sedona files 06 - enemy mine

by Christine Pope

  “You knew that I’d seen something, and so you knew I would come along with Callista and her parents. That’s really why you took Raphael. Your boss Lir Shalan only wanted him as bait.”

  A faint narrowing of his eyes when I mentioned Lir Shalan. But otherwise, Lir Gideon didn’t react, except to give the faintest of shrugs. “It is true that the person you refer to as Raphael wasn’t that important to us. Or rather, we knew we had to step carefully there, as he is an agent of the Assembly, and there could have been repercussions if he was harmed.”

  “But it was okay to take me.”

  “Have you been harmed?”

  No, of course I hadn’t. And it wasn’t as if I’d been dragged here against my will. I’d put my hand in Lir Gideon’s, had let him lead me away as that baleful yellow light glared all around us. At the same time, I couldn’t quite puzzle out what exactly was going on. All right, so I had strong psychic powers. I’d understand better if I’d been hauled off to some lab to be dissected. Instead, I was standing here in the Reptilian equivalent of an anonymous hotel room, having a mostly civilized conversation with a man who didn’t seem to be human or Reptilian, or like any of the aliens Callista had described seeing or meeting when she went before the Assembly on the far-off world of Penalta.

  “No, I haven’t been harmed,” I said at last. Not yet, anyway, I added mentally.

  “Nor will you be. You are our guest, Taryn. I know you have little reason to believe me or trust what I have said to you, but we do not offer hospitality lightly. If you are here with us, you are safe.”

  How very noble. Nothing I’d heard so far about the Reptilians seemed to indicate that they followed any sort of code, but I had to admit that all the information I’d been provided so far had come from somewhat biased sources. As for the abductions the aliens had been conducting over the years, well, I decided it was probably better to ask about that later on. Lir Gideon’s tone was even enough, but I thought I could hear an edge of tension to it, as if he was just waiting for me to ask exactly the wrong question and trying to decide what he should do if I did.

  “Well, I feel better now,” I said. The words hadn’t come out quite as sarcastically as they might have if someone like Grace was saying them, but neither were they entirely neutral.

  Lir Gideon affected not to notice. “I’m pleased to hear that. You should make yourself comfortable here. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you wish to rest?”

  Considering I’d gotten out of bed to go meet Callista and her parents not even three hours earlier, it wasn’t quite time for me to go to sleep, as tempting as that might sound. I could crawl into that cubbyhole and try to pretend certain parts of this day had never happened.

  “Not hungry, or tired,” I replied. “But some water would be nice.”

  As I spoke, I wondered if I could even trust any of the water I’d be given on this ship. After all, I had no idea what the Reptilians considered clean, or healthy. There was always the possibility I’d end up poisoned just because they didn’t know enough about human physiology to provide me with the right things to eat and drink.

  If he noted my misgivings, Lir Shalan gave no sign. He went over to the wall on the other side of the table, where there was another of those flat panels, although bigger than the biometric scanner he’d used to gain access to the room.

  Which made me realize he could come and go here any time he liked. Including when I was asleep. Could come in here and —

  And what? I couldn’t ignore the Reptilians’ history; it was the sort of thing my parents would never discuss openly in front of me, but I knew that the aliens weren’t exactly saints when it came to how they behaved with human women.

  Anyway, whatever he was, Lir Gideon definitely wasn’t a Reptilian. Actually, in this light it was a lot more difficult to see the pale green hue of his skin, or the deep red of his eyes. He almost looked like a normal human man, except for those high-necked robes he was wearing.

  “This panel will provide whatever you need,” he said, and I forced myself to concentrate on what he was saying. It would be stupid to miss out on his instructions for using the food replicator or whatever it was just because I was busy manufacturing worst-case scenarios in my head. “It does understand some basic English words, so you can ask for water, or food, and it will supply those things for you.”

  “Will it get me a cheeseburger?” I asked, just to see how he would react.

  To my surprise, he actually smiled. “It won’t be quite the same, and won’t have the bread component — ”

  “The bun.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that. But I think you might be surprised. Come and try it for yourself. It will need to learn your voice patterns.”

  Wondering how in the world all this could possibly work, I stepped away from the cubbyhole’s entrance, where I’d been standing all this time, and went over to the food synthesizer panel. In doing so, I had to pass quite close to Lir Gideon, who didn’t seem inclined to move out of my way. In fact, the sleeve of my jacket brushed against his robes, and I felt a strange shiver pass over me. Not revulsion. I’d held his hand earlier, and been glad of it. No, this felt more like my body reacting when my brain didn’t know quite what to do.

  He didn’t seem to notice, however, so I put on what I hoped was an expression of mild curiosity as I faced the panel embedded in the wall. “What do I have to do?”

  “Speak your request. Slowly, so it will not have to work as hard to understand you.”

  I had a feeling that if it had been Callista standing here, she would have done something snarky like order a double dirty martini and a plate of nachos. But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. For one thing, I didn’t like martinis very much, and another, I didn’t want to confuse the synthesizer unit.

  So I said, “A cheeseburger and some water, please.”

  Lir Gideon shifted slightly, possibly from amusement. “You don’t need to say ‘please.’”

  No, I supposed a food synthesizer wouldn’t care about the niceties, especially a machine designed by the Reptilians. However, it didn’t appear that I’d confused it too much, because approximately ten seconds later, a blue light flared in the panel, and a plastic door slid out of the way. Sitting inside the recess it revealed was a square metal plate, and on top of that plate was a fairly respectable-looking burger patty with a slice of yellow cheese on top. Off to one side was a square plastic cup, presumably filled with water.

  I hesitated, unsure whether it was safe to reach inside and retrieve the plate.

  “Go on,” Lir Gideon said, his voice tinged with amusement. “It won’t hurt you.”

  So I picked up the plate, which was slightly warm to the touch, along with the cup. Its surface was cool against my fingers. I looked inside and saw clear liquid. It definitely looked like water.

  Then again, so did vodka. And formaldehyde.

  “Would you like me to drink from it first, to show that it’s safe?”

  He wore a half-smile that did interesting things to his full mouth. I tore my gaze away and said, “No, I’m sure it’s fine,” then lifted the cup to my lips.

  It did taste like water — nicely chilled high-end mineral water, not something from a tap. My estimation of the Reptilians went up slightly.

  The burger, though…without the bun, I wasn’t sure how to eat it without making a mess.

  “The utensil is attached to the bottom of the plate,” Lir Gideon said.

  I went over to the table and set down the cup of water so I could feel the underside of the plate. Sure enough, there was a square-edged implement that looked like some high-priced European designer had come up with his version of a spork. It seemed to be attached magnetically, because I felt a slight resistance as I pulled it away.

  Thus armed with my spork, I didn’t have much reason not to try the burger. I told myself that the water had tasted fine, so the manufactured meat and cheese should be okay, too.

  Even so, I hesitated for a long moment, spork poised over
the patty as it lay in the middle of the plate. I could feel Lir Gideon watching me, and didn’t dare look up to see whether he was smiling outright this time.

  Well, if I’d been brave enough to reach out and put my hand in his, then I should also have the courage to take a bite of the burger. I pulled in a breath, then used the edge of the spork to cut off a small piece of meat and cheese, and placed it in my mouth.

  Suddenly, it was summer, and I was at one of the Rineharts’ backyard barbecues, enjoying a burger after spending the afternoon wandering along the banks of Oak Creek. This replicated patty I was eating tasted just as if it had come straight off the grill, with that wonderful mixture of slight charring and a complicated combination of spices rubbed on the surface to wake up the ground beef.

  “So?” Lir Gideon asked.

  “That’s amazing,” I replied, once I had finished chewing. “It doesn’t taste like it came out of a machine at all. How in the world can one of your food synthesizers duplicate Earth food like that?”

  It had seemed like an innocuous enough question, but something in his expression clouded. “It had input from one of your people.”

  Oh. It wasn’t too difficult for me to figure out why the Reptilians would have had a human captive around to help them program their food synthesizers. An awkward silence fell, and suddenly I didn’t have much of an appetite for the rest of the burger, even though it had tasted marvelous only a moment earlier.

  But I forced myself to nod, then take a few more bites before I set the plate with its half-eaten patty down on the table. Lir Gideon seemed content to watch me as I did so, not offering anything else by way of conversation, or providing any further explanations. While I wasn’t the sort of person who felt the need to fill up awkward silences by forcing myself to talk, I thought I should try to say something.

  “So,” I began, desperately trying to think of a topic that seemed somewhat neutral, “is ‘Lir’ some form of address in your language, like ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms.’ are in English? I noticed that both you and Lir Shalan were referred to that way.”

  “No,” Gideon replied. “‘Lir’ is a surname.” He paused for a second, then went on, “We share it because he is my father.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  For the longest moment, I could only stare at him. I’d guessed Gideon wasn’t human, at least not completely, but I’d never imagined that a Reptilian like Lir Shalan could actually be his father. I blinked, trying to sort through my roiling thoughts. “So…he used his DNA and human DNA to create you?”

  It seemed like a safe enough question. After all, the Reptilians were well known for their propensity to play with genetics the way a master mixologist might whip up a new cocktail.

  Another of those hesitations. “Not exactly.” Gideon’s gaze flickered from me to the little sitting area with its hard, backless couch and flat metal table. “Perhaps you would like to sit down.”

  In general, if someone suggests that it might be a good idea for you to sit, then you’d better do as they say. I retrieved the cup of water and then went to the sofa and perched on one end, just in case he intended to sit down as well. At least that way we would have as much space between us as possible.

  He didn’t sit, however. He remained standing, making me feel quite small as he loomed there in his long, dark robes. But I tried not to show my uneasiness, and instead took a sip of water as I waited.

  When he spoke, his tone was quiet and calm, revealing little of what he himself might think of the current topic of conversation. “My mother was as human as you are, Taryn. And I was conceived and born just like any other human. No one created me in a laboratory. I am not a hybrid, at least not in the way you have come to think of hybrids, as the result of genetic manipulation by our scientists.”

  That revelation hit me almost like a physical blow. Because if Gideon truly had been conceived in the same way that humans had for hundreds of thousands of years — if you left out those undergoing fertility treatments, that is — then that meant Lir Shalan had been with a human woman, had….

  I made my mind stop there. Yes, I’d heard the rumors and the stories, but that was all they had been…up until now. But there Gideon stood, saying that he was the product of one of those unions. Even with all the rumors I’d heard, however, no one had ever been able to provide definitive evidence that the women who’d been abducted and sexually assaulted by aliens had produced half-alien offspring. They claimed they had, but those children’s DNA had been tested and had come back completely normal.

  With his green skin and red eyes, Gideon probably didn’t have anything close to “normal” DNA.

  “You are surprised,” he said.

  Shocked was probably a better word. Or flabbergasted. I drank some more water to cover my amazement, then asked, “Are there others like you?”

  He didn’t answer right away, but instead came over and sat down on the sofa next to me. His proximity made me feel that much more off balance. It wasn’t any one thing, but just his general presence, the way his robe flowed over the edge of the couch and brushed against my leg, the way that this close, I could see the strange ruby glint of his eyes, even though they were framed in a fringe of thick black lashes that would make most women jealous.

  “Exactly like me? No. Unlike true hybridization, which is controlled in a laboratory and produces the same result every time, these sorts of pairings are…unpredictable. The results are rarely similar.”

  “But there are others who were born in a similar way.”

  “A few.”

  Right then, even though it was probably only around ten o’clock in the morning, I thought I could use something to drink that was a lot stronger than water. And I didn’t even drink very much; I couldn’t, because keeping out of other people’s minds required a good deal of mental control, and control was a difficult thing to manage when you were on your third martini.

  My brain didn’t want to accept what he’d just told me. Lir Shalan, the leader of the Reptilians charged with occupying my world, had been with a human woman and had a son by her. A son who now sat next to me. Because he was half alien, his looks could be misleading, but in appearance he only seemed a few years older than I. Which seemed to indicate that he had to have been born not all that long after Kirsten Jones drove the Reptilians out of Sedona.

  “Who is she?” I asked. “Your mother, I mean.”

  Gideon’s entire body seemed to tense. That is, I could see how his shoulders lifted slightly, the way the muscles along his jaw tightened. “She was a woman who was taken from Sedona as the base was being evacuated.”

  I couldn’t miss the “was” in his reply. So she was probably dead. I didn’t dare ask, though. “Taken? You mean abducted?”

  “Yes.” He pushed himself off the sofa and went over to the food synthesizer. “Water,” he said.

  Once again the blue light flashed, and the door slid open to reveal a cup identical to the one I held. He took it out and drank some of its contents, then turned back toward me. Some of the tension seemed to have left his face, and I guessed he had gone to fetch the water to give himself some time to decide how best to continue the conversation.

  He didn’t sit back down, but again stood a foot or so away from the couch, staring down at me. “She was a visitor to Sedona. She wanted to be there for the solstice, you see, and so was out at the Boynton Canyon vortex that night.”

  I nodded. My hometown got thousands of tourists every year, some who came only to hike and gawk at the amazing red rock formations, while others wanted to tap into Sedona’s unique energies. A lot of people dismissed the ideas of the vortexes and the powers associated with them as complete woo-woo, but I knew better. A power like no other on earth — maybe in the entire galaxy — was concentrated there. It was that power which had allowed my own mother to blast the aliens from their base while desperately attempting to save my father, and it was that same power — amplified by Kirsten Jones’s half-Pleiadian abilities — which had driven them out c
ompletely a quarter-century earlier.

  So I could see why someone would hike out to Boynton to be there when the earth turned from dark to light, and the power of the solstice united with the vortex energies. I didn’t know if I would have the courage to do something like that, simply because that fateful solstice had taken place at something like five o’clock in the morning, and blundering around Sedona’s wilderness areas in pitch darkness was not generally a wise thing to do.

  Especially if it put you in the path of a group of alien refugees fleeing the destruction of their base.

  “So he took her?” I asked, trying very hard not to think of what a horrifying experience that must have been, and to keep my tone neutral.

  “She was brought to him. He was not at the base, you see, but here on his ship. Not this exact ship — this one is much newer — but he has been stationed in this system, and overseeing your planet, for many years.”

  Did I dare ask about Reptilian life expectancy? I knew the Pleiadians, like Martin Jones and Kirsten’s father Gabriel and Callista’s soulmate Raphael, lived for thousands of years. But I had no idea how long Reptilians lived. Longer than humans, I guessed, just because Gideon’s explanation seemed to indicate that Lir Shalan had been in charge here for more than a quarter-century, and probably much longer than that.

  “Droit de seigneur,” I murmured, and Gideon’s black brows pulled together.

  “Excuse me?”

  So his English was flawless, but clearly he didn’t understand French. I didn’t really know why I’d thought he would, only that I didn’t have a very good idea of what the Reptilians did and didn’t know about my world. But I supposed if Gideon’s mother was American, and Lir Shalan had been overseeing a base in northern Arizona, then it made sense they’d only know English, or possibly Spanish as well.

  I hesitated, wondering whether I’d offend him with my explanation of the French phrase. Then again, I wasn’t the one whose father had stolen a woman from her world, just because his people had thought she might be useful. But since I’d mentioned the phrase, I didn’t see any way to avoid telling him what it meant. “It was an old custom in medieval France — and England, once it had been invaded by the Normans. It just meant that the lord of the manor had the right to a woman on her wedding night, rather than the man she’d married. It’s not applicable in this case, really. I guess it popped into my mind because of how you said your mother was given to the person in charge, instead of being taken by one of the people who found her.”