V 16 - Symphony of Terror

by Somtow Sucharitkul (UC) (epub)

  Setsuko said, “I have always known that he was an alien: the finest of all fifth columnists, for he had been able to climb almost to the very top of the alien hierarchy.”

  “Both my old identities are useless now,” said the alien sadly.

  “And I have bad news for all of us,” Setsuko said. “I have been doing some research on the red dust, and I’ve found that it is not ... as effective as we thought it would be. When the cold weather comes, the microorganisms that give it its toxic power will hibernate and grow strong, and renew themselves; but in warmer climes this will not happen. Then —they will return!”

  “Will it never end?” said Schwabauer. “Something must be done,” said the alien swordmaster. “I believe that it is America they will strike the hardest, because of that nation’s technology and because there are vast tracts of territory there that are not subject to harsh winters, and where they will be able to set up bases. As soon as 1 have recovered from this sickness wrought in me by the red dust, I will return there. I won’t see my friends be made into converts—or worse, into food! Though I am a reptile myself, I am ashamed of the evil perpetrated by my planet’s leaders. It goes against the precepts of preta-na-ma, the most sacred of our beliefs. Oh, they tried to ban the old, strong religion, but it lives on. I am heartsick, my friends. Will you come with me to America? Will you help cure the Earth of this terrible visitation?” “You know,” Setsuko said, “that I will always come with you. Besides, I will be able to share the results of my research into alien biochemistry with other scientists there. Perhaps we will come up with something new.”

  “How can I trust you?” Schwabauer said. “I don’t trust people easily . . . and you’re not even a human being.”

  “But you have trusted me in the past,” said the alien swordmaster, “before you saw my true face.

  Can the difference between scales and fur override what is in our hearts? Believe me, Dr. Schwabauer, as Setsuko does already. I do not fight your kind: I fight only evil, whether that evil be human or alien.”

  Professor Schwabauer was moved by the swordmaster’s words. For so long he had wanted to believe in the brotherhood of man and alien; but he had been contradicted by cruel reality at every turn. “You are noble,” he said softly.

  “In all the creatures of the universe,” said the swordmaster, “there is good.”

  “After all that has happened—after the horrors of this invasion, after the ruthless extermination of one sentient race by another—you still believe this thing?” Schwabauer said.

  “I do.”

  “Then I will come with you ... I must come with you.”

  He thought of the resistance fighters who had fought the aliens here in Japan: Tomoko Jones, the half-Japanese anthropologist he’d trained himself, so unsure of her identity; Matt, her husband, the swaggering ninjitsu expert in whom this conflict had awakened a new tenderness; Chris Baer, the young boy who had lost everything and then gained new parents and new hope; and Sugihara himself, a compassionate soul in a nest of soulless killers. How they had all been transformed by their harrowing experiences! Middle-class Americans, transmuted into heroes. Must it take so much suffering to make men rise above themselves?

  “Yes,” he said softly. “We will go to America.

  When they come again, we’ll be ready.”

  And he thought of the skyfighter that had burst free from the hell of Osaka Castle . . . and hope stirred in his heart at last. He knew that, with the breakdown in communication between the countries of the world, it might be a long time before they reached America, before he could see his beloved friends again. But he would see them, he swore to himself. And they would stand together once more, ail of them, facing the dark forces from the stars.

  PART 1

  DIANA THE HUNTRESS

  Chapter 1

  Orange County, California: one year later

  “Hand me another nail,” Matt Jones hollered to Tomoko. She climbed up the ladder and watched as he pounded another plank over the main entryway of what had once been the Matt Jones Institute of Martial Arts, the main attraction of the decaying Haataja Shopping Plaza. She put a handful of nails in his outstretched hand.

  “It’s hard to believe that we’re actually leaving,” she said.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. “What?” he shouted.

  “I said, I can’t believe we’re going!”

  “We have to go. For CB’s sake.” He stopped pounding for a moment. The warm California sun beat down on both of them. From halfway up the ladder, she watched thirteen-year-old Chris Baer (nicknamed CB), their adopted son, hauling a box of clothes into the back of their Chevy van. Matt continued, between hammerings, “Since Nathan Bates’s death, the riots have become intolerable. I don’t want our kid to grow up in this kind of world,

  Tomoko, and I’m tired of fighting those goddamn lizards. Last year we followed them to their very lair in Japan, we smoked them out and drove them away . . . and today they’re back, powerful as ever, cruel as ever. I can’t stand it. We’ve gotta get to the free states somehow—even if we die trying. Even if we’re only free for a few days.”

  Tomoko shuddered, knowing the perilous journey they’d have to undertake. Somewhere to the east, people said, there was a loose association of states that were free of the aliens’ curse; their harsh winters made the red dust stronger every year, and it was still death for a Visitor to go there. At first they’d thought of going up to Washington State or Idaho; but the northern border was very strictly guarded. They’d have to flee east and then north, trying to lose the Visitors in the endless deserts before thrusting up beyond the Appalachians.

  The van had been disguised to look like one of the Visitor vehicles. Members of the local resistance had supplied them with three Visitor uniforms pilfered from the skyfighter which she and Matt had captured and brought back to Los Angeles. Alas, that skyfighter was no longer operational, for several parts had malfunctioned and the resistance technicians had been unable to find replacements. But at least they had the uniforms, and they had their dermoplast disguises, the imitation saurian faces which they had worn when they infiltrated Osaka Castle one year before. CB was putting them into the van at that very moment.

  , At last Matt finished boarding up the institute

  and they both climbed down the ladder into the plaza. “Are we all packed?” he called out to CB.

  “Just a couple more boxes,” the boy said, coming up to them. “We can blow in, like, fifteen minutes. Like, I’m totally psyched.”

  He’s grown taller in the past year, Tomoko thought. Soon he’ll start thinking about girls all the time. Matt’s right. We can’t let him grow up in this hell.

  “You don’t feel bad about leaving our home behind?” she said to him.

  “No way,” he said, idly brushing back his spiked blond hair with one hand, and carefully adjusting his neon-pink leather tie with the other, making sure it was properly askew in the manner now fashionable with teenagers. At first, she’d been a little alarmed at CB’s “new wave” affectations; but after a while she realized it was just a harmless fad. The boy went on, “Are we really going all the way to Washington, D.C.?”

  “If we make it,” Matt said despondently. He went over to the van and, with a small can of black enamel, carefully retouched the Visitor logo that adorned the door. The Visitors never seemed to have any worn-looking artifacts. Not for them the battered jalopy or the rundown gas guzzler; with them everything was always squeaky-clean.

  “Aren’t you being a bit overcautious?” Tomoko said, watching him.

  “They’d notice instantly, I’m sure, if the insignia were a little faded.”

  “Yeah,” CB said. “Those lizards are sticklers.”

  From the Chinese restaurant across the plaza emerged an older, balding man, struggling with some brown packages.

  “Sam,” Tomoko said. “What are you doing with all that stuff?”

  “You need food,” he said. “You go away forever? I make great f
ood for you: ho fan ... in this box two Peking ducks. I made too many by mistake. You take, Tomoko, Matt, CB. Theresa says she too sad to say goodbye.”

  Tomoko saw the face of Sam’s wife in the window of Po Sam’s restaurant. Suddenly she didn’t want to go at all. “They’re our friends!” she said, almost weeping.

  “One day we will meet again,” Sam said. He thrust the packages into the back of the van;

  Tomoko could smell the mingled fragrances of Sam’s exotic cooking. She knew he hadn’t made two extra Peking ducks by mistake.

  “Yes, we’ll meet,” she said, unable to meet his eyes.

  “Hey, Matt, hey, Tomoko!” CB cried out. “Someone’s coming!”

  A car was pulling into the plaza; a rare occasion, since no one frequented this shopping center any more, and Matt had announced the closure of his academy some weeks ago.

  “My god,” Matt said. “It’s Julie Parrish. What can she want?”

  Matt watched as Julie approached them. Sam, too overcome by emotion to stay any longer, had gone back into the dingy diner where Matt and the others had first planned their assault on the lizards in Japan. Julie was worried, obviously. Her blonde hair was in disarray, and her beautiful eyes were sad. Before she could speak, Matt said, “You shouldn’t have come, Juliet. You know we’ve made up our minds.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Juliet Parrish said. “I don’t know why anyone would want to stay here, now that Nathan’s dead, now that riots are ravaging downtown Los Angeles, and the reptile contingent is out in force, raping, killing, devouring ... oh, it’s horrible, Matt. The freeway was a sea of bodies.

  I had to crash through a lizard checkpoint, and ... I zigzagged through the surface streets, and I think I threw them off the trail, but 1 don’t know how long for.”

  “Well! That’s a hell of a way to start my escape! Thanks a whole lot,” Matt said.

  “Wait, this is important-—” Juliet began.

  “Right now, nothing is more important to me than the protection of my family, and getting out of here with our skins intact,” Matt said. “I’ve paid my dues to the resistance.”

  “Yes, you have,” Julie said. Her eyes began to water a little, and Matt immediately regretted his angry outburst. But they still had to get out of there fast.

  “Well, say what you’ve come to say. I’ve gotta split,” he said.

  Julie said, “Well, our intelligence has gotten wind of a new development in the lizards’ technology ... a new, artificially created super-heavy metal called papinium.”

  “What does it do?” CB said, interested suddenly.

  “That’s the bad news,” said Julie. “A thin coating of this metal, say on an armored vehicle or even something larger, and they think the lizards might be able to penetrate into regions where the red dust is still active.”

  “Holy shit,” said CB. “Then even the free states—”

  “Won’t be free anymore!” Matt said bitterly. “And our entire odyssey will become senseless.”

  “How far along is this technology?” Tomoko said.

  “We don’t know! But we think that they are manufacturing it in secret somewhere in the noman’s land between the free states and the Visitor-occupied territory ... in the Carolinas maybe, or in southern Virginia. That’s why your flight eastward has suddenly become of critical importance to the survival of the human race—”

  “Oh no,” Matt said. “No you don’t! No more heroics.”

  “It’s nothing like that. We don’t have any plan, any undercover mission. It’s just that, maybe, forearmed with this information, you might be able to find scientists out east who could help us. Here,” she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a lump of shiny metal, bluish-silver in hue. “This is the only sample we’ve managed to obtain. If you could take it and—”

  “I’m not touching it with a ten-foot pole!” Matt said.

  “Please!” said Juliet Parrish.

  He saw the desperation in her eyes. Wildly he turned to look at his wife and kid. “I guess I’m going to say yes,” he said. Tomoko nodded, approving. “Goddamn heroics.” He took the nugget and tossed it to CB. Julie started to protest and then sighed in relief when CB caught it and pocketed it.

  “Hey,” he said, “I think it would make a radical ear cuff.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Matt said. Julie looked as though she were about to say something more, so he went on, “Do you have more disaster to report?” “I do have good news too,” she said. “Maybe. Don’t you three know this German-American anthropology professor, used to teach at USC, was in Japan for a while?”

  “Of course we know him!” Matt said. “He helped us immeasurably in our battle against the forces of Lady Murasaki. I think he’s dead; when we returned to Tokyo in our captured skyfighter, we couldn’t find him anywhere, and the laboratory where we’d left our friends behind was completely deserted.” It was a painful memory; he was angry at Julie for forcing him to relive it.

  “Well, there’s a remote chance Professor Schwabauer may still be alive. We’ve been monitoring some of the lizard communications; there’s an order out to kill him. They’re sending some converted hit man out to rub him out right now.” “Where?” Tomoko said anxiously.

  “If it’s the same Dr. Schwabauer—and it’s not a very common name—-he’s hanging around Washington, D.C., right now, giving lectures on the habits of the aliens and briefing prospective resistance members.”

  “Washington!” Matt said. “But that’s where we’re going!”

  “If it’s the same guy, and he hasn’t been killed by the time you get there, he can probably help us find someone who can work with that papinium sample,” Julie said. “For god’s sake, CB, take care of the damn thing!”

  “For sure,” CB said, juggling it back and forth with an action figure he’s pulled from a pocket of his pants. Juliet looked at him nervously, but didn’t comment. She’s really desperate, Matt thought.

  “Good luck,” Julie said at last. Impulsively, she hugged him and Tomoko and CB; then she was off, her green Mazda with its dented front fender roaring as she turned onto Spruce Street.

  “Why did I do that?” Matt said furiously. “I don’t want anything to do with the resistance again! I just want to get out of here.”

  “Hush, Matt,” Tomoko said gently. They didn’t exchange any more words as they boarded the van, changed into the hated alien uniforms, and started moving toward the freeway.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Matt said, slamming on the brakes only a few miles down the freeway. The traffic was at a standstill. “Another lizard barricade. There’s nothing for it but to sweat it out.”

  “Look!” CB said. “They’re waving us over to the shoulder.”

  Matt honked his horn and made what he thought was an arrogant face. Terrified, the cars around him scrunched closer together, so that he was able to worm his way around them. A Visitor vehicle was parked; two Visitors were standing by the side of the road, angrily interrogating those who drove by.

  Rolling down his window, Matt said, “We’re on an urgent mission. Have to get to ... to headquarters.”

  “Sorry to bother you, sir,” said a young man in uniform. This wasn’t an alien; it had to be one of those converted people. His eyes were dead and stared straight ahead. Matt tried to control his features, and to project his voice through the synthesizer attachment hidden in the collar of his uniform.

  “How dare you!” he barked. The voice was harsh, metallic, startling even himself. “Don’t you realize who I am?”

  “I’m sorry,” the converted recruit said, flinching. “We’re looking for a green Mazda. Have you seen it, sir?”

  “You have the nerve to call me over and bother me with such trivialities?”

  “But sir, it’s not that trivial! We have reason to think the driver may be the resistance leader Juliet Parrish, and that she may be carrying a sample of p-p-papinium!”

  Thinking quickly, Matt rasped, “You idiot! We were pursuing that c
ar ourselves . . . and you’ve prevented us from performing our duty! Let us through at once—unless you want to join me for dinner tonight,” he added menacingly.

  Backing away in terror, the convert began to direct traffic madly to clear a space for Matt’s van. When there was enough room to move, Matt rammed his foot down on the accelerator and wove

  quickly through the stalled traffic.

  “That was close!” CB said as they drove down a clear stretch of highway. “How far away is Washington?”

  “Are you kidding? It’ll be days before we get there,” Tomoko said.

  “I keep thinking about what Julie said,” Matt said, “about Professor Schwabauer. Do you think it’s true?”

  “If he’s alive,” Tomoko said, “then anything’s possible. Perhaps even the alien swordmaster is still alive—”

  “He’s history,” CB said sadly. “Like we saw him dying, remember, the red dust getting to him? He’s dead, Tomoko.”

  “We saw him dying,” she said, “but we didn’t see him dead. Maybe the blast threw him clear and—”

  “Ridiculous,” Matt said. “Anyway, he’d have succumbed to the red dust soon after that. His thermal pressure skin was dissolving . . . poor guy. He loved you, Tomoko. He gave up his life for all of us, but especially for you, I think.” Matt did not voice his jealousy of the alien first known as Fieh Chan, then as Kenzo Sugihara. But he had felt threatened by this swordsman of dazzling skill who had won not only Tomoko’s affection but also the hero-worship of young CB. What terrible thoughts! He shouldn’t think ill of the dead. Seriously he drove on, not speaking. The others, cowed by his dark mood, stared intently at the road as the scenery flashed endlessly by . . . abandoned suburbs, gutted shopping malls, the rubble of bombed skyscrapers ... all the debris of the alien conquest and of the terrible riots that were even now tearing apart the inhabitants of Greater Los Angeles.