by Darrell Bain
"So, where do we go from here?” That was me asking.
"Now that Mona has lessened security concerns somewhat, I don't see why we four can't all stay together once we get a base of operations set up, so long as we keep the other Cincans informed in case we fail. I could go ahead and rent us a place in Ft. Smith and get started."
With that much settled, the meeting broke up and Jim left to gather a few things he wanted to take with him. Before leaving he made several arrangements simply as contingency planning, like setting up a way for us to contact Tera's friends in case anything happened to him, a way for them to contact him, calling his broker and a close friend and arranging for a bank account to be opened in the name one of the Cincans was using and funds to be transferred there, getting the phone numbers of the two disposable phones we still had on hand and so on. He left soon afterward, deciding at the last moment that the risk wouldn't be much greater if Tera went with him at the same time.
Mona and I were left by ourselves to wait until he had an address for us. I suppose we could have followed, but this way we would avoid having to check into a motel while Jim searched out suitable quarters.
It was an idyllic two days. We had no pressing duties and there was plenty of food and drink on hand and nothing much to do. And we didn't have to worry about making noise. Anyone who heard us probably would have thought it was a cougar screaming and given the place a wide berth anyway. The only thing that marred the enjoyment was the constant background worry over the situation that we-and everyone in the world-were facing. Of course the world didn't know it was in danger, but we did. However, Mona wouldn't let me spend much time on the subject. She said rightly, that we would have plenty of opportunity when we rejoined the others to begin thinking about it again, and in the meantime to forget it. I did, almost. When Jim called and said we could join him and Tera, I was almost sorry.
* * * *
With the best of intentions, I had failed to get an atlas at any of our previous stops. There was probably a shorter route from our hideaway to Ft. Smith but I didn't know one. I drove back the way we had come, then picked up Highway 270 and from there Highway 71 on into Ft. Smith. On the way, we passed very near the army post where Tera had told us General Melofton had his base of operations. It was also where he was holding the Cincan prisoners and conducting his interrogations and experiments. From the Cincan monitoring through the prisoners’ PDAs, I knew it was located in an area of the fort that had been closed down for years. Not that it concerned us. We were as safe in Ft. Smith as we would have been in New York, or nearly so. It was rescuing them after we took the lander that would be difficult, if it could be done at all.
* * * *
Jim greeted us like long lost family when we arrived. He had taken a semi-country home on the southern suburbs of the city, a big two story place with more room than we really needed, even for the lab he intended to set up-in fact, was already setting up. He had brought in the first piece of equipment he had purchased just before we arrived, having gone to pick it up himself from a shipment point at another place he rented. Security. Whatever we could do to lessen the risks of being caught before we made our move, he intended to see that it was done.
Jim hugged us all and Tera followed suit. She was catching on to the more intimate earthly customs rapidly. As soon as we were inside, he introduced us to someone else whom he had already recruited.
"Mike, Mona, this is Staghorn Strongarm. He's one of the best geneticists in the country."
"Call me Strongarm,” he said, sticking out his hand. It was covered with age spots. His face was dotted with them too, as well as a million wrinkles. He was very old, yet he moved his small body spryly and his dark eyes twinkled with intelligence. Even with the furrows and valleys in the skin of his face, I could tell that he was a full blood Indian, or very close to it.
"Glad to meet you,” I said. “I hope you can find what we're after."
"Me too, white man. Me want to get young again. Surprise my squaw."
"Knock it off, Strongarm. Mike, he isn't even married and that Indian act was old before you were born."
"Doesn't mean I don't have a squaw.” Strongarm cackled like a hen that had just laid an egg. He peered closely at both Mona and I. “Injun blood, I can tell. You ever hunt with a bow?"
"No,” I said.
"Smart. Firestick better. Come on, I need samples from you and your squaw."
He took us into a back room where some instruments he had brought with him were setting on improvised shelves made from sawhorses and planks. The room was largely bare of furniture other than a refrigerator. He drew blood from each of us, then apologized for the lack of anesthetic but insisted on digging into our forearms far enough to get a sample of muscle tissue. I bit my tongue to stifle the pain but surprisingly, there wasn't much. The puncture site hardly bled at all. My Tersha on the job.
After that, Jim showed us upstairs and let us pick a room. He had linen handy but there was no bed, just an air mattress. I was beginning to wonder if he had some stock in an air mattress factory. Or maybe we were just ordained to sleep on them by some mysterious destiny that had it in for us.
"Cheer up,” Jim said. “At least we have lights and running water. I'll buy a few rolls of memory foam soon as I can get to it so we'll be more comfortable, but first things first. Any problems coming up?"
"Nary a one. If there's a dragnet out, I didn't notice it."
"Good. Still, I want you two to stay inside, just as a precaution.” He grinned. “You can cook for the rest of us while we get organized."
"It's a cinch he hasn't tasted much of my cooking,” I told Mona.
"We'll suffer for the cause. What do you think of Strongarm"
"I think he's funny,” Mona said. “Is he always like that?"
"Sure, but don't let it fool you. He just gets a kick out of acting like a wild Indian, and he's older than dirt. He's brilliant, though."
Back downstairs, there was another refrigerator in the kitchen that came with the house. Jim pulled out a beer for himself and one for me. Mona declined and took a coke. There was a pan bubbling on the stove with something in it that smelled good, and out in the dining area there was a set of folding table and chairs and the packing material they had come in. Jim had been busy already. We pulled out chairs and sat down.
"Strongarm will be busy for a while getting his instrument set up and calibrated. Don't worry about offering to help; he likes to do things himself. Claims it keeps him going.” He took a sip of his beer and continued. “There's five more people coming, including an old army buddy of mine. He's a retired Sergeant Major and former infantry platoon sergeant. I should say there are more coming if they survive a dose of my Tersha. I inoculated them with my own blood. They're all at least half Cherokee."
"Sounds like we're banking a lot on the Cherokee line being the key,” I said.
Jim shrugged. “It's all we have to go on right now, and I made no promises. They all have terminal illnesses so it's not like they're risking a great deal. I've told those men, and Strongarm as well, what the whole situation is. They're the only ones I knew that I could trust completely to just believe me, and to help us if they survive.” He chuckled. “It helped that they both knew how close I was to packing it in before the Tersha got me."
"Have you listened to any news lately?” Mona asked.
"Just to and from errands on the jeep radio. Nothing unusual and I haven't had time to buy a television. This is a wired city so you can use my PPC when you have time if you like."
"I'd rather have something productive to do."
"Me too,” Mona said.
"You can work with Sergeant Major Friedman with the planning when he arrives, if he does. That's if he's not busy running errands for me. There's just so much to do and only one of me. And you can help out our wild man if he allows it. I doubt that he will, though."
"Speaking of, he looks like he could use a dose of Tersha. Is he planning on trying it?"
Jim shook his head. “Not until and unless he identifies the specific gene or genes that indicate compatibility with the Tersha. He's too valuable to risk right now."
A timer made a dinging noise in the kitchen. Jim jumped up and ran toward the smells that had been attracting my attention ever since we arrived. A minute later he yelled, “Come and get it!"
The pot I had seen on the stove was lima beans and bacon and onions cooked together and he had made a pan of hot cornbread to go with them.
The old Indian came in just as Jim was cutting the cornbread. He was gnawing on what looked like a piece of old leather. He saw me eyeing it. “Buffalo jerky. Old Injun food.” He sat down and began filling his plate, then sniffed. “You put pig in here, huh? No squash?"
"Shut up and eat, you crazy bastard,” Jim said. To us, he added “Beans, corn and squash. He thinks just because Indians always grew them that they're the only vegetables worth cooking."
"Wild onions are okay too,” Strongarm said, spooning up a mouthful of beans. “White man onions too big."
"Sorry, I'll go see if I can find some. In the meantime, you don't seem to mind eating the white man onion I put in the beans."
Strongarm didn't answer. Jim winked at us from across the table.
We ate and then Mona and I went up to bed. The air mattresses Jim had provided were no more comfortable than the ones in the cabin, but we managed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Three of the five friends that Jim had inoculated with his blood died. Jim didn't grieve openly but the only thing that made him smile for the next week or so was occasionally when Strongarm's untamed Indian act became especially outrageous. It was a setback to our theory, but not entirely. Two of them did live, including Sergeant Major Herb Friedman. He showed up three days after Mona and I arrived.
Herb was medium tall and fair haired, an oddity for someone who was half Cherokee, and he was beginning to go bald on top. I wondered if the Tersha would cure that. He was about the same age as Jim, but thinner, a result of the chemotherapy he had gone through three times already in an attempt to beat lung cancer. It was Herb who gradually drew Jim out of the mild funk he fell into with the loss of three of his old buddies, even though they had been terminal already. Herb took over the organization and planning of our prospective encounter with a confidence and energy that belied his recent illness, not even counting his age. He was a good man to be around and I liked him from the start. He reminded me of all the tough old no-nonsense sergeants I had known in the army, the ones who really run the day to day operations of their units. Not only that, he proved to be immensely well read and had a disciplined mind that always stayed on track.
Herb agreed with Mona. If we couldn't mount a full scale assault, and didn't have trained troops, it was best to keep things as simple as possible and go in with as few people as possible, counting on surprise and swiftness to get into the lander. Before he arrived, Tera had drawn up a map of the immediate area around where the lander was located, relying not only on her memory but that of her friends as well. Herb wasn't satisfied. He downloaded the most recent commercial satellite photos and got a shot of the ridge line where the lander had come in, then plowed a path down into the ravine. The stealthing was still holding; from the photo you wouldn't have known there was anything there other than fallen trees and underbrush. Herb made a new map on pieces of computer paper taped together (Jim had brought in a standard PC and printer during the week and gotten it hooked up and on line). He sat down at the table with Tera and drew in more detail, questioning her (and through her, the other aliens) about distances, slopes, elevations, debris, undergrowth, trees that might be used for cover and on and on until he was satisfied that he and the rest of us knew the layout and had it committed to memory. There was one bit of good news from the last satellite image. It didn't show a great concentration of troops and few signs of a permanent camp, at least to our untrained eyes.
After that drawing the new map, he penciled in the lander, its position, where the entrances were and whether they were immediately accessible, how they were oriented with the terrain, how long it would take them to open once we arrived and a hundred other little items that the rest of us probably would have overlooked. I sure hoped Tera's memory was good, because we were going to be counting heavily on some of that information.
Herb had arrived with two duffle bags that contained a small arsenal. He let us watch as he emptied them, giving a short description of each item, just as if none of us had ever been in the military. Well, for me it had been so long that I had forgotten a lot about arms and munitions. Same for Jim. Mona had been in the service more recently but none of us except Herb and Jake Sheridan, when he arrived, had been ground pounders. While we were in the service, we fired for qualification once a year with the standard army rifle and pistol and that was it.
The combination rifle and twelve gauge shotgun was Herb's choice. Any fighting we did was likely to be at fairly close quarters and he wanted both options. On the other hand, since none of the rest of us had handled that type weapon before and there was neither time nor opportunity for training, he gave us each a rifle that we were used to and made us practice dry firing them until he was satisfied that we had regained some competence. He offered us all one of the standard army pistols but Mona and I both chose to stick with our forties; we were used to them. Jim had brought his own arsenal and probably didn't need the practice but Herb insisted on running him through it anyway.
Jake Sheridan didn't need any familiarization with firearms but went through it with us anyway. He had just recently been retired on a medical. Herb had been Jake's platoon sergeant when he first entered the army, fresh out of a college ROTC program. Herb told me privately that Jake had been an excellent officer and would have made a good infantry officer, but an accident had cost him part of his lower leg. He had stayed in, but moved over into logistics. His medical retirement came from some weird disease picked up in the last gulf war that completely incapacitated him. It was still undiagnosed when Jim inoculated him.
Had it been left up to Jake, I would never have learned anything about him. He was friendly enough but seldom spoke, and when he did it was in terse, simple sentences. He was a full Cherokee with the typical dark complexion and black hair.
Herb wanted two more men (or women; he wasn't particular so long as they were willing and able to fight) but Jim was having a problem finding anyone else he thought he could really trust, and that were so ill or old that they would have little to lose by risking the Tersha. He finally asked Herb for help.
Herb took off early one morning and didn't return until the next day. He told us he had injected a drop of his blood into three other men and one woman and given them his cell phone number to call if they lived. He hoped to get two more recruits, which would about fill the chopper when we found one. All we could do after that was wait. I was looking forward to spending some time upstairs with Mona, but then Jim found her a helicopter and she had to get ready to leave.
Jim had brought back a blond wig for Mona. When I saw her in it, with her lips painted in bright red lipstick and wearing a pair of jeans one size too small and a top with no bra beneath, I had to laugh.
"What's wrong?” Mona said. She grabbed Jim's arm and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Don't I look like some arm candy for my Sugar Daddy?"
Jim grinned uncomfortably. “It was the best disguise I could think of. I doubt anyone would suspect an old man in his dotage out spending his money on young women of anything sinister."
"You two look the part, all right,” I conceded. “But what happens with the hanger operator? You sure as hell don't look like a helicopter pilot."
Mona pulled her shoulders way back, stretching the top tightly over her breasts. “Oh, I suspect he'll be so busy studying my bust measurements that he won't worry about much else. Or don't you think so?” She grinned impishly.
"Um, I agree. I just hope he keeps his eyes there when you show him your fake flight book.
” Jim had already arranged that for her.
"If he doesn't, it won't matter, “Jim said. I've bribed him so heavily he can afford to go find a bimbo for himself. Come on, Pattycake. Let's go play."
I was still stifling giggles as they went out the door. The whole absurd notion of seven old men and a woman wearing a blond wig and no bra tackling the United States Army in order to rescue stranded space travelers with the whole world at stake finally got to me.
"Good squaw, just too skinny,” Strongarm said.
I turned around. The old Indian was standing nonchalantly, gumming a piece of jerky, his eyes dancing with amusement. I don't think I've ever known anyone who enjoyed life so much, nor made so much of a joke of it, as Staghorn Strongarm. It was the first time I had seen him in a day or two.
"I like her like she is,” I told him.
"Okay, but me get fat squaw soon as I get young. Maybe next week."
"Why next week?"
"Have to get the Tersha bug going good first so I can service the squaw.” He grinned, showing his gums. “Maybe I can grow new teeth, too."
I hated to think of someone so full of life taking the chance on the Tersha, even as old as he was.
He must have seen that I was frowning without being aware of it. “Not to worry, Mike. You act like white men. Worry too much. Bad for the brain. I found the genes. I gottum too. Shoot, maybe get two squaws, like in the old days."
He wasn't that old! Then what he had said hit me. “You found the genes? The ones that tell who the Tersha is compatible with? Wow, that was quick!"
"Haw. White man government lab probably looking in the wrong place."
"What do you mean?” I was really astounded. This old man standing there gnawing on jerky with his toothless gums had found what we were after in a week when all the government research so far hadn't.
