Alien Research

by Gini Koch

  White looked as if he’d like to leave, so took that as a sign we should get moving. But I wasn’t quite ready. “So, what will you do if Al Dejahl wins? If all the people, Alfred included, are mind-controlled or destroyed?”

  “I’m not like the thing you call ACE. I’ll just leave. Find another group of interesting beings and hang out with them for a while.”

  “Will those interesting beings allow you to hide as well as we do?”

  “Can’t see why not.”

  “Can’t see how. While about half of the Alpha Centauri system has humanoids on it, you probably can’t pass for any of them. But you could walk outside right now and pass for a human. Other than your eyes, which I’ll wager a really good pair of contacts could fix.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “You won’t do anything that can show you’re here to those hunting for you, I get it. But you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a planet so easy to hide on, especially since you’ll have to go closer to the galactic core. And I know you could tell us something, anything, that would help.”

  Algar nodded. “I could. And then, the next time, you’d come to me again, and you’d harangue me some more, beg, plead, threaten, whatever. And maybe I’d do it again. And then, after a very short while, it becomes a habit. And instead of doing for yourselves, suddenly you’re hailing your great god Algar and your free will and my anonymity are things of the past.”

  “We don’t do that with ACE.”

  “Ah, but you do. By all rights, the Z’porrah invasion should have destroyed this world, certainly the main city under attack. And yet Washington, D.C. and all the rest of the world still stand. And the humans didn’t nuke each other in the process. You didn’t prevent any of that—ACE did. Because of you. It got involved, and it gave itself away.”

  “Is ACE in trouble?”

  “Not as you’d understand trouble, but yes. Because all stronger, immortal beings of all kinds have a form of Prime Directive.”

  “That’s what you did, your crime. You interfered.”

  He snapped his fingers again. Nothing changed. Other than, as I looked around, White and Gower seemed as immobile as Adriana. “No.” Algar reached up and patted my cheek. “No, that’s what I chose not to do.”

  “So you’re a good guy?”

  He shrugged. “Good is in the eyes of the beholders. Is it good that I’ve allowed not one or two but hundreds of planets and civilizations to destroy each other and themselves? Is that a moral choice?”

  Algar wasn’t asking lightly or rhetorically, so I thought about my reply before I gave it. “I guess it depends on whether or not you value free will.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it, yes.”

  “Were you one of the race we call the Ancients?”

  “No, but we knew of them. That’s why I wandered out this way. Followed their paths, in my own way, of course.”

  “Of course. The Ancients interfered.”

  “Yes, they did. And both good and bad came of it. But they weren’t immortals.”

  “I don’t see the difference, honestly. Short life or a long one, why does that affect your moral code?”

  He sighed. “Let me give you more perspective, and more food for thought. Most Black Hole People remain within the Black Hole Universe. Your science is eons away from determining that all the black holes are interconnected, particularly how they’re connected. We have a rich, full universe that provides us infinite work and entertainment. But some of us are chosen to leave.”

  “Were you chosen or did you run away?”

  “I was chosen. I was in charge of a solar system. My third, by the way. Billions and billions of souls in that system. I chose to let them have free will. All of them. And while there were many leaders, on one of the planets eventually one leader was more strong and charismatic and powerful than any before him. And he destroyed his world, sent a bomb more frightening than your worst nukes right into his own sun. Billions died, all at once, not just on that planet, but on the others in that system. There were eight planets teeming with life in that solar system, wiped out by one power-mad individual’s free will. Was my allowing that to happen a ‘good’ moral choice?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Let me make it more complicated. Or maybe easier. That took place in the system one over from the system the beings you call the Ancients came from. They chronicled the event as a warning to others, and did their best to spread their good word.”

  “I knew they were missionaries!”

  “Yes, and your ability to make those kinds of leaps is why we’re having this conversation right now.”

  “I’m not the only one who can so leap.”

  “No, but you’re the one who was at the right place at the right time and made that leap when it mattered. Timing and luck count much more than most humans want to believe. Anyway, the beings on the one world, the world responsible for the destruction of its entire solar system, survived. In a sense.”

  That very bad feeling from earlier returned, sharing that I wasn’t going to like the next things Algar said.

  “You call them parasitic superbeings. I was on Alpha Four when the man you called Ronald Yates was banished to Earth. I might have even suggested it.”

  “Why?”

  “Being helpful. It was clear he was a danger. Along the lines of that other leader, the one who destroyed his entire solar system. He was very like the one I’d allowed to destroy every living thing he could.”

  “Why didn’t you kill Yates, then?”

  “Because there is a chasm larger than the Grand Canyon between ‘might,’ ‘will,’ and ‘did.’”

  “Ah, the Minority Report defense. I’ll allow it.”

  “So glad.” Algar definitely had a sarcasm knob, and apparently it flipped to eleven easily. “Because of what I can do, I saw when the leader who’d destroyed his own solar system arrived and joined with Yates.”

  He paused, presumably waiting for a reaction from me. I didn’t have one. Well, not one I could verbalize. Maybe that was Algar’s point.

  “So, consider that I’m the reason Mephistopheles ever existed on your planet. And yet I did nothing then and still do nothing now to either stop or hinder either him or his offspring. Now what are your thoughts about free will and passive noninterference?”

  Thought long and hard before I replied. And looked at White while so thinking. “Some of his offspring are good and some are bad. And one side will win. You are on the side of good, so to speak, because you help us, and I don’t think you’re doing Ronaldo Al Dejahl’s laundry, for example.”

  He chuckled. “No, I’m not.”

  “So you aligned with the good guys as an active choice. Because you could have chosen either side when you came here, couldn’t you? Or no side at all and just wandered off like you say you will should we annihilate ourselves.”

  This I didn’t buy. Algar was attached to the A-Cs, more than he seemed willing to admit. Or maybe he told himself he wasn’t attached so that when he did nothing it didn’t bother him as much.

  “Yes. Alfred is still unaware that I exist and I could have chosen to not let Richard know.”

  “You said I couldn’t comprehend your crimes. But I can.”

  Algar shook his head. “I’ve explained this in simplistic terms, as if, for my people, you were a little child. There’s always more going on than you see or are aware of, including the true nature, effect, and ramifications of choices. Layers and twists upon layers and twists. That’s how the universe works. Even when you win, somehow, you can still lose. You know that from experience.”

  “True enough. So why tell me all this? Will I forget it the moment I’m away from you?”

  “No, but your thoughts about me will be shielded. As for why?” He shrugged. “As I said, you’re my favorite.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled slowly. “You always say please and thank you. You’ve never taken what I do for granted. And I find your offers of gif
ts of milk or money in shoes to be somewhat . . . endearing.”

  “So I not only actually called it, in that you’re more like the A-C Elves than a confusing scientific answer, but you also like me because I’m polite? Wow. Mom and Dad would be so proud. If I could tell them about this. And Christopher. I’d love to tell Christopher about this. I might even be able to do it without a lot of gloating.”

  “Which you can’t. I’d say sorry but I’m not. You won’t be able to talk about me, not even with Richard or Paul, unless you’re with me and I allow it, such as I have now.”

  “Or Gladys,” I added. “She knows about you, even if she can’t tell Al Dejahl about you. Which is good. But I can talk to her about you once she’s okay. I mean, we brought her back from under Ronaldo’s mind control before. We can do it again. You could do it, if you wanted to.”

  Algar snapped his fingers. White and Gower were breathing again. Or we were back from whatever time hold Algar had put the two of us into. I wasn’t sure and doubted he’d give me a straight answer if I asked.

  “Well, about Gladys. There’s more than a little problem with Gladys.”

  “What problem is that?” Gower asked.

  Algar shook his head. “You’ll get to find out.”

  “But you’re not going to tell us?” Figured he wasn’t, but also figured I should ask.

  “No.”

  “You are just like the Q.” I’d never liked the Q, because they were pompous, capricious, all-powerful jerks. Algar had the potential to make the Q look good. And he knew it, too, and clearly wanted me not exactly liking him. Why was the question.

  “In a way, I suppose. But your situation is much less like Star Trek and much more like The Mummy.” With that he snapped his fingers and the four of us weren’t in the water tank area anymore.

  CHAPTER 34

  WE WERE STANDING IN A ROOM that had the faint odor of sulfur and sewage along with small tanks and equipment that said “Reclamation” and “Reclaimed Water: Do Not Drink” all over them.

  We were all also completely dry. The baseball mitt was on my left hand, my purse was over my neck. Opened my purse. Everything in there was dry, too.

  Pulled out my iPod and earbuds. Put them in and pushed play. “MF of the Year” came on. It’d been playing when we were in the plane and the iPod wasn’t on repeat. So Algar had a sense of humor. And, I guess, wanted me to know I hadn’t been dreaming or hallucinating.

  Left the earbuds in and the music playing low enough that I could still hear everyone and clipped my iPod to my belt. Needed the reassurance of tunes right now for some strange reason.

  “I’m glad we finally got that hatch opened,” Adriana said. “But I’m gladder your imagination was just overactive, Kitty.”

  “Ah . . . right you are.” I wanted to ask Gower and White what the hell had just happened but I couldn’t. I also wanted to ask what had happened to the water tanks, and why there were water tanks in the Science Center in the first place. Wished I’d asked Algar when I’d had the chance. Maybe next time. If there was a next time.

  “I’m just relieved none of our enemies were here in the reclamation system,” White said, as if everything was totally normal. Figured I’d better follow his lead. He’d been living with the knowledge of Algar’s existence for a long time, after all.

  Took the mitt off and tucked it under my arm, then dug my Glock out of my purse and made sure a full clip was in. “I’m ready to move on, then, Mister White. I think we need to find Gladys.”

  “We need to ensure that the Science Center is clear,” Gower countered. “If you’re right, everyone’s here somewhere, Gladys included.”

  “Yes. Back to the excitement of being under siege, Missus Martini.”

  They were right. More to the point, they were trying to tell me to forget about Algar. I didn’t call on the Elves for help with anything other than food, clothes, and cleaning, and that was how it had to be. My clothes and belongings were all nice and dry. Looked down. My hands were clean, and so were my pants. Decided not to point this out.

  Gower did a hyperspeed check of the reclamation area—it was clean, so to speak. Other than the hatch, which White closed, there was only one door in or out of the room. Managed not to mention that the hatch had been closed already. This spatio-temporal-black-hole stuff really messed with your head.

  Had to get my head back in the game. The music changed and “Saints of Los Angeles” came on. Let the music rev me up. A few bars was all it took. Headed for the door.

  I didn’t open it right away, but listened at it first. Didn’t hear anything. Opened it slowly, ready to slam it shut or open, depending, but the hallway it opened to was empty.

  Realized we weren’t on the lowest level, where the room I’d dubbed Martini’s Human Lair was, where we’d lived for my first year or so with Centaurion Division. We were on the second level, the one right under ground level.

  All A-C bases went down. The Science Center went down fifteen floors. Main Operations, or what I called the Bat Cave Level, were on the third floor. The ground level had the main launch area, motor pool, main gate area, and other logistical sections.

  The second floor where we were had human medical. Other than when I’d had to bash in Beverly’s head with a baseball bat to prevent her from killing or sterilizing Jeff, I hadn’t spent a lot of time on this level. Possibly because it was also where a lot of standard maintenance happened, so it made sense that the reclamation equipment was here.

  What didn’t make sense, any more, was how the left fork of the pipe could take us to the second floor, but the right took us to the fifteenth, and yet never went down. And none of us had noticed or mentioned it—not Jeff and Christopher when they were little; not me, Christopher and the flyboys when we crawled through the first time; not Gladys and Security; and not even my mother when she was told about how the pipe that emptied onto the equivalent of just under ground level led to the hallway just outside of where I was sleeping fourteen floors below.

  Clearly Algar was in control of that pipe in some way. Maybe the pipe was still here because it was the spatio-temporal-black-hole, or its machinery.

  Chose to absolutely not mention this aloud. Not because I wasn’t sure if I even could or not, but because I had to figure that Algar had put us here for a reason. He might want to say he was just a helpful observer and wasn’t involved, but he was indeed involved. Perhaps only like an observer at a baseball game, but he was involved. And he obviously had a favorite team.

  While White zipped through the floor to see who or what might be around, I shoved this newest wrinkle away, hard, and ran through our past experiences. The first time the Science Center had been under siege everyone other than Jeff and a few others had been herded to the top level. But when Al Dejahl had taken over he’d done it in the Research area, in the library, in fact, which was below us.

  I truly had no clear idea of how wide the Science Center actually was, but I was pretty sure it was much wider on all four sides than the ground level would indicate. I always related to rats in a maze whenever I had to find my own way around here.

  However, hyperspeed meant White could search it, vast or not, in under thirty seconds. “All clear,” he said when he rejoined us.

  “Up or down?” Gower asked.

  “That’s the hundred thousand dollar question, isn’t it? A part of me thinks Ronaldo will go for the library again, but another part says he’ll try somewhere else. So, up, I guess? It’s one floor to search if no one’s there and then back down.”

  White nodded. “I’d hate to discover they were on the top floor after we’d searched all the way down.” He took my hand, Gower took Adriana’s; we headed for the stairwell, and went up.

  We reached the stairwell door. Nothing and no one. We zipped through. This stairwell was back off the main floor, so we were actually hidden by a wall. White stopped walking and shoved us against said wall “We’re not alone,” he said in whisper.

  We slunk up to the
doorway in the wall. As with the first time I’d found people up here who shouldn’t be, there were a lot of folks in camouflage. They weren’t doing anything much, just standing around with assault rifles.

  “Do we round them up or kill them?” Gower asked, keeping his voice low.

  “There are too many,” Adriana replied. “We would need to use explosives.”

  “We can get those easily enough,” White said.

  “Wait.” There was something wrong with these people. They were literally just standing there. Sure, they could be on duty, but they weren’t at attention or even seeming to be paying attention. “Wait a second.”

  Scanned the terrorist crowd. Based on the body structures, there were a lot of women in this group. Sure there were women terrorists—Mahin was one, after all—but this many in this particular organization didn’t seem statistically likely.

  Searched for a face, any face. Was finally rewarded to see a couple people who were more or less facing us. They were both incredibly attractive, ill-fitting military garb or not.

  Pulled everyone a few steps back. “I’m pretty sure those are our people, as in, A-Cs, and probably humans who work with us.”

  “Why?” Gower asked.

  “Presumably so that if anyone breaches through the shielding somehow they’ll either kill our own or our own will kill them.” This was a rather impressive bad guy maneuver. After all, if we could have gotten in when we were dealing with Mahin, we would probably have shot first and asked questions later.

  “So what do we do?” Gower asked.

  “We still have to find Ronaldo and everyone else. The people on this level don’t account for even a tenth of those who are missing.”

  “Library again?” White asked.

  Was about to reply when the song changed to “Just Another Psycho.” Should probably nominate it to be our official Bad Guy Theme Song.

  But none of the Megalomaniac League thought they were ordinary. So, would Ronaldo do a repeat? And if he was, why? He’d wanted Jamie last time, and this was the last place where she’d be. She’d lived all but about a week of her life in the Embassy.