Occasionally, they were forced to come out into the open. Otherwise, they would circle endlessly through Soho until they were spotted by one of the alien patrols.
Now they emerged onto Wardour Street, slowly working their way north as they attempted to join the milling pedestrians unobtrusively.
“How long can we afford to walk out in the open?” Gabriella asked.
“Not long. But we cannot simply cross Wardour Street from one alley to another. It will look too suspicious.”
They walked a few blocks, stopping briefly to
pretend they were looking in shop windows. A skyfighter passed overhead once, but they were hidden by an awning. When Subhash was quite certain they were unobserved, he pulled Gabriella by the hand into an alley.
“This way,” he said.
Walking briskly, just short of running, they hurried down the alleyway. It was as dark as a moonlit night between the two buildings, but Subhash didn’t slow his pace at all, until a voice called out to them.
“Not so fast now, the two of you.”
They looked back, terrified that it would be the Visitors. A lone figure stood silhouetted in the alleyway.
“What do you want?” Gabriella demanded.
“Just a wee chat, miss.”
“And just who is it who wants to chat?”
“A friend, I suspect.”
“I have no friends whose names I don’t know,” Gabriella said, prepared to turn and go on walking.
“The name is Kelly,” the man said. “Seamus Patrick Kelly.”
Subhash squeezed Gabriella’s hand. The name meant something to him, obviously. But what?
“The legendary Seamus Patrick Kelly?” Subhash asked politely.
“Modesty forbids me.”
“Then you are the same, are you not?”
“There is only one, so far as I know.”
Kelly moved closer, a wiry man with sandy hair and spectacles. He looked like a schoolmaster, Gabriella thought.
“What is it that you want with us?” Subhash said.
“I want to know if my boy McHugh is still alive,” Kelly said.
Another IRA man, Gabriella thought. This one didn’t look half as forbidding as the late Mr. McHugh, and yet Subhash seemed quite wary. Subhash shook his head. “McHugh is dead.” “And who killed him?”
“I don’t know whose hand it was, or whether it was the Visitors themselves who finished him,” Subhash said. “I didn’t see.”
“But it was Ian, was it not, who gave the order to take him?”
Subhash nodded.
“I knew it wasn’t you, Subhash. Your ambition doesn’t run to madness, like Ian’s.”
“I’m sorry about McHugh,” said Subhash. “He came to warn us about Ian.”
“Ian is the filthy scum who’s not only killed my lad McHugh, but your own lad as well.” “Smythe-Walmsley?”
“The very same.” Kelly sized Gabriella up with a penetrating gaze. “And this is the lass who saw Smythe-Walmsley last?”
“Yes, I am,” Gabriella said. “And I intend to make them pay.”
“Who?” Kelly asked. “The Visitors? ... Or Ian?”
“All of them.” The coldness of her tone surprised her. Was she so bitter already?
“You’ll find no way to fight them in London,” Kelly said. “Not today, at any rate. They’ve taken over the city, and the rest of England will follow. It’s what I always believed I wanted to see, but now that I’ve seen it, I find myself sympathetic with the English for the first time.”
“Perhaps it is time for the English and the Irish to forget about their differences.”
“My old grandfather, killed by the Black and Tans when he was a young man, will turn over in his grave, but I think you’re right, Subhash. These lizards will be the end of us all if we don’t join forces.”
“I’ll fight on your side,” Gabriella said. “I’m an exchange student, and I don’t owe my allegiance to the British, and even if I did I’d want to join you.”
“I’d heard you were a spirited lass,” Kelly said. “And I believe you mean what you say.” “Indeed I do, Mr. Kelly. Indeed I do.” Gabriella set her jaw so hard that it hurt her teeth. “You have no idea what it would mean to me to be able to avenge Nigel’s death.”
“Even if it means working with those who might have killed him themselves before the Visitors came?”
“Even so.”
Kelly mulled that over for a moment. “Come with me,” he said at length.
He turned and walked back the way he had come a few moments before. Gabriella glanced at Subhash, shrugged, and the two of them followed the Irishman.
Before he reached the street, Kelly stopped by a thick metal door painted jet black and set in the crumbling brick wall of the building on his left. He rapped sharply three times and waited.
A moment iater, the iron door opened, and Kelly gestured for them to go inside.
Subhash and Gabriella exchanged one last glance before entering. A second later, the door clanged shut behind them.
Chapter 11
Nigel was alone. He sat on the edge of his bed, resentful and hurt. His father had been called off to some urgent meeting and was unable to spend the day with Nigel. Nigel was used to that. His father was often busy. One day he would be in the House of Lords, everyone said. But that didn’t matter today.
Today was Nigel’s birthday.
There had been a party, with Mother and Auntie and twenty-five children in attendance, the servants bustling about the manor with cake and party favors . . . but it just wasn’t the same without Father.
He sulked, thinking that just this one time Father should have stayed home with him. He was seven today. All his other birthdays had been so happy. It was as if the world were only created to please him, but now he had to listen
to Mother and Auntie go on about duty and responsibility while Father looked after more important things . . . more important than Nigel, it seemed.
Well, he didn’t care about it, any of it. He would go off by himself and be an adventurer. He didn’t care about the world of politics, and he didn’t care about the comforts of home and hearth. He would be a pirate. Of course, he would write to Mother regularly . . . and even Auntie on occasion . . . but never Father. Never. He would never, never forgive Father for not being with him on his seventh birthday.
Nigel heard a faint creaking sound, and he looked up to see a glimmer of green light shining through a crack in his wardrobe.
“How curious,” he said, imitating the way his father talked. He rose and walked slowly towards the wardrobe as the light grew brighter. He hesitated for a moment, and then stepped forward, his hand reaching out for the wardrobe door.
Taking a deep breath, Nigel flung open the
door.
He screamed as a monstrous serpent’s head slithered towards him. The green light seemed to emanate from its ghastly scales, and its flickering tongue shot out repeatedly in Nigel’s direction.
Nigel tried to shut the door on the monster, but it was no good. The wardrobe’s wood dissolved into a noxious vapor in his fingers and he was left to stand alone and unprotected against the advancing, giant reptile. He wanted to cry, but Father had taught him to be brave, and he must face this terror with courage now, or he was no Englishman.
The monster’s hinged jaws opened, strings of venom connecting the enormous fangs. The forked tongue leaped from its hissing mouth as the immense head lunged.
Nigel sidestepped the beast’s attack. Rather than trying to run away, he darted past it. The serpent was so huge, however, that he was unable to escape it. Its coils closed about him, the monster’s scales rasping against the ground as it squeezed.
Nigel was unable to light his way free. He struggled valiantly, but the squamous flesh held him fast. It was impossible to catch his breath. Even so, he battered at it with his clenched fists, shouting, “You’ll never defeat me, you filthy beast!”
The harder he fought, the
more deadly the snake’s grip became. Nigel could feel his life slipping away as he gasped for air.
Where is your father now that you need him? a voice in his head asked. Where is England now that you need her?
Where indeed? Why was he left alone here to be destroyed by this giant snake while others stayed comfortably at home and his father went
off to do as he pleased?
The serpent’s head loomed over him. Was it going to strike now and fill his veins with its venom?
The monster hissed, “Join me.”
The death grip of its coils relaxed a bit, not enough for Nigel to free himself, but enough so that he could breathe again.
“Join me,” the monster repeated.
“I can’t,” Nigel said, amazed that it could speak. “I simply can’t.”
“And why not?” the serpent asked in the tones of a strict headmaster.
“You are the enemy of Britain,” Nigel said in his piping child’s voice. “I must resist you.” “But if you join forces with me, we two will be unbeatable. We will make a better Earth.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“But you must, for I can destroy you in an instant if I wish to.”
“Then do so,” Nigel said bravely. “I am prepared to die for my country.”
“But why?” the serpent asked. “There is really no need for you to die.”
“If I must die, then I must. I will not be a traitor.”
“Look, then, upon your own death.”
Still wrapped in the serpent’s coils, Nigel watched as he was chased down a dark alleyway by armed Visitors. As he came out into the open, the dome of St. Paul’s rose above the surrounding buildings. He was running towards Amen Court, to Gabby’s flat. If he could hide there, he might be able to elude his pursuers.
Just as he turned the comer, a bolt of fiery blue energy caught him on the right shoulder. He staggered, grasping the cauterized hole in his flesh, but he kept moving.
Crossing the courtyard, he was hit by laser fire a second time. Somehow he continued on, though his pace was considerably slackened.
He reached Gabby’s door and pounded fiercely. He heard voices shouting behind him, a woman screaming in the distance. Laser fire singed the air around him.
“For God’s sake, Gabby,” he whispered as his alter ego rapped on the door for all he was worth, “open up.”
The sound of the door being unlocked came just before the laser blast burned through his back. Nigel’s body fell inside as Gabby cried out in horror.
Chapter 12
Disoriented, Nigel watched himself as an adult. He was no longer a boy battling a giant serpent. He was a man, dying in the arms of the woman he loved. It seemed so real . . .
But how could it be? He was here, alive, wasn’t he? It was some sort of simulacrum that he had seen die. Now there was nothing but darkness . . . and pain.
His entire nervous system was on fire. The agony shot through him head to toe in increasingly devastating waves.
“No!” he screamed. But he couldn’t stop it. He tried to ignore it, to think about what was happening to him. He was not a little boy, and he was not dead, and when he thought about these things, he suffered terrible pain. That could only mean one thing.
The Visitors.
He was being tortured. Converted.
But he barely had time to realize this when the pain raged through Mm again, driving everything out of Ms mind.
When the billion pieces of Ms shattered consciousness drifted back together, he picked up Ms train of thought again. It took a monumental effort, but he managed somehow.
Medea had promised that he would not be converted if he agreed to help them, but she was obviously taking no chances. They had Gabby in their clutches, tat that was not enough. They would brainwash Mm as well.
It wasn’t going to work. He wouldn’t permit it. He would die first. No, they would not destroy Ms mind. He would cooperate with them only insofar as it would help Gabby, but they had already broken their agreement with him.
Another surge of pain shot through him.
“Steady, old thing,” he groaned. If he could just outlast the conversion tube, he could make it through tMs thing all right. It seemed that the Visitors had given up on psychological trickery and were using torture as a last-ditch effort. If he could convince himself of this, it might give him the strength to see it through.
It was so exquisitely painful now that it almost seemed as if he weren’t here. His mind seemed to transcend the agony for a moment, but then the pain returned more powerfully and horribly than ever.
They would stop at nothing to break him, but he mustn’t let it happen.
Join us.
“No!” Nigel cried. “Never!”
Your father has betrayed you. You owe him nothing.
A part of him still wanted to believe that, but Nigel knew that was the selfish, childish part of him. Father’s responsibilities had kept him away, not a lack of love. Now Nigel had responsibilities, too, not only to the woman he loved, but to his country. He would not let the Visitors win. Besides, he was not altogether certain that Gabby was their captive. He had asked to see her, but all they had shown Mm was a hologram. No, it would take more than this to make him betray Ms nation.
“You will never defeat Great Britain,” he said, even as a current of pain coursed through Ms body. “Do you hear me?”
join us.
“You will never succeed in subjugating the human spirit.”
Pain.
Join us.
Pain.
Join us.
It went on until Nigel’s body could stand no more. And yet he had found Ms center. He had the will to resist torture, even the advanced techniques of the Visitors.
Even as his mind spiraled down into unconsciousness, he took satisfaction in knowing that he had withstood them.
“Remove that ape’s filthy carcass from the conversion tube,” Medea said, “and hurry up about it.”
“He’s surprisingly strong, isn’t he?” Beverly said. “Have you ever seen a human resist conversion like that?”
“He can’t hold out forever,” Medea said, but she realized that she might be guilty of wishful thinking.
“Can’t he?” Beverly taunted, selecting a guinea pig under glass to snack on while she waited for the guards to bring Nigel’s limp body out. “He could die before you get what you want out of him.”
“He’s revealed a few things to us already.”
“But those things have all proven false when we’ve had them checked out.” Beverly unhinged her jaw and swallowed the squealing guinea pig whole.
Watching enviously as Beverly gulped it down, Medea said, “As long as he believes we’ve got the girl.”
“Sooner or later he’ll demand to see her. He may already be suspicious.”
“Possibly,” Medea admitted.
“There’s a way we can accommodate that desire,” Beverly said.
“What are you talking about, Beverly?” Medea said, annoyed. “How can we bring the girl here if we don’t know where she is?”
“I have an idea.” Beverly’s throat swelled as the guinea pig was slowly forced down her gullet.
Medea rolled her eyes.
“They have a saying on Earth,” Beverly said as if she hadn’t noticed. “ ‘If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed will go to the mountain.’ ”
“I see,” Medea said, wondering what it meant.
Beverly grinned. “I thought you would,” she said.
Chapter 13
Someone was shouting at Gabriella. At first she didn’t know who he was or where she was, but then it slowly began to come back to her. She was lying on the ground listening to birdsong, as if she were back at camp in Maine when she was a little girl. It was cold and foggy, and her back was sore from lying on the hard surface. She couldn’t remember when she’d been so uncomfortable before.
Yes, she could. Yesterday. And the day before. And the
day before that.
“Come now, lass,” the man standing over her said. He was dressed in military fatigues, hands on hips. “It’s time to rise and face the world.” Gabriella sat up and stretched. The first grey light of dawn was creeping into the camp, but it was still difficult to see anything clearly. Around her, men and women were packing up their
sleeping kits, cleaning their AK47’s and their Uzis, or making coffee on a fire of smouldering faggots. Kelly’s tent stood in the fog a few yards
away.
She rose and folded her sleeping bag, joining the others at the fire. A cup of coffee was poured for her in silence by a beefy man with a scarred face. She accepted it and sat thinking about her new situation.
As far as she could tell, she was somewhere in the Republic of Ireland, though she had no idea of knowing what county. Like all of Ireland, it was wet and green, softly rounded mountains and peat bogs, the few peasants they saw looking like people from & hundred years ago. When people saw them, they tended to look the other way, as if the IRA weren’t there at all. When asked, they would provide a place for the rebels to sleep, or even a slab of bacon and some eggs if they could manage it.
She wondered if they were this cooperative before the Visitors came. Many of them had been sympathetic to the IRA, she was sure, though their acts of terrorism had been reviled publicly by the Irish Government. Old hatreds died hard.
At least the IRA was useful now, against the alien invaders. It was a joke among these rough men that the British, in their infinite wisdom, had created them, knowing centuries ago that the Visitors would come in the late twentieth century. They were indeed a formidable guerrilla force that the Visitors had not yet dealt with successfully. On the other hand, in spite of devastating forays into the enemy camp on several occasions, the Dublin Mother Ship still hovered over Ireland’s greatest city.
“Good morning, Gabriella.”
She turned to see Subhash approaching, outfitted in fatigues and a beret.
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