A weak mouth below a long, hooked nose twitched, showing a flash of eellike teeth as he spoke.
"Thank you," he said, accepting the steaming brew. He pulled out a small bottle of Xeno-Zip and took out a tablet, which he washed down with a gulp of tea. "Marvelous stuff, Mr. Grant. I would not be able to perform at peak mental ability for such long hours without it."
"Good to see you putting some of the money I give you back into the firm," said Grant. "But I'm a busy man, Begalli. You want to get on with this show-and-tell?"
Begalli put the tea down and began to prop his charts up on an easel. He spoke in a hoarse, low but audible voice as he did so.
"Mr. Grant, I believe you are aware of my background and many other important things. But I do not believe you are aware of the amazing number of secrets comprised in the genetic makeup of these marvelous xenotropic creatures, so interwound with human experience."
"I'm a businessman. You're a scientist. I have the money, you have your work."
"Indeed, indeed, but you have to understand something of what's going on here in order to have a grasp on not only the essence, but the cutting edge of this business." Slender, snaky fingers were tapping on a chart, which looked like some modern art collage of the alphabet connected by lines and squiggles and the incomprehensible. Grant recognized it as an incredible tangle of genetic code, with some new symbols that had been invented just for the silicon-based segments of the alien creature's makeup. Begalli gazed at it for a moment, absorbed and fascinated.
He snapped out of it just before Grant was about to get mad. "This is the closest we can get to an actual chart of typical alien DNA. There's so much we do not understand—so much to learn." Eagerness and awe crept into his voice. "So much opportunity ... But look what I have discovered, Mr. Grant!"
His eyes widened and he tapped the edge, where the code performed a curious curlicue.
"A goddamned crossword puzzle?"
Begalli laughed an oily laugh. "The whole DNA is a puzzle, sir—but what this is, is nothing less than a recessive gene!"
Grant did not pretend to understand. "Look, talk in English, will you?"
"Mr. Grant, when we first started getting reports of the hyperactive results of some doses of Xeno-Zip, I was among the batch of scientists who immediately investigated the biochemical reasons. The reason that some people have been reacting in this fashion to the drug is that their biochemistries are sensitive to the unique properties of the synthesized regular alien jelly."
"Yes, dammit, but what else are we going to use? We're running out of the natural stuff, right. We've got to synthesize the jam or jelly or whatever."
"Yes, sir, but if you'll allow me, there's more. Apparently the berserker antics were the result of a batch of Xeno-Zip in which too much of the precipitant was introduced."
"What a waste!"
"Indeed. Nonetheless, normal amounts still affect a portion of the populace negatively."
"So. What are we going to do?"
Begalli shrugged. "I for one would like to study the possibilities in this recessive gene."
"What does that have to do with our problem?"
"Mr. Grant, you're going to have to face up to facts. We need more royal jelly, and we need more queen mother royal jelly. At the moment, our understanding of the genetic makeup of the aliens is not sufficiently advanced to clone either. We need to go to the source. I have reason to believe that the DNA avenues I have been exploring could result in drug breakthroughs far beyond mere Xeno-Zip. At the very least, we could obtain a source of the active ingredient in the cornerstone of your drug empire that would allow you to manufacture safe batches for a long, long time. And I have the feeling that the answer to my questions could lie at the source of what we need."
The man nodded significantly as though Grant was supposed to catch the significance from these words alone.
Grant shook his head, jumped to his feet, and let the frustration out, full volume.
"Look, goddammit! I'm staring at the possibility of lawsuits buggering me from now till kingdom come ... I'm going to hear from sales as soon as those spineless assholes get up the courage ... and you know what I'm going to hear? A drop-off of sales for Fire. That will kill the cash flow, which will kill Neo-Pharm ... And I'm in hock for everything else!" He stalked nearer to the cowed scientists. "And you're telling me I ought to give a rat's ass about a blip in a weird ladder? You're telling me that I've got to spend more money than God owns for a trip to an alien planet?"
Begalli blinked and smiled uneasily. "In every seeming disaster, there is incredible opportunity. And this particular discovery ... well, sir, it simply reeks of it!"
"What, because it makes people as crazy as aliens? I just don't get you guys! I'm running a business here, not a nonprofit research group. I'm in desperate straits! I need help, not homilies! I need—"
The vid-phone chimed. Wyckoff jumped for it, as though for a lifeline to pull himself from the storm.
Curiosity and deep respect for that demigod of the business world, the telephone, caused Grant to stop mid-spew. Begalli watched the proceedings, engaged but more than a bit bemused.
"Yes?" said Wyckoff. His eyes swung toward his employer, still wary and more than a bit relieved by the interruption. "Yes, he's here, but this is a—" He blinked. "Oh. Oh, I see. Well, very well, I suppose ... Yes. Right away." Wyckoff turned to Grant and handed him the receiver. "It's General Burroughs of the United States Army, sir. Vital communication."
As Daniel Grant reached for the vid-phone volume button, he saw Begalli's lips tilt up into a half smile, as though he'd expected something like this all the while.
5
There was only one thing worse than the nightmares.
The nightmares, plus a hangover.
When the phone kicked Colonel Alexandra Kozlowski out of sleep at 0600 hours in the morning, she was experiencing both.
"Yeah?" she said, fumbling with the vid-phone control. She was covered in a snarl of sheets. She was still dressed in the civvies from last night. From what, for where? Her pounding brain came up empty.
First things first.
"Who is this?" she demanded.
"Colonel?" Unfamiliar face.
"That's right." Inventory. All her limbs seemed intact and still attached. No empty bottle of whiskey on the counter. Even better, no naked body beside her. That limited the possible damage of last night. Shreds of memory and the dinner tray in front of the vid told the story.
Too much video, too much vino.
She hadn't raised hell outside, she'd just raised it inside. Much more discreet. Far more destructive.
"Colonel, this is Burroughs. General Delmore Burroughs." She sat up, ran a hand through her hair. "I'm sorry to bother you this early in the morning, but we've got an important meeting today in Washington. I'm going to have to ask that you get on a jump-skip."
"Yes, sir." Civility and duty won over surliness. Why the hell had she stayed in this stinking profession anyway? Why was she taking this bullshit?
"Good. There will be a plane ready for you at eight hundred hours. The meeting is scheduled for eleven hundred hours, sharp."
"Yes, sir." She struggled for the proper words. "Begging your pardon, sir ... but could I inquire about the nature of this meeting?"
"I'm afraid not, Colonel. Top secret. Priority one. You'll know soon enough."
"Thank you, sir."
"And, Colonel. Wear your dress uniform. Wear your medals ... and some kick-ass boots."
"Yes, sir."
She disconnected. Well, it wasn't any problem getting to the transport. She was living on base at the moment. All she had to do was call up her adjutant and get him to wheel her all of two miles to the airfield.
The trouble was going to be getting out of bed.
Dammit! she thought, groaning. I wait around for months for something important to happen, and it happens on my day off, hours after I've had a snootful. The karmic balances of the universe were just ge
tting far too hair-trigger for Alex Kozlowski's taste. The stupid Eastern theories were immediately banished for the colder, more mechanistic, and less vengeful rules of Western science. You drink too much, you get sick. Moreover, if you're a career officer, you took it all like a good soldier.
Groaning, she heaved her compact, muscular body out of bed, wishing she'd been working out more lately. Cripes, she felt like a pair of hips with a torso and limbs tacked on as afterthought. She peeled off her clothes, then walked (no, Koz, she admonished, more like waddled) to the shower stall, avoiding the mirror. She turned on the water, hard and hot, held her breath, and jumped in. The pounding heat against her neck and shoulders immediately improved things. Suddenly she had an afterthought head, too.
It wasn't like she was an alchy or anything. She'd go for weeks with just a glass of wine or a shot of bourbon and beer with the gang now and then. Every once in a while, though, when she started thinking about Peter too much, she found herself motoring for a jug of wine, gallon size, and just going apeshit.
Peter. Peter Michaels. Lieutenant Peter Michaels.
There had been men since him, just as there had been men before him. Hell, soldiers in foxholes and all that stuff. Nothing like sex to ease the tension. But there had never been anyone like Peter ever again. No one she cared about. No one she could love.
Had it been love with Michaels? Hard to say. She just knew that she didn't have much in the way of tender emotions anymore. They had got eaten up with that alien acid. All that was left was guilt and nightmare—and a large sturdy pile of grit that was the essential stuff of Alexandra Kozlowski.
The grit. The iron. The hard stuff. That was why she was a colonel now.
After that nasty business with the Hollywood nest, she transferred to the Marines. They took her in a shot. She found herself immersed in space and the vessels that traversed it. It was a way to get her brain out of the acid. She was a top student and her rank just increased and increased. She was on Camp Kennedy base now, doing some prelims on a possible space cruise, but it looked as though her superiors had something different in mind for her, which was just hunky-dory.
Busy. That was what she needed. To be busy, to immerse herself in work. When she worked hard, she slept hard. When she slept hard, she didn't have nightmares.
When she didn't have nightmares, she didn't see Peter's dissolving face again.
Dammit! Just shut up! she told herself, pounding the tile of the shower stall, letting the hot water sluice down her face. Just shut up! It wasn't your fault, why are you torturing yourself? It was Peter who'd been getting weird, who had to show his independence. If he hadn't demanded to go up to that bulb, if he had listened to her, he might still be alive.
After his death, they'd cleaned the nest out. It was as though all her men had become an extension of her need for revenge. There wasn't much alien jelly. They'd taken the piddling amount out. Not worth the bother, certainly. But no alien bodies, no DNA samples. They slagged all that. It was like a dementia. It was like nothing that Alex had ever experienced before. If the bugs had had half a brain between them, they would have run, because there'd seldom been a killing machine like her and her men, taking revenge for that sneaky little alien trap. Somehow they'd all made it through alive, too, which was a wonder. They'd used part of their extra leave for a wake for Peter Michaels. It should have been enough for her, it really should have.
But it didn't bring back Peter.
The thing about it was that they'd both known that something like that could happen. They'd promised each other that if it. did, they'd get on with their lives, not cling to memories and hope. But it had happened and now Alex had to live with that and somehow there were always other kinds of pain she'd rather have.
She dried herself off. She put herself together. She made herself some coffee. Then she called her adjutant to pick her up. She found her good uniform, she put on her pants—one leg at a time, as usual. She combed her hair and she had another cup of coffee.
The pounding in her head had subsided, but she still felt weak and weary.
She looked at the clock. Five more minutes to pickup time.
She looked at her hands. They were trembling.
Damn and double damn! What was happening to her? She wasn't nervous, yet she couldn't function. She'd never been like this after drinking.
She took a deep breath, but it didn't calm her. She sighed. Then, wearily, she went to her medicine cabinet. She took out one of the bottles there, opened it, and tapped a pill into her hand.
She took it with a gulp of coffee, and almost immediately began to feel better.
Damn this stuff, she thought. Damn it to hell.
She tucked the bottle of Fire into her carry-bag, and put her face into her hands.
Daniel Grant smiled.
He felt the room lighting up around him from the effects of that wonderful smile, and he reveled in its power.
"Gentlemen, all I ask for are three things." He turned the smile wattage up just a tad higher. "Guns. Grunts. And a gondola. Send my team of specialists and scientists on a little voyage, and I promise to bring back happiness and satisfaction for us all."
The meeting place was a high-level war room, streamlined angles, all polished wood and chrome and underlit attitude. It smelled of after-shave and leather, and was about five degrees cooler than it had to be. Architecture and technology contrived to create a crib of spare power, with acoustics that made the most of monosyllabic speeches.
There was enough brass in the room to supply knuckles for an army of hoodlums. They sat around a black oval table, bracketed by uniform high-backed black chairs, still and forbidding as monuments in a nighttime cemetery.
"To the alien homeworld for God's sake?" said Admiral Niles. The old man moved forward in his chair. He was a good-looking man, with a shock of gray hair and a slash of a mustache below an aquiline nose. His face was lined with weariness, but his eyes were sharp as a hawk's.
"Not homeworld, sir," a supernumery corrected. "Hiveworld."
"The source of all the aliens that have been encountered in this quadrant of the galaxy, from all signs. The source of the queen mother that was brought to Earth—not of the race," tendered another expert.
The extent of the spread of the xenos had not yet fully been determined. So far they had been found only on isolated planets; all the clues pointed back to this so-called Hiveworld. The Hiveworld had been the source of the Alien-Earth War.
However, naturally, there was great concern. Any newly discovered planet had the potential of being infected. And no one knew if any eggs had been illegally exported from Earth.
Admiral Niles grunted. "Whatever. This place must be hell. I know that the xenos are comparatively well contained here on Earth." He looked at Grant, and it felt like those coal-black eyes were boring into him. "In some ways, perhaps, even farmed. But on their own turf, surely—"
Grant snapped his fingers.
The AV portion of this morning's DC festivities.
A holotank eased down into its moorings and lights flickered. Three-D film flashed of brave soldiers and mercenaries in the latest getup, carrying the most modern weapons, slamming through the ranks of an alien nest. He would have enjoyed splicing in some martial John Philip Sousa, but his PR people had talked him out of it.
"Not bad, huh? And lots of these folks are yours. Just crack teams! Crack! And I even understand you've got a real handle on the alien-blood-in-battle problem. Wonderful!" Grant was all enthusiasm.
"I know those films!" said the admiral. "They're from the North Carolina campaign earlier this year. A piece of cake, true—but we're talking about a place where aliens have total sway."
"Not necessarily, sir," an expert's nasal voice twanged. "The Hiveworld may also be inhabited by the alien homeworld original predators—or corollary predators. There's got to be a similar ecology to some extent for them to have developed there the way they have."
"Hmm. So you're saying an expedition there is
feasible, and not overly risky," said the admiral, settling back in his seat.
"Any environment containing these critters is going to have an element of risk, sir," said Grant. "But then ... I know your people can handle it! And the rewards would be spectacular!" He leaned forward confidently. "I mean, it was General Burroughs here who approached me on the subject. And I found it to be not only a fascinating concept—but a mutually rewarding alliance. An expedition into the adventure of free enterprise and the onward evolution of the American soldier! General Burroughs? Would you care to elaborate?"
The black general glared at Grant through slitted eyes. "The admiral has been thoroughly briefed on the benefits of the royal jelly you can supply." The man was playing poker here, and that was okay, because Daniel Grant appreciated a good negotiator.
It brought out the best in him.
"Yes, but before me I see intelligent eyes, questioning eyes!" Grant stood and gestured outward at the assemblage of frowning brass. "And as I am the pitchman here, and you've granted me time—please allow me to properly present my pitch!"
Again, a snap of fingers.
The moving pictures flickered into a different round.
The Baghdad Goodwill Games. Oriander's world record, and his unfortunate demise.
Ratty videos of the horrible slaughter at Quantico.
He heard the sharp intake of breath.
"I'm sure you're aware of these tragedies and others like them that have caused a huge number of lawsuits to be leveled at my company," Grant said gravely, deep into presentation mode.
Then: soldiers, looking noticeably calmer, performing tasks and exercises with sharp precision and sharp eyes.
"Here we have a group of men who have just taken small doses of regular Xeno-Zip ... which I shall call Fire from now on. This, as I hope you know, is derived from normal alien royal jelly. My company Neo-Pharm has patented the proper methodology of transforming normal alien royal jelly utilizing molecules of queen mother royal jelly so that tiny doses will perk up a normal human's day—and enhance any soldier's performance. A little costly, perhaps—but worth it.
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