“With the enhancements Art made in me today, I feel I now have a better understanding of at least some of this alien hardware,” Bertha stated. “As best I can tell, most of these small devices are somewhat like the ‘Transformer’ toys of decades ago. In this I mean that in their current state they appear to be relatively harmless, but should they be allowed to combine into larger configurations I believe them to have the potential to be incredibly destructive, and ultimately quite lethal. While they appear to be inert at this time, I strongly recommend they be quickly isolated into individual radio-shielded containers and examined under the most secure conditions.”
Wow! This was a far more “intelligent” Bertha than I’d previously known, and I looked at Art with a grin. He had a smug look on his face, like that of a proud papa. His “child” had just scored an “A+” on her first major test! “Thanks, Bertha,” Art stated. “Your suggestions are solid and will be followed to the letter.”
Thankfully, my luggage turned out to be “clean”, as was the rest of the house. Once the devices were secured and L’raan’s luggage skillfully repacked by the spiders, the “all clear” was given for us to re-enter the house. Inside, instead of the chaos I envisioned, I found nothing at all out-of-place, and no damage to anything that I could see. “Bertha,” I commented, “your spiders did a fine job putting my house back together. I’m impressed!”
“Part of the service, Tom,” the AI quipped. Quipped! I was shocked! I’d never imagined a mechanical mind capable of making an appropriate joke in anything other than a carefully scripted scenario---and here the one charged with helping keep us all alive riposted with a perfect comment!
Art raised an eyebrow at my astonished expression. “Don’t underestimate her,” he stated. “We gave her more than a ‘Windows service pack upgrade’ today. Bertha’s a lot sharper girl now than she used to be.” Indeed!
The alien hardware was packed up and ready for transport to the Fort Stewart, Georgia, “black ops” research facility that Art commanded, and the containment crew and guards were piling back into their vehicles. L’raan had regained a good bit of strength, but she still looked a bit bewildered. “Art,” I began as he was beginning to walk toward his car, “would it be too much trouble for you to stay behind and talk with my Yularian observer? I think she may have more questions that I can easily answer, and after all this…chaos…I think she needs a better understanding of our side of the equation.”
My old friend stopped, looked around for a moment, then called his driver over. After a low-key exchange the driver jogged back to the car, which soon joined the box truck and passenger van as they caravanned out the gate.
“Since there’s room enough for a small chopper to land in your front yard,” Art said, smiling, “I’ll let one of the Fort Stewart fly boys get in some night ops time when I’m ready to head home.” He grinned widely, adding, “This’ll give me more time to enjoy another mug or three of the wonderful coffee that machine of yours makes!”
Moocher.
L’raan had recovered enough to want solid food, so I quickly put the fire to some nice steaks on the gas grill, nuked Art and myself a couple of baked potatoes and warmed up some frozen sweet corn. After we’d filled our bellies---L’raan loved the corn---and Art had yet another big mug of his promised gourmet coffee in hand, we three settled into the den for a serious talk.
Art and I occupied either end of the couch so L’raan, curled up in my old recliner, could talk to us both without having to constantly swivel her neck, a courtesy she soon came to appreciate since my old friend and I had a habit of jumping in when the other one paused in an explanation or comment. But first---
“Am I in danger?” she asked suddenly, looking at us in trepidation. The question confused us at first, but then she restated it. “Should I fear you, Mr. Government Man?” and she looked directly at Art, “Or…despite what we’ve been through yesterday and today,” she looked at me and I got a chill, “should I ultimately fear you more, Thomas Barnes, especially since what my people know about you is apparently…incorrect?”
I opened my mouth to try and answer her, but Art turned her question around, which was better. “Before we get into that, why don’t you tell us what you know about this whole operation, and especially about Tom. I can assure you that if you mean us no harm, we certainly mean you no harm.” OK, that was probably better than what I’d have said; now to see how L’raan handled it.
Yularians may be descended from fox-like creatures---while they looked like “evolved foxes” and had many vulpine characteristics, their DNA showed many strange non-vulpine anomalies---but they were also spooky intelligent, and L’raan was no exception to the rule. “Fair enough,” she said after a moment’s contemplation. Art and I settled in for what promised to be an interesting---and no doubt informative---session.
“A little over two of your planetary years ago we made contact with humanity,” she began, “and both our species quickly joined in the expected political dance as we looked for advantages and leverage that would benefit our respective positions. In the meantime we both sought to come up with something profitable enough to justify trade between our two worlds. The three other species in our little family of worlds---” I winced but said nothing. “---are, of course, free to seek their own trade arrangements, and my understanding is that there are negotiations underway, although I have no detailed knowledge of them.” L’raan paused to suck on a straw stuck in a bottle of Gatorade. So far, she had said nothing of consequence.
“And then we discovered humanity’s great wealth of science fiction literature, and realized that your people, far more than any of us, have a wanderlust, a curiosity and a need for new experiences, for discoveries that lie just beyond your present grasp. One of those burning desires, as illustrated in many works of science fiction, is the ability to roll back the aging process, to reboot your worn-out bodies into a much earlier physical state. This was something our own laws absolutely forbid us doing to ourselves, but nothing said we couldn’t offer it to humanity---at a price, of course.” She took another pull at her Gatorade.
“Through your science fiction novels, Thomas Barnes, you appeared to have a good grasp of non-human psychology, and ultimately your name was put forth as a likely candidate for experimentation.”
“Plus,” I said dryly, “I was old, worn out and ‘disposable’.”
L’raan coughed unhappily, then sipped again from her straw. “That, too,” she admitted, “but it at least sounds better to say that you had lived a full life. You were also well-known and claimed to be agreeable to assuming the risk of catastrophic failure which, I’m relieved to say, has not manifested itself.” Her ears perked up and her tail thumped in the equivalent of a small Yularian smile, but moments later her ears drooped and her tail became still. “But something else disturbs me on…on a deeply personal level.”
That got Art’s attention. “You mean the apparent attempt to poison you?”
She actually snarled before stating, “Poisoning me did far more than ‘disturb’ me. I’m so outraged---” For a few seconds she couldn’t even talk. “There will be an accounting for that, I assure you.” She grew silent, and I couldn’t read her expression. In time she momentarily tilted her head, glanced at me, then looked directly at Art. Carefully setting her bottle of Gatorade on the table next to the chair, she got to her feet and, much to his surprise, slowly approached my friend.
“I wish to run a test, Mr. Goldman,” she stated. “Please sit on the front edge of the seat cushion.” Art handed me his coffee mug and scooted forward to perch on the edge of the couch. L’raan stepped right up to him, held out her arms and said, “Please smell me and state what you find.”
I realized what she was doing and when Art looked at me with a puzzled expression I said, “Go ahead. She probably won’t bite---this time.”
He’d started to comply but hesitated when he realized what I’d said, so I had to encourage him. “For Christ’s sake, man, do what
she says. There’s a reason!”
Art Goldman owned a beautiful female Golden Lab called Fluff, so he was well acquainted with “canine odor”, and that’s pretty much what he expected to find so close to a woman-size canid-creature. That he was surprised was an understatement.
After a good sniff or two of her outstretched arms he exclaimed, smiling, “Why…you smell of...of jasmine, with a pleasant undertone of musk!” Without warning she grabbed his bald head and literally buried it between her pert little human-style breasts, then pushed it halfway down her white-furred belly toward her shorts. After a moment Art began struggling to pull himself away, and moments later she released him and stepped back, her jaws open in a vulpine grin.
“And did you smell anything terribly offensive that time, Mr. Goldman?” she asked, an almost musical lilt to her voice. She was very female and apparently well aware of human sexuality, and she obviously enjoyed the shocked look on his face.
After sputtering and stammering, his face red with embarrassment---not helped by my raucous laughter---he finally managed to say, “N-no. Nothing doggy---I mean…not at all. Just---more jasmine, and more musk. Lots more…m-musk.” He was totally baffled. “Certainly nothing…(cough!)…unpleasant, though.”
“Tom?” she asked, her head tilted.
I shook my head, smiling. “Sorry, dear, but the rotten fish odor overwhelms the jasmine-scented fur shampoo you used yesterday, which only proves that my sense of smell was tampered with when I was rebuilt.” Art was about to burst so I explained, “Dr. N’looma tweaked my human sense of smell to be ‘sensitive’ to Yularian female pheromones. When L’raan was poisoned it disrupted her bi-monthly sexual cycle, immediately throwing her into estrus. As she just proved, a normal human nose won’t detect her pheromones---but mine does. Horribly.”
She’d padded back to the recliner and settled back into its confines, wrapping her lush tail around her like a comforter. Her ears drooped and she hung her head, speaking almost to the floor. “What was done to…to Tom was against all ethical rules and standards, and what makes it worse is, the…the experiment---failed. Yularian males know when a female is in estrus, but they claim our…fertility scent…is nothing like what Tom describes.” She briefly looked up at us both, and my heart broke. “He…he has been so g-good to me…and all I can do is b-bring danger into his l-life, foul his home with m-my sickness…and…and I stink.” And then she cried.
Crap. This wasn’t going well at all, and I couldn’t just leave her sitting there in her misery---smelly as she might be to my screwed up nose. I levered myself up from the couch and quickly knelt by her chair, gently saying, “We deal with the life we’re given, L’raan, and right now the three of us are warm, safe and among friends.” Carefully reaching a comforting arm around her, I said, “C’mon over and sit with us on the couch. There’s room, and Art won’t bite as long as you don’t bite him first.” She glanced in his direction and he cheerfully clacked his coffee-stained teeth, which got the desired reaction; she yipped a laugh in the middle of her sobs. “Here’s a paper towel to honk your snout on and dry your eyes---” She used it. “---and now come on and sit with us and let’s finish this conversation so Art can go home and we can get to bed.”
“C-can I sleep with you again tonight, Tom?” she quickly asked just as we were all getting settled on the couch. Double crap! I thought Art’s bushy eyebrows were going to crawl up on top of his chrome dome and flap like wings.
“Of course, dear,” I replied, then quickly added, “but Art needs to understand that our sleeping arrangement is strictly for your comfort and security. After last night’s terrifying attack, staying down in your bedroom at the end of the hall simply wasn’t a viable option.” Art got a scathing “hairy eyeball” from me, which silenced any snide comments I was sure he was itching to make.
“The first thing is, what information you know about me isn’t all that wrong,” I stated, “but there are a few key elements missing.”
“Like me,” Art said, smiling. “Tom’s novels are quite popular with a lot of scientists and governmental officials, and over the years he made a number of, shall we say, ‘influential’ friends and contacts in some fairly important agencies, including those agencies that don’t have publicly-known names. After your people contacted humanity and eventually made us the rejuvenation offer, some of us in a few of those agencies feared that something unpleasant might be in the plans before all this was over. However, since Tom was willing to risk his one-and-only body for ‘the cause’, we figured it only fair to equip him with the tools and knowledge to at least give him a chance to survive.”
“Bertha?” L’raan offered, and Art nodded.
“I got to know Tom years ago when I did some consulting work for one of his novels. He turned out to be a good civilian ‘sounding board’ for some ideas my agency wanted to develop, and Bertha grew out of one of them. In time I got him high-level security clearance, and when this whole rejuvenation project began to grow legs he was the best person we could think of for the job. Careful misdirection followed to keep your people from suspecting he was anything but an ordinary citizen, and now here he is, a reborn example of your incredible medical technology!”
L’raan looked back and forth between Art and me, then she asked Art, “Is…is Tom a real-life version of the Jock Reed character in his book Redemption Factor? That man was almost superhuman---”
Now it was Art’s turn to laugh, and once he could catch his breath he said, “No, not by a long shot. Tom’s no spy, nor is he an assassin.”
“I’m just an old man,” I injected, smiling, “with a vivid imagination, some special friends and apparently more than my share of good luck.”
“But---who is trying to kill us,” she countered, “and why?”
I gave her a comforting hug, then said, “Right now we don’t exactly know the answers to those questions, but we plan to find out.”
Art added, “From what I’ve seen and learned over the years, the obvious culprits aren’t always the real ones. It even might turn out that only a few of your people are involved, and they may simply be working as agents for someone entirely different.” Her mouth hung open in shock. “Yes,” Art said, “I’m serious; possibly even those of another species. Now that we’ve been alerted to some of what’s going on---”
“And since Art also has a nice sample of nasty hardware to study and perhaps trace back to its origin---” I injected.
“We just may be able to start putting the pieces of this puzzle together,” Goldman finished. He took a final swallow of coffee, then said, “But now I need to call for my ride back to my base. There’s been enough time for the Army helicopter pilot to fly down to the local airport, and from there to here is only about ten minutes.” He made a pained expression. “That’s also just about enough time for me to get rid of some of this great coffee before I have to go bouncing through the sky.”
It actually took fifteen minutes from the time Art called a special number on his cell phone for his ride to show up, but seemingly before we knew it the night air was pulsing with the thrum of rotor blades, and moments later bright spotlights from the approaching machine swept my large front yard. Art was using his cell phone like a walkie-talkie to give landing instructions to the pilot, and it didn’t take long for the evil-looking AH-64A Apache battle ‘copter to settle gently onto my close-cut grass. L’raan had never seen one of the incredibly lethal human-built machines, and she was suitably intimidated.
Art didn’t wait for the pilot to fully throttle down the engines, and quickly scrambled into the vacant weapons officer’s seat. He pulled on a helmet and waved at us, and the pilot punched the little machine into the night sky and pointed it north. In response to L’raan’s question about Art’s safety, I told her that he was probably more skilled with the fully-armed battle ‘copter’s weapons array than most regular soldiers. “Art’s a special case, dear. He’s a full Army colonel, yet probably closer to a real-life Jock Reed than any other hu
man you’ll ever meet, but he’s also one of the nicest. In crunch time, you couldn’t ask for a better man protecting your back.”
Her ears perked up and her tail wagged. “I think I like him, Tom. Even though he’s a...a soldier, he didn’t make me feel…uncomfortable the way some of our Yularian military officers do.”
“If you’re nice to them, L’raan, you’ll find that most self-confident humans will treat you decently. It’s usually the insecure jerks who give you the most trouble, and I try not to have anything to do with such people.” We headed back into the house and I secured the front door. “With Bertha guarding us, and the local contingency of Yularians no doubt running around pissing on themselves in fear, I think we’ll sleep undisturbed tonight.”
With the mention of sleep, L’raan suddenly yawned widely, and I had to admit that the tensions of the past two days, along with the too-short night’s sleep, had my rejuvenated ass dragging pretty low.
“Bertha, you’re on watch. Wake me for important phone calls or visitors, and of course wake us both for emergencies. Otherwise, let old men and sleeping…foxes…cut zees.”
“Good night, Tom and L’raan,” the AI said. “Sleep well.”
Chapter 9
Clearing the Air
Day three apparently dawned bright and Florida sunny, but neither L’raan nor I were up to greet the first light. In fact, it was nearly noon before my rejuvenated body declared it had slept enough and booted me out of bed to drain my protesting bladder. That’s when I discovered that my Yularian observer had already risen (Bertha informed me that L’raan had been up an hour) and was busy in her bedroom, unpacking and storing the items, clothing and supplements she’d brought with her.
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