Species II

by Yvonne Navarro

  Always the jokester, he gave her a conciliatory grin and she knew he was hoping she’d smile in return. Instead, Laura just looked at him and when she did respond, she couldn’t hide the sadness in her voice. “You might not believe this, Press, but I’ve learned a lot working with Eve. You look at her and see nothing but a monster, but in technical terms, she’s half human and half alien. Built into her are two distinct strands of DNA, and that ancestry fights a constant battle within her body.”

  She waited but he didn’t say anything. “Genetically speaking,” she continued, “she’s part of a never-ending struggle for dominance that can’t continue indefinitely—one will eventually win out. Alone and separate, those two halves of Eve would be fine; each would know and understand what it is and how it should act and survive. Side by side, they just can’t coexist.” She stopped and they stared at each other; then she shook her head and walked toward the building, letting him consider her final words:

  “Sort of like us.”

  When the trio of military guards standing before the entrance to Dr. Orinsky’s laboratory moved aside the barricades and lifted the yellow tape so that Laura and Press could enter, they walked into a bloodbath.

  “The last time I saw something like this was in Hollywood Hills,” Press said. “Remember Robbie Llywelyn? Sil killed him at his house when he tried to force her to have sex with him.”

  The glance he sent Laura had all the markings of a class “I-told-you-so,” but she ignored it. “Sil’s dead,” she said shortly. “And Eve has never been out of her habitat. This isn’t her handiwork.”

  “Sure looks familiar though.” Press followed her as she stepped over a long, smeared trail that bisected the room, then moved to inspect a door marked MEDICAL SUPPLIES on the other side. He hooked a finger around it and pulled it open, then bent and peered through the hole that had been smashed through it at knee height.

  “I think there are substantial differences in the outcome,” Laura said dryly.

  “You got that right,” Press replied. She could see one of his eyes through the ragged opening. “What possible motive could an alien have to rip this old guy apart?”

  “I have no idea.” Laura moved through the dead doctor’s work area, carefully stepping over the splatters of blood that seemed to be everywhere. “Press, this is very sophisticated blood-testing equipment and the computer records indicate which samples he was working on, although he didn’t record the results. The strange thing is that I can’t find any of them—all these tubes are empty. Where the hell did they go?” She scanned the floor as if the scarlet puddles could tell her the truth. “The FBI coroner says they’ve sampled all segments of the blood on the floor and it’s all Orinsky’s.”

  Press stood, then stepped around to the front of the damaged door. “I don’t get it. According to the homicide report, Orinsky’s abdomen was punctured over here and he was relieved of a good portion of his lower internal organs.” He frowned at the floor, then went over to where she was standing. “But his body was found by a colleague all the way over here. That’s a good seven feet away from where he was assaulted.”

  “So he was alive—and moving—for a short time before he finally expired.”

  “Exactly.” Press shoved his hands in his jacket pockets. “So why did the soon-to-be-dead man cross the room?”

  Laura’s mouth tightened. “Not funny, Press.”

  “Sorry. But you didn’t answer my question.”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? It might have been some kind of involuntary reaction.” She stopped, considering her own words. “Don’t you think it’s far more likely that he was trying to get away from whatever had attacked him?”

  Instead of answering, Press squatted and looked at the area where Orinsky’s body had come to its final rest. “The crime-scene team said Orinsky had blood on the tip of his forefinger.”

  Laura lifted one eyebrow. “So? Orinsky had blood all over him. The man was gutted like a fish.”

  “So maybe he was trying to leave us a message.”

  Laura gestured in disgust at the circular smears of blood across the floor, then folded her arms. “Forensics says that Orinsky’s colleague tried to wipe up the blood and destroyed the integrity of the crime scene.” She shook her head in disbelief. “These people are doctors—you’d think they’d know better.”

  “Still,” Press said, “all may not be lost.” One hand dipped inside his jacket and came out with a small leather case. He pressed the latch on one side and showed her the small aerosol can nestled inside. “This is leuco malachite.”

  “And?”

  “It’ll give a green shading to blood-particulate matter,” he explained as he began to painstakingly spray the wall and the floor around where the front of Orinsky’s body had been found.

  “But—”

  “If Orinsky wrote something and it had any chance at all to dry before his partner came along and mucked everything up, this’ll show us.”

  “Wait,” Laura said as something began to form where the wall and floor met “Look right there—what’s that?”

  They leaned forward and studied the area as it slowly began to show a vague green outline—a smudgy, slightly lopsided circle. A few more seconds and a spike appeared at the one-o’clock position, then was topped off by a pointed mark.

  “You’re right,” Laura said excitedly. “He did try to leave a message!”

  “Yeah, but I don’t get it” Press pointed. “This line here is probably an arrow, extending upward. Isn’t this whole thing the symbol for male? Was he saying that a man killed him?”

  Laura nodded. “It sure looks that way.” She chewed at her bottom lip thoughtfully, then moved a little closer to the faint greenish mark on the floor. “Press . . .”

  Something in the tone of her voice must have given away her uneasiness, because he looked up sharply. “What is it?”

  “It’s also the astronomical symbol for Mars.”

  9

  The flashbulbs were nearly blinding, blotting out the stars overhead, the lights on the street and around the sumptuous hotel. Even the faces of the people held back by the barriers of velvet-covered rope, manned by discreetly dressed government guards, couldn’t be seen. Hundreds of people pushed at the barriers, constantly testing the patience of the guards, who fought to keep pleasant smiles pasted on their faces while listening to their ongoing orders through tiny speakers tucked into their ears. Whatever transmissions were coming through, however, were lost in the cheers of the onlookers and a thunderous round of applause as the two limousines the multitude had been waiting for finally arrived.

  Seven o’clock at night and the cameras—reporters, paparazzi, television crews—made it seem like high noon as the two sleek white vehicles rolled smoothly to the curb at the front entrance of the Watergate Hotel. The first to climb out was Dr. Anne Sampas; with her auburn hair done in an impeccable French twist she looked lovely in a sparkling black Nina Ricci dress. One hand rested on the arm of her dark-haired husband, the handsome Dr. Harold Friedman, a noted professor of history at the University of Maryland. They made quite the picturesque couple, a perfect example of opposites attracting, as they smiled and waved on the way into the hotel.

  Right afterward a pair of exquisitely long, coffee-colored legs slid into view. Jemila Asante, Dennis Gamble’s date for the evening, exited the limo with the grace of a dark young gazelle, all legs and arms wrapped in silver lamé and matching high heels, her glossy black hair swept up and around a jeweled comb. Following her out of the car was Dennis himself, replete in a black tuxedo with a silver cumberbund that matched Jemila’s dress perfectly. Cheers from the waiting onlookers escalated when the black couple laughed and waved as they headed up the front walkway.

  But it was the second limo that drew the most attention. When the door was opened by a black-tied doorman and Senator Judson Ross stepped out of the limo with his son Patrick and Patrick’s fiancée Melissa, the crowd went practically insane. The barrier ropes
were virtually useless as the government bodyguards, conveniently decked out to match the hotel’s doormen, tried vainly to keep them in place. As had their friends in the first limousine, the three of them smiled and waved, and Patrick, in keeping with the all-American hero image he’d unwittingly cultivated, fed the excitement by pausing to shake hands here and there and to autograph whatever the people thrust toward him, be it handkerchief or matchbook. When one young woman with long brown hair leaned forward over the ropes and momentarily grabbed onto Patrick’s lapels, hung on, then began shrieking joyfully—

  “I touched him! I touched him!”

  —Melissa only smiled indulgently and pulled Patrick out of the woman’s grasp and back to her side.

  “Jack Kennedy and I started out in Congress at about the same time,” Senator Ross told a delighted crowd during his speech after the banquet. He smiled expansively and gripped the podium. “We both championed the exploration of space,” he continued. “I’d like to think that Jack’s spirit is alive and well. You can find it carried on in my son, Patrick.”

  There was a thunderous round of applause from the two hundred-plus dignitaries assembled around the banquet hall. Senator Ross waited a few moments, then continued with his speech.

  “Look at him,” said Harry. “See how he’s using the podium to pull himself upright? It makes him look taller. Even for a man his size, politics means always trying to look bigger than you are, especially to your constituents.”

  Anne and the others laughed. “Stop that,” she admonished. “To you, the world is nothing but an ongoing history lesson.”

  “And to the senator, this room is a big bowl of potential votes,” he returned with a smile. “For him and his son.”

  Anne glanced around, puzzled. “Speaking of Patrick, what happened to him?”

  When their gazes turned to her, Melissa just looked down at the table. “He hasn’t been feeling well lately,” she said. “I asked him to go back to the doctor, but he keeps insisting that he’s fine.”

  For a minute no one said anything as they considered this, then Anne picked up her napkin and twisted it nervously. The brightness of her green eyes clouded over. “To tell you the truth,” she admitted, “I haven’t been feeling that great either.”

  Her husband glanced at her in surprise. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”

  Before she could answer, Dennis gave Jemila a long, hangdog look. “I think what we all need is a little tender loving care.”

  “Two more days until the quarantine is over,” Anne reminded him. “We’ve waited this long. You can hold on.”

  “Shit,” Dennis said crudely, then looked embarrassed. “I’ve been holding on too long already.”

  “Anne, this thing about you not feeling well—I think we should talk more about that,” Harold Friedman said with a frown. “You haven’t—”

  A new round of applause drowned out the rest of his statement and the group at the table looked toward the podium, where Senator Ross was finishing his speech and gesturing somewhere offstage. “But enough hot air from this old windbag,” he said graciously. “As a man gets older, he gets wise enough to know that people would much rather hear from the younger populace, and there’s no greater thing that can do a man proud than to introduce his son to a roomful of people. So how about a word now from Patrick himself?”

  Senator Ross waited as the seconds stretched on, turning into five, then ten. At the fifteen mark, the confident expression on his face started to slip, then he motioned to an assistant at the end of the stage—

  “Go find him!”

  —and grinned at the crowd. “Guess I’ll have to send someone to the lounge to retrieve him. This is what happens when you have to try to please the American people—every time you turn around, you’re expected to be in two places at once. Give us a moment, and my assistant will remind Patrick that his public awaits.

  “In the meantime, you poor folks are going to be subjected to my joke-telling skills. Once there were these three tomatoes walking down the road—”

  “God,” said Dennis, watching from the table. “I hope they find Patrick soon. That’s the tomato joke from Pulp Fiction. As much as the old man’s had to drink tonight, I don’t even want to think about what he’ll move on to after that!”

  “Has anyone seen Patrick Ross?”

  That voice—Patrick didn’t know whose it was, but it pierced the fog layered over his brain like an arm sweeping aside a pile of feathers.

  Where was he?

  Offstage, of course. He’d excused himself from the table and headed to the men’s room. That done, he’d washed up and gone to the area blocked off by the curtains hung there to separate the platform on which the speeches were given and the back of the room. Behind him were piles of wires that fed the lights and the sound system and boxes of extra supplies. Napkins and whatever other things a huge hotel like the Watergate had to store.

  Before Patrick could figure out more, someone kissed him.

  Not just a kiss, but a kiss—passionate, intimate, more demanding than anyone in the world except his fiancée had the right to be. He started to say her name—

  “Meli—”

  —but the sound was cut off, by a mouth closing over his, a tongue that pushed past his lips and explored his mouth hungrily. There was a heat in places on him where there shouldn’t be—

  The quarantine!

  —and the kiss itself wasn’t familiar, or even good. In fact, it wasn’t—

  “Stop,” Patrick said into the mouth that covered his. He grabbed the side of the woman’s head with both hands and pushed her away, trying not to think about where her hands had been rubbing until he’d broken the embrace. She was tall and busty and very beautiful, with streaked blond hair and chocolate-brown, doelike eyes that promised an innocence she clearly didn’t possess. The ball gown she wore fit every curve of her upper body and Patrick had hiked up its long, layered-satin skirt to hip level and planted himself firmly between her legs. Thank God his pants were still on, because he had no idea who this woman was.

  “I have to go,” he said inanely and tried to back-step.

  The woman glanced around, then gave him a short, sulky nod. Before he could stop her, she leaned forward and squeezed the erection straining against the fabric of his slacks. Patrick gasped and had to literally fight not to grab her again. She was a stranger, some oversexed Washington debutante out to put an astronaut on her scorecard, but he didn’t even remember meeting her, didn’t know her name—what the hell was going on here?

  “The Lincoln Suite,” she said in a low voice. She yanked her skirts down and with a few expert pats of her hand looked as if nothing in the world had happened. Her eyes were commanding when they caught his. “Upstairs. Later.” She licked the tip of her finger languidly, then trailed it along the line of his jaw. Then she was gone.

  He stood there for a moment, trying to get his bearings and thankful that both the unidentified socialite and whoever had been looking for him had gone. Christ, he was so hot, and so . . . aroused. How was he going to get enough control of his body to walk across the platform to the podium without the entire audience seeing that? And Melissa—good God. He’d never been interested in anyone but her. What on earth had he been thinking?

  Another few breaths, more precious seconds passing while some dim part of his brain told him that his father must have introduced him a while ago, that he was supposed to be out there by now, and damn it, he’d better get his ass in gear. A final deep breath and he thought he had it—amazingly, his erection was gone, his heartbeat had slowed to a fast walk from the roaring it had been, the surface of his skin no longer felt like a lit burner on a stove. Incredible and unexplainable, but he’d worry about that later.

  Right now, John Q. Public awaited.

  A sea of people stared at him, expecting to be impressed by the man who had walked on the surface of the red planet more than thirty-five million miles away. They had made him into a demigod, placed hi
m on the pedestal of American heroism, and now they waited, breathless, to hear what he had to say.

  No problem.

  “When I looked through the viewing portal, at first all I could see was blackness. It goes on for an eternity—certainly for anything we’ll ever live to see—broken only by the sparkle of a million stars we’ll never reach, a million more planets that man, with his limited lifespan, will never visit Then the ship swung homeward and the Earth filled my sight—a beautiful blue globe covered in white swirls.”

  Patrick gazed at the audience, knowing they were mesmerized by his voice, by this retelling of an experience they would never know. He waited a beat, then held out his hand in a gesture that was a perfect balance of drama and entreaty. “Seeing it from up there,” he continued, “makes it look so small. So . . . fragile. I couldn’t help but think about how painfully easy it would be to destroy this most beautiful of God’s creations. In the whole of the universe, we are nothing but a speck in the eye of God, and we could be wiped away so effortlessly. As we look into the future, perhaps we will see that our greatest mission should be to nurture what we have right here at home.”

  An excellent finish and one that garnered him a standing ovation. As he stepped from the podium, Patrick felt strangely as though his eyesight had increased tenfold. He could see his father’s eyes—red-rimmed and clearly well-liquored—all the way from here, as well as Dennis and his date, Anne and Harry, and, of course, the lovely Melissa. He smiled and waved as they stood with the rest of the crowd and applauded enthusiastically, caught up in the moment with everyone else. Pride shone from his fiancée’s hazel eyes and her radiant smile was only for him; still, Patrick felt vaguely disconnected from her and whatever tenuous hold she might have on him, from all of it, as he waved a final time and stepped off the platform and beyond the curtain an usher held aside for him.

  All those people out there. When they looked at him, they saw a budding politician whether he wanted to be one or not, a man who was fair and kind and whom they believed could take their world into the stars and beyond while keeping a firm eye and a stable grasp on what was happening on the homeworld. They recognized his intelligence, his charm, his wit, his righteousness. They believed in him.