V03 - The Pursuit of Diana

by Allen L. Wold

  Mike Donovan turned to Willaim. "Did you know this guy Richard?" he asked.

  "Not very well," William said. "He was just a worker like me. I do remember once he said he didn't like having been lied to about humans being the same as cattle."

  "It sounds," Aaron said, "as if he overheard some kind of plot and got silenced."

  "What kind of plot could there be?" Julie asked.

  "A sixth column," Caleb said. "Visitors who don't want to go along with Martin and Barbara."

  "I'm afraid that's possible," Aaron said. "Diana was not well liked, but she could inspire fanatical loyalty and devotion among some of us."

  "Do you suppose any of the fifth columnists would be in on this plot?" Mike asked.

  "None that joined before the final battle," Aaron said, "but among the trustees, yes."

  "I don't think we can trust any of them," Caleb said, "even those who have reported on others trying to stop work. And get this: some pf these so-called trustees have beers heard to say that they think our two races should be kept separate." He laughed harshly. "Can you believe that?"

  "There's more differences between them and us," Mike said to the black man, "than between you and me."

  "Oh, I know that. I'm just not used to being considered part of the upper class holding the minority race in subjugation." He laughed again. "No offense, Willie," he added.

  "I think I'd better go talk with Martin," Donovan said. "This business is going to have to be stopped before it gets out of hand."

  "I'll go with you," Caleb said, and the two left.

  "I hate to say this," Aaron said as the door closed behind them, "but I think bringing Diana on board is what's started the trouble."

  "I believe you're right," Julie said. "We should have been more secretive about it." She went to stand by the head of Diana's bed. "I think she's beginning to come around."

  Aaron checked the monitor again and agreed. Even as he disconnected the wires and probes, Diana's breathing began to change.

  "Don't say anything about this counterrebellion," Julie whispered. "We need all the advantage we can get."

  Diana moaned and then became very still for a moment. Her breathing deepened, and then her eyes opened. She was fully awake. She tried to move one arm just once, but stopped as soon as she felt the restraints. Her expression was calm and grim, but a slight smile turned up the corners of her mouth.

  "You seem to have won," she said.

  "We have," Julie answered. "We're in control of your ship, and we're on our way back to Earth right now."

  "Yet you went to the effort of rescuing me," Diana said. "You could have just let me drift. Why didn't you?"

  "That would have been the easy way out, wouldn't it?"

  Julie said. "We rescued you for two reasons. First, you're going to stand trial for what your people did to us and to our planet."

  "Hah!" Diana barked. "How fair a trial do you suppose that will be?"

  "Probably not fair at all, but that doesn't really matter It's the symbolism that counts. You represent the evil that was done to us, and your trial will symbolize our victory over that evil. But more than that, you owe us compensation. You were the science officer of your fleet, Diana, and what you know will help us recover from the damage you have done, and may even give us an advantage."

  "You don't think I'm going to cooperate with you. do you?" Diana sneered.

  "If we can figure out how to work the conversion machine," Julie said coldly, "you may not have a choice.''

  "Never," Diana said. "It takes years of training, a staff of experts, and a fine artistic touch to perform a conversion."

  "Well, at the least, we'll have you to experiment on. And if we damage you in the process, what more fitting punishment could there be for your crimes?"

  The defiance slowly faded from Diana's face.

  "Now, remember," Valery told the three trustees, "be very careful who you talk to."

  "That's right," Gretchen said. "If in doubt, don't mention our plan at all. We can't just kill everybody who won't go along with us."

  "For one thing," Valery said, "we could find ourselves killing so many we couldn't operate the ship."

  "And for another," Gretchen said, "if too many die, those relavisk will start cracking down on us and cramp our style."

  "Once there are enough of us we can take over the command center," Valery. said, "a lot of others will follow along."

  "And even if they don't," Gretchen said as the three new recruits nodded their understanding, "there are plenty of people in security who will support us once we can set them free."

  "But what are we going to do about weapons?" one of the three trustees, an older man named Luke, asked. "They're in contaminated areas."

  "We'll have to get respirators," Valery said. "But we'll worry about that later. Right now just slow down. Pretend to cooperate but drag your heels. And check out everybody you know."

  "But carefully," Gretchen said. "Very carefully."

  Chapter 5

  San Pedro, once a town of 35,000, stood empty. The only inhabitants were birds, squirrels, insects, a few starving dogs and cats—and fifteen rebels, who occupied the top floor of the municipal building with their trucks concealed among the abandoned vehicles in the parking basement below.

  Robert Maxwell, senior among them, was their de facto leader. He was not used to this kind of role. He had proved his worth as Juliet Parrish's lieutenant and Ham Tyler's captain, but he had no experience leading people on his own initiative. Worrying about his children and the other rebels who were still at the lighthouse, and about Mike Donovan and Julie and the others aboard the Mother Ship, didn't help any.

  He stood now, in what had once been some minor official's office, looking out over the abandoned city. Cars, some just parked, others overturned or blown up, were scattered along the street. In places the pavement had been torn up. Stores stood with their windows broken, their doors open. He and the other rebels had plenty of food, though there was no power and they had to depend on bottled water.

  He heard the door open behind him and turned to see Claire Bryant come in with a plate of canned food and a bottle of warm cola.

  "We missed you at supper" Claire said. Robert turned back to the window. The sun was going down, and soon the sky would be full of color. "You should eat something," Claire persisted.

  "I know," Maxwell said. "Just put it on the desk."

  "You did the right thing," Claire told him. She put the plate down amid the clutter of paperwork that now would never be finished, and came over to stand beside him. "Keep the fighting force together and mobile, and save the lighthouse for the others. We would have endangered the children if we'd gone back there."

  "Yes," he said, "that was my motive." He looked at her profile. Since Kathleen's death, he hadn't really paid much attention to women, but Claire Bryant was something special. Not the same as his wife, but as strong as Kathleen had been. He put the thought out of his mind. It was too soon to become involved yet.

  "There's another child I'm worried about," he went on.

  "Elizabeth?"

  "Yes, her too, but I meant Sean."

  "Mike's boy. Yes."

  "He wasn't at the Visitor Headquarters. His grandmother must have sent him somewhere else."

  "Or his stepgrandfather, Arthur, took him? He wasn't there either."

  "I know. I hope Sean's all right. If we don't find the boy, or at least discover where he is, Mike will be frantic when he gets back."

  "Sean's mother is up on that ship, isn't she?" Claire asked rhetorically.

  "Yes, along with most of the people of San Pedro. I don't know how many of them are still alive. The ship holds ten thousand, but there were more than three times that many here before the Visitors took them away."

  "And the rest? Eaten?"

  "Or on other ships, and now beyond our reach. Fifty ships, Claire! Fifty times ten thousand or more. That's at least half a million people. And there's nothing we can do abo
ut them."

  "Well, most of them, but we'll get some of them back when Mike and Julie return."

  "It's been so long," Robert said. "I'm beginning to lose hope."

  "I'm afraid a lot of the rest of us are too," Claire admitted.

  Robert's stomach growled. In spite of his anxiety and concern, he was hungry. It had been a long time since he'd eaten. He went to sit at the desk and pulled the plastic plate of corned-beef hash and cold canned beans toward him. "You forgot the fork," he said.

  "I'm sorry," Claire said. She pulled one from her shirt pocket and handed it to him.

  "Thanks." He started to eat. "Any word from Ham?"

  "No, but I forgot to tell you, we got the communicator from the lighthouse. Fred Linker brought it in just a few minutes ago."

  Someone had rigged up a small gasoline-powered generator in a windowed closet, and from there had run wires into the large conference room. There they'd set up a television high on the wall where everybody could watch it. Other wires led to the communicator, which was set up in the antechamber, where someone was always listening.

  Six or seven of the rebels, including Paul Overbloom and Fred Linker, sat watching the screen. It felt strange to watch regular programming, situation comedies, and dramas. For the rebels, the world was a different, place, and it took an effort to remember that for 95 percent of the population, the whole episode of the Visitors had merely been a bad dream of confusion, high prices, limited communications, and shortages. The country still went on, though the artificial stability that had been imposed by the Visitors was missing, and the shakiness of the remaining government was becoming obvious.

  The one real difference now was that five-minute news bulletins came on every hour instead of just at six and eleven, with occasional special bulletins on the half hour. The faces of familiar news anchormen and women kept reporting progress in reestablishing order, but as likely as not, the reports were contradicted by the next bulletins announcing outbreaks of revelry or looting.

  Radical groups both new and old, sensitive to the ever more obvious power vacuum, staged demonstrations, marches, and conferences, demanding that governmental and economic recovery include their ideas for the formation of a perfect state.

  Other news stories told about rebel groups similar to theirs. Some had returned home with little or no difficulty, accepted by their communities as heroes, or at least as well-intentioned malcontents. Others were having more trouble, and were accused of treason, trespass, or collaboration. Still others, having found the rebel life preferable to what they'd experienced before, had chosen to remain rebels against their own people, seeking to wrest power by force of arms.

  "That kind of helps explain the reception we got at the suspension plant," Fred Linker said.

  "I'm not sure, I believe all those stories," Paul demurred. "God knows we're heroes, but if we'd been captured by those cops at the plant, we'd be counted among the bad guys."

  "Hey," somebody said, "that's us they're talking about!" The room got very quiet.

  ". . . in Pomona," the announcer was saying, "a group of Visitor sympathizers had taken over the building where, reportedly, human victims had been put into suspended animation prior to being taken up to the Mother Ship. Police Captain Emil Jonkers said that attempts had been made to 'process' more human victims. Approximately eighty-five people were found in a comatose condition, and another fifteen were returned to their homes in a state of confusion. The sympathizers managed to escape by running down state police and highway patrol officers in their trucks. Police vehicles were damaged in the gunfight preceding the escape, so pursuit was not possible, according to Jonkers."

  "Those bastards have got it all wrong," Paul Overbloom yelled, and he was not alone in his protest.

  "How can they believe that stuff?" Fred asked angrily.

  "Hell, people will believe anything on the news.''

  "No, I mean the police. They must have talked to those people we revived. 'State of confusion,' my ass. The police are the sympathizers, not us. Somebody fed them a line."

  "I guess that's what the Fixer went to find out about," Paul said. The two men, still fuming, turned their attention back to the TV.

  The screen showed grim shots of Visitors, stripped of their human disguises, hanging from lamp posts. The reporter told of others, who had somehow survived the toxin, being kept in local jails. "Apparently," the announcer said, "one in every five hundred aliens has a natural immunity to the toxin released yesterday by liberation forces."

  "That's not the best news I've heard," Fred said. The bulletin ended, to be replaced by an episode of Dr. Who.

  Robert Maxwell and Claire Bryant came in just as Tom Baker was outwitting some kind of slime monster with the help of a scantily clad huntress. '

  "You should have seen the latest bulletin," Fred Linker said, and told them about the report of their escape from the suspension plant. As he listened, Robert felt the weight of responsibility drag his shoulders down until he had to take a chair. Claire put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  "That captain told us he had his orders," Maxwell said. "All I can figure is that whoever gave those orders is somebody the Visitors converted."

  "That makes sense," Paul Overbloom said. "The whole reason for the conversion process was to make government officials sympathetic to the Visitors."

  "But the Visitors are gone now," Claire protested.

  "Yes, but don't you see?" Fred said. "With the Visitors gone, the converted people are like cars without drivers. They're still moving the way the Visitors wanted them to, but now they're out of control."

  "And they still tend to see things the Visitors' way," Robert Maxwell agreed. "The President, for one, and the most influential members of Congress."

  "Right," Paul said, "and governors and mayors of large cities like Los Angeles."

  "He hasn't been seen in weeks," Claire Bryant said.

  "Well, New York, then, or Chicago. Who knows how many generals and admirals are out there converted but no longer controlled?"

  "We can't trust our own leaders anymore," Fred said.

  "Or our best scientists," Robert added. "They were the first to go. Remember Corley Walker?"

  "This is terrible," Claire said. "I thought we'd won. But the people we need most—our government, the psychologists, anthropologists, doctors—they were the Visitors' prime targets for conversion. We might as well have been blown up."

  "Quiet back there," somebody called. "There's a special bulletin on."

  It was Dennis W. Simon, the Lieutenant Governor, speaking from the governor's mansion in Sacramento.

  "As of six o'clock this afternoon," he said, speaking into a bank of microphones, "I have assumed the responsibility of acting Governor in the absence of Abe Riggsbee who, with certain members of his staff, disappeared from the mansion four weeks ago. Every effort is being made to locate Governor Riggsbee, but we must be prepared to accept the possibility that he, along with so many others, has fallen victim to an as yet unidentified scheme perpetrated by the Visitors."

  "Does he really not know?" Paul asked.

  "The Visitors have left us now," Simon was saying, "but the crisis is not yet past. Indeed, we are only now beginning to become aware of the extent of the damage done us. It is for this reason that I have decided that California will remain in a state of martial law for the next two weeks."

  "Or as long as it suits him," Fred Linker said.

  "During this time," Simon said, "I urge each and every one of you to cooperate with the police, both state and local, to the full extent of your ability, and to cooperate with National Guardsmen, should they require it.

  "Our objective is first to determine the full extent of the crisis and, second, to immediately implement measures to restore normal order. This will not be easy, but progress is already being made, and with your cooperation our objective can be more readily reached."

  "He's so damned slick," Fred muttered. "Has he been converted?"


  "In addition," the Lieutenant Governor went on, "we must immediately cease this senseless slaughter of those whose poor judgment caused them to collaborate with the Visitors. Known collaborators will be put under arrest and tried to determine the extent of their crime, if any. It is not up to you, as vigilantes, to judge these people. It is the responsibility of the state and duly constituted judges and juries.

  "More importantly, we must make every effort to insure the safety of those few Visitors who are still alive. All such Visitors must immediately be given over to the custody of local or state authorities, who have been instructed as to how to insure their survival. Personal vengeance taken upon these Visitors will be treated the same as murder. Alive, they can teach us much, with or without their active cooperation. Dead, they can teach us nothing."

  He stepped back from the microphones, indicating that he had finished, and immediately began taking questions from the reporters assembled before him.

  "It's almost worse than before," Fred said to Robert, Paul, and Claire. "Then we knew who our enemies were. Now who can tell? Is Simon being straight with us? Is he taking advantage of the situation to enhance his own power? Is he a convert whose actions are half-random? How can we tell?"

  "I can't answer that," Robert Maxwell said, "but we may leam something when Ham gets back. If he can find out who put out the order to arrest us at the plant, we can be sure that that person is still a Visitor puppet."

  "I wish to hell Julie would come back," Claire said. "With her leadership, we were a fighting force, without her, we seem to be becoming just refugees."

  "I agree," Robert said. "I'm not the one to fill her shoes."

  Chapter 6

  "Can't you make it go faster?" Mike Donovan asked. He was standing, looking over Martin's shoulder as the fifth column leader sat at the ship's controls. Other positions were occupied by trustees, under the watchful eye of human and fifth column guards.

  "I'm sorry, Mike," Martin said. "If I push it too hard, we'll start breaking up. This ship was never meant to move through the Earth's atmosphere as fast as it did when we left. The structural damage is more extensive than I thought."