by D. F. Jones
A week passed; ten more Xenos were taken and quickly dispatched to research centers. At the insistence of the secretary of state one was sent to the USSR. The level of attacks in Nash County fell off dramatically; no more than one or two victims died each day. Man can get used to anything if he has to — and what was the death of one or two people, whatever the cause, compared to the highway accident toll?
Outside of Abdera the feeling was much the same. In New York City hundreds die every day from a variety of causes. What was another guy or two, said some citizens (with no experience of Xeno), even if they were knocked off in this horrifying way? Jesus, you stood a better chance of being murdered on the street than of buying it from this thing. A fair observation; naturally, those who made it considered themselves exempt from attack. Only in the affected areas, around Central Park, for example, did tight pockets of fear exist.
Attacks still happened around Abdera. Freedman believed two Xenos were still operating in the area, but although wooded areas were sprayed again and again, no more Xenos fell out of the trees. He suspected they had adapted and now lived closer to humans. The one way left to track them was by sound, but with windows and doors shut in houses and cars, and people on the street in protective suits, the sharp burst of sound could be easily missed. He felt sure that the Xenos now lived in the town, but even if he was right, they could be holed up in a thousand places. Still, he continued to stare pensively at the small steeple on the church.
On the side, he studied his own specimen. While he observed, no member of his staff, with the exception of Jaimie, dared to go near his office. But the Xeno seldom moved. It never tried to escape. Freedman piped smoke in through the hole in the top, banged the side, flashed lights, shouted, and played sudden bursts of sound on his recorder, but none of this had the slightest effect. He concluded that his subject had learned it could not escape, and had also learned that the antics beyond its prison meant nothing. For days on end it followed the same pattern, sleeping on the pine bough at night, resting on the tank floor by day, its passionless eyes watching its tormentor, giving nothing, asking nothing. All the same, Freedman was learning. Every day he photographed it, wrote up his notes, watched for a change in its appearance. One fact stood out: Xeno did not have to feed every day; and the longer the experiment went on, the more this worried Freedman. There are many creatures that, given the chance, will willingly eat daily, but have the ability to last a very long time without food, especially if they are not expending energy. In spite of Freedman’s experiments, the Xeno remained still, shifting only to face him as he moved around the tank. Increasingly, it became a personal battle between him and his prisoner.
Then, two events, one close upon the heels of the other. First, the consolidated report of the biologists at Brookhaven and Harvard was submitted.
The second seemed less significant at the time: His Xeno lost its iridescent sheen.
XXXIII.
The report came by the night mail. Freedman’s day had been hard; life and death went on in spite of Xeno. He looked at the bulky package without enthusiasm until he turned it over and saw the return address.
Entitled A Preliminary Report on Xeno it ran to some three hundred pages of text, drawings, diagrams, photographs, and tables. His wife took one look at his face and the book, canceled her ideas for a civilized evening meal, and returned to the kitchen to make sandwiches.
Freedman read the report from beginning to end without getting out of his chair or touching the sandwiches and milk. Many of the observations in it did not surprise him, but some did. Xeno did not have an internal bone structure: the report held that it was “exo-skeletal,” the skin evidently possessing “iso-tensional qualities the mechanics of which are not understood.” The mouth was not a mouth at all but an air intake, and the lungs performed a double function, extracting oxygen in a conventional way, but also capable — via strong surrounding muscles — of compressing air sufficiently to provide propulsion. The weapon system worked as he suspected, but the hornlike excrescence contained an inner tube which — the surrounding muscles suggested — allowed Xeno to thrust it with considerable force into its victim. The venom sac held enough for at least six shots.
But it was the section headed “Sexual Characteristics” that really intrigued Freedman. Xeno was hermaphroditic; inside its complex system there existed a penis and testicles as well as a vagina and ovaries.
This came as no blinding shock; many forms of life on earth had that ability, including the human tapeworm. In his long hours of thought, he had considered the possibility, but the lack of evidence had caused him to dismiss it. Now he had to face it: Xeno needed no partner; copulation was an internal process. Any eggs it implanted — there was a detailed description of the oviduct, which was part of the tail — would already be fertilized. The destruction of eighty-six of them would not be enough. The remaining one could restart the cycle.
At last the method by which Xeno spread and its lack of interest in its fellow creatures had been explained. Xeno way not social, for the simple fact that it had no need to be. Every single one had to be hunted down and destroyed. Only one faint ray of hope existed: The report “suspected” the testicles to be immature — a vague observation at best.
But to Freedman the implication was plain: While Xeno was adult, it had not yet reached maturity. Brushing aside his wife’s protests, he ran back to his office. Suddenly his specimen’s loss of iridescence had taken on a new significance.
His worst fears were confirmed. Xeno, reacting to the light, dropped down from the withering branch and assumed its defensive posture. Freedman ignored it, his gaze fastened on something else.
On the floor of the tank lay a pale, shadowy image of reality, the outline of another Xeno, split precisely down the center of the back. Freedman’s gaze shifted from the cast skin to the Xeno, and he noticed that its color and iridescence had been restored. And something else: It was larger.
*
One of the most powerful and satisfying experiences known to humans is sex, and Jaimie and Shane had plenty of that.
In basic, earthy terms, Jaimie screwed the hell out of Shane on every possible occasion. Their total absorption with each other cushioned them to a great extent against the horrific events which surrounded them, and in some ways the crisis helped. Jaimie worked from nightfall into the early hours, running the practice almost single-handedly, for Freedman was either tied up with hospital work, busy with anti-Xeno operations, or studying his specimen.
At around 5:00 A.M. Jaimie got back home. He and Shane ate and tumbled joyfully into bed where they stayed for a highly satisfying twelve hours. Sometimes he had to climb into his suit to meet an emergency, but even then the summons always came via the bedside phone. In the altered social conditions of Abdera they could be sure of no unwelcome visitors, no distracting invitations from neighbors. But there was another side to the coin: due to their disrupted life and Shane’s slaphappy attitude toward practically everything, she had run out of pills.
*
Throughout the Western world the implications of Xeno raised the biggest theological storm since the Reformation. From secret Vatican conclaves to banner-carrying protests, factions clashed, argued, and prayed in every country. New creeds evolved overnight and vanished just as quickly, symptoms of the profound doubts and fears of humanity.
Secretary of State Erwin Lord watched the storm’s progress as he pressed on with his private offensive. In his cold estimation the religious upheaval would have little long-term effect on the West; what it would do to those who had long denied the existence of God, he had no way of knowing.
He saw to it that copies of the Xeno report were sent to the Soviet State Institution of Science (which also had the Xeno specimen), the president of the USSR, the head of state of the Ukrainian SSR, and Dr. Marinskiya. He could not do more without breaking diplomatic rules, and in doing that much he’d badly bent a few. The Kremlin would be enraged by his action, but they could hardly prot
est. After all, the Americans weren’t trying to spy. They were giving information, not seeking it. Nor could the Soviets point to anything in the report that was even remotely political. It was straightforward and factual; if the reader chose to draw his own conclusions, that was not the Americans’ fault.
So the urgent request from the Soviet ambassador for an audience came as no surprise to Lord. The ambassador eloquently conveyed his government’s thanks for American cooperation, but “for administrative reasons which the secretary will understand,” all future material should be passed to the Soviet embassy for transmission.
Erwin Lord understood perfectly and, having no option, he agreed at once. Incidentally, had His Excellency seen the report? No?
He was sent a copy — and a copy of the secretary of state’s earlier report — immediately. Lord was satisfied; he’d expected the Soviet move and felt he’d done well to plant as many bombs as he had.
Unknown to him, he had allies — the two Ukrainian Xenos. Within the USSR, over 99 percent of its citizens were ignorant of the horrific events in the U.S., and no one knew of the existence of Xenos in the Soviet Union except the top men in the Kremlin and Tatyana Marinskiya. With the exception of a couple of doctors and a few nurses who, given the Xeno report, might have guessed, no one in the Ukraine, from the general secretary of the party down, had — officially — the remotest idea of Xeno. The aliens could not have asked for better conditions.
Both operated on the outskirts of Odessa for three weeks before any hint of their existence reached the Ukrainian government in Kiev. The Odessa police and the local KGB, puzzled over the deaths from the beginning but having no explanation, were not anxious to report the incidents to higher authority.
The Xenos chose solitary humans as their victims, mostly farm laborers, road-menders, or other humble early-risers, people whose deaths raised no great stir in any community, capitalist or communist. When the toll reached twenty-five, however, a report had to be made.
The news went from town to oblast and from there to Kiev, and on the way the same considerations applied. No police force, regardless of its political color, likes to appear baffled to its seniors. Another week passed before Kiev HQ admitted they could do no bet-ter. So nearly a month elapsed before the premier of the Ukraine Republic, who kept a shortwave radio in his country house and thus had some inkling of Xeno — and the ability to put two and two together — learned of the Odessa crisis. He wasted no time in telling Moscow. By then over fifty were dead.
The news shook the Kremlin, but their difficulties had scarcely begun. The team would be seeking only two creatures — a needle in a haystack would be easier to find. In only one sense was the situation less awful than that which the Americans faced: With no idea of what was going on, the scattered local population had no cause for panic. Relatives of the dead might ask questions of the neighborhood police, but in a country that had been obsessed with security since the days of the Czar, no one pushed too hard.
Moscow toyed briefly with the idea of asking the Americans to send in a hunting team, but soon discarded it for a galaxy of reasons. Instead, Tatyana was ordered south. She alone was chosen because she was already on the inside. Her pleas of inexperience in biology fell on deaf ears. She was told sharply that with her experience in the United States and her access to the American report, she knew more than all the Soviet biologists put together. Her task was to find and report the night locations of the Xenos. That done, Moscow would decide what action would be necessary.
The half-baked operation was doomed from the start, although she came very close to fulfilling her part: close enough to become a victim herself.
Tatyana Ivanovna Marinskiya’s death warrant lay in her orders. To avoid comment she would not wear full protective clothing, but “other suitable measures” might be taken. She went about her survey in a trouser suit, gloves, glasses, and a plastic rain hood: a lonely, frightened woman, doing her best in a battered 2CV van, traveling dusty back roads, struggling to understand the maps that showed where the victims had fallen. At night she collapsed exhausted in some sad provincial hotel, seeking refuge in vodka from the erosion of her faith in the party by Xeno — and ICARUS.
On the fourth morning, in a cornfield on the edge of a wood, her search ended. The Xeno’s venom went through the plastic hood faster than a red-hot rod through butter.
The Kremlin regarded her death with mixed feelings: Xeno remained at large, but at least the number of those who knew the full story was reduced by one. Still, something had to be done, and the one-person search party had clearly been a mistake.
With Tatyana dead, the top men who knew the full story were isolated by their lofty positions from the mere technicians. There had to be intermediaries. Reluctantly the president and the general secretary admitted the rest of their ICARUS group to the full secret. Through them a biologist and two biological warfare officers of the Red Army were chosen to seek and destroy the Xenos. They had to be told the secret, and thus the death of Tatyana was reduced to a useless sacrifice: it is unlikely anyone considered that point.
To insure full local cooperation, the top men of the Ukrainian SSR were also admitted to the ICARUS circle, which now officially grew to nine. In fact, the number that knew unofficially was a great deal larger. Through Western radio, travelers, and numerous clandestine channels, the news of Xeno spread, losing nothing in the translation. If anything, the gruesome reality of Xeno became more alarming with each telling. From the knowledge of its existence it was a short step to the obvious, inevitable question: Where did it come from — and why? Each repetition of the question was, in effect, an assault on the bastion of Marxist dogma.
At fearful cost, the party had dragged a collection of peoples out of the middle ages and hammered them into a twentieth century superpower — six hundred million people, the vast majority proud of their country. But a surprisingly small percentage felt the same way about the party, which, in 1984, still had only fifteen million members.
Of course, membership was not just a question of filling out a form and paying fifty rubles: it involved hard work, dedication, and the acceptance of an iron discipline. Naturally, some joined for the practical benefits — life could be a great deal better for members, especially in the higher echelons — but the vast majority of the party believed deeply in Marxist-Leninist doctrines as interpreted by the party. The party had a view on everything, from abstract art to petty theft. Its view of religion was exceedingly simple: God did not exist. Man — at least Communist Man — was the measure of all things.
Organized religion had long since ceased to worry the party, and priests seldom figured on the list of state enemies. Far more troublesome were the revisionists, those who tampered with the faith: Trotskyites, Maoists. Compared to these traitors and heretics, the party loved capitalists, and was right to do so — even as the Spanish Inquisition had attacked the heretic, not the heathen, four hundred years earlier. Defense of the faith against subversion has always had top priority. Inevitably, the defense fails in the end, but that has never kept people from trying. Not that the party intelligentsia gave failure a passing thought. They had the one True Faith; once the enemies of the party were overcome, mankind would move on to the sunny meadows of communism. God? Old hat. A device used by rulers to control the people.
But now there was Xeno, a lethal threat to humans, and a deadly, slow-working cancer on an unbending atheistic doctrine.
XXXIV.
By August, 1984, forty-eight Xenos had been trapped in the States. Freedman’s hunch about the church steeple proved correct: One was caught there, the last in Abdera.
After several tense days, during which no strikes were made by the aliens, Civil Defense declared the township free of Xenos. Not only had none been seen, but the net of microphones spaced over Abdera failed to detect any. To be quite sure, suited soldiers combed the eaves of every building in the township, and all roof spaces were fumigated with sulfur, to drive any lurking specimens into the
open.
Even so, the Abderans were reluctant to return to their old way of life. Soldiers might remove their face masks, but soldiers were paid to risk their necks and to obey orders. They were also a bunch of strangers.
But Freedman convinced them by walking the length of Main Street hatless and in his shirtsleeves. On the way back, the Civil Defense boss met him, which was a much braver gesture, for Freedman was banking on more than just the house-to-house search. He’d noted the return of the birds, an observation he quickly passed to the CD boss in their uneasy mid-street conversation. As Mark said, smiling grimly, “If that cardinal over there gives his alarm call, I’ll be indoors before it gets airborne.”
His advice was repeated on the local radio, and for a time Abderans were the nation’s keenest birdwatchers.
Elsewhere in Nash County the battle went on. One or two Xenos were still operating close to the hospital; several kilometers east, two attacks quickly shut the Roosevelt Hyde Park home to visitors. BW strikes in Louisiana had reduced the Xenos in the area to one, but several still terrorized New Jersey — business in Newark froze for two days, and twelve people died in a panic downtown stampede for cover. Two or three were spreading more terror in lower Pennsylvania, and ironically, at least one was active on Brookhaven’s doorstep, in Patchogue, central Long Island.
In the same week that Abdera Hollow regained a measure of freedom, Mark allowed his Xeno to be taken to the Walter Reed observation unit. It still appeared to be in good health, although it had not fed for over two months.
