade—” He turned the word to mockery. “Your cunning schemes have overtaken you. Here at last, with all your false promises of secret files and private letters and genetic wonder weapons, you have led me and the whole Center into a trap. In Moscow, I shall warn the Center not to swallow this strange tale of some mysterious new informer whom only you can contact. A tale I’ll make sure they don’t believe.”

  “Comrade, I’m sure you’ll try.” She returned his derision. “You’re aware, however, that the Center has its own records of my training and the use I have made of it. When your friend Bogdanov hears what this man has told me—”

  “He’ll send you off for psychiatric care.”

  “You haven’t heard what I’ve learned. Here’s the gist of it.”

  She let him wait while she bent to turn up the air conditioner fan, trying to get his odor out of the car.

  “You may report it to Bogdanov in any way you like.” She grinned into his glowering. “The Americans have recaptured this genetic creation. My contact describes it as female. A most astonishing creature!”

  She turned again to relish his reaction.

  “Described as a fat pink worm when first seen, it has grown and changed in a way that is hard to believe—”

  “I’ll see to it that Bogdanov does not believe.”

  Carefully, she ignored his raspy mutter.

  “This brother captured the creature but later released it for some reason he seems unable to explain. Later, it was sheltered and cared for by a criminal hiding in the abandoned area around the dead city. The Americans spotted them from the air. The convict was wounded and recaptured. The creature was picked up outside the military perimeter, along with the brother.”

  “Comrade, your dramatic imagination fascinates me. I recall that you were an actress on the Moscow stage before your gangster father was exposed.”

  “Thank you, comrade.” She gave him her brightest smile. “There is even more to the story. Facts that won’t get stupid sneers from Bogdanov. You see, the Americans released the brother, hoping he would lead them to the creature. He was allowed to return to his home in Iowa, where he no doubt expected to find that letter.”

  “Which we should have recovered.”

  “True.” She made a wry face. “I did have his office searched. The letter had already been removed. Scorpio, evidently, had been there first, to take the letter and set his booby-trap—a device that demolished Saxon Belcraft’s home.

  “Yet—I don’t know why—he persists. He appears to care more for the creature than for his own career. It seems that they are able to communicate by some means not yet discovered. In flight from the Americans, the creature fell into a disused water well. She might have died there, but she was somehow able to call Belcraft back from the hospital to pull her out.”

  “Da? An actress inventing fairy tales—”

  “You may believe what you like. The facts will speak for me. Center can soon confirm that American intelligence was able to keep up with Belcraft’s travels. They reached the scene at the moment of the rescue. He and the creature have been recaptured.

  “She is now being held in a special cell in a guarded laboratory inside the military perimeter. In the time since she was first described, she has grown and changed remarkably, taking on the appearance of a human child a few years old. She seems highly intelligent. She has learned Spanish from her criminal protector—reported to be a Mexican alien.

  “The Americans are trying to discover precisely what she is and what she knows. Her mental powers seem to make her dangerous. In spite of that hazard, however, they regard her as a valuable prize. They don’t intend to let her escape again.

  “They are hoping, of course, to learn the technology used for her creation. The same technology, they believe, that set off the Enfield contagion. The American general, Clegg, hopes to turn it into a super-weapon.

  “A critical situation. Yet we still have time for action.

  The creature knows very little English. She has no technical vocabulary in any language. So far, she has refused to speak at all, except to inquire about Belcraft and her convict friend—his name is Torres.

  “She begs to see them. Up to this point, however, she has been isolated in that laboratory cell, under observation through one-way glass. I understand that she looks as harmless as any little child, but until they know what she can do, they hold her friends as hostages.

  “I’m afraid for her, Boris.” Anya’s resentments were half forgotten. “This Clegg is an evil-tempered sadist who abuses his family and bulldozes his men. The mind of a Hitler! Perhaps the same sort of mad genius. He has built a powerful clandestine organization to support his crazy quest for total control of America, perhaps of the world.

  “I’m afraid for her, but more afraid of what Clegg’s investigators may learn. If he gets that weapon—”

  Shivering a little, she shut off the air conditioner fan.

  “That will be the substance of my report to the Center.” She turned to glance cheerily at Shuvalov. “I think Bogdanov and his own superiors will send me back here, with instructions to continue contacts with this new source and take whatever action seems necessar
y to stop Clegg from getting any total weapon. If they refuse to believe me, I doubt that the failure will help the future of their careers—or your own.”

  She had got her malice back.

  “Comrade, what do you think?”

  28

  The Shadow

  Men

  She had been too long in the cold wet dark of the hoyo, too long with no food and no air. The pit’s jagged walls bit so hard she couldn’t breathe, and her life light had dimmed. The good Sax had been too far away when she found him, so far she was afraid he could never come to help. Even when she felt the rope in her face, she had no strength to reach for it—not till she felt the strong white light of his love at the top of the hoyo.

  That brought back a spark of her life. The hard rock jaws cut skin off her arms, but she moved enough to lock her hands and her teeth on the rope and cling tight when she felt Sax pull, but cruel rock held her fast. The rope hurt her teeth and the rope began to slip through her hands, but the white shine of Sax gave her new life.

  She hung on. He hauled her up, scraping past the rough wet walls. He would warm her and find food for her and carry her far away from los gringos malos that had hurt el pobre Panchito. She felt very glad, till suddenly the red fog clotted above her in the hoyo, so thick it dimmed the bright love of Sax.

  Los gringos again, coming in their ugly helicoptero. Sax had not seen them. He kept hauling and hauling on the rope. She wanted to tell him to drop the rope and run, but she had no strength or breath to call a warning, no way to reach his mind. She kept her grip locked, till he had dragged her out into the redness and the roar of the chopper.

  She felt his fear that she was dead, but still she had no breath. The feel of danger came down like red rain upon her. She heard the great bray of the gringo machine, commanding him not to move, and felt the sickness in him when he knew they were going to take her.