V 10 - Death Tide

by A C Crispin, Deborah A Marshall (UC) (epub)

  It might be from one of their other Mother Ships, reporting on a special problem or victory. Possibly it was from their home world, providing updated status reports on the environmental and other crises they were struggling through. Or it could be from her beloved, the Great Leader himself.

  As she keyed in the codes for acknowledgment and receipt of the message, she thought about the last time they had been together in the privacy of his hunting lodge. He had rubbed her crest and back ridge in that special way of his, remarking for the thousandth time upon the beauty of her coloration, the perfection of her patterning. He had said that he would see to it that she would be fitted with a pseudo skin that was as beautiful, in human terms, as she truly was beneath it. It was a pity that the humans’ lack of sensibilities and their undeveloped sense of aesthetics prevented them from appreciating her true form for what it was. It was just another example of their inherent inferiority, he supposed.

  The message began flashing across her viewscreen. “My

  Most Exquisitely Scaled and Beloved,” it said in her native language, “the situation here has become most grave. Our water supplies are now at critical levels, and many are dying every day. Effective immediately, you are to direct the efforts of all personnel in your immediate area into reactivation of the desalinization plants, so that an emergency shipment of water can be made to our home world. I have already dispatched a special ship for this purpose. Our people look to me with great confidence that I will lead them through these dark and troubled times, and I, in turn, have the greatest confidence in you that you will not fail me.”

  He had signed it with the private self-name that she had given him during one of their best and most leisurely dances of love in the sands of their home world. Sirius had been hot and bright on their backs, the way a sun ought to be, not like the weak, pale yellowness of this system’s star. An echo of that remembered warmth touched her as she tapped in the commands to acknowledge the message’s end and transfer its only record to her personal data banks.

  The Supreme Commander Pamela had once snidely observed that if the Great Leader couldn’t bear to be without Diana, then why had he sent her trillions of miles away? The remark was one of many reasons why Diana had taken special pleasure in killing her when she stood in the way of their plans for total domination of Earth. Now this message had come, reconfirming what Diana had always known—that she and the Leader were one, though apart. Diana smiled, and her fingers caressed the console’s edge.

  No one could really understand the special depth of feeling between herself and the Leader. In part, it was based on a shared vision of a galaxy united and thriving under one central government—theirs. In rare, private moments, she imagined herself returning home a great heroine, acknowledging the acclaim and adoration of her people as she stood, claw to claw, with the Great Leader.

  Of course, there had been, and would be, others. One had to take what small comforts one could in a battlefield environment, and only humans held the strange, parochial notion that sexual relationships should be monogamous. She had discovered there was even a certain pleasure in making love while wrapped in these tight, strange-smelling skins. Mostly, her present life meant sacrifice, however. She missed the pink, endless sands, the shouts and games of the children during the water rituals, the excitement in the Leader’s eyes as he described his plans. Diana knew she was crucial to the fulfillment of his plans, dreams, and goals.

  Perhaps, she thought idly, she would accompany the water shipment back home for a hero’s welcome. Surely she was due a small vacation after the privations she’d suffered during these years on Earth. The Leader would be thrilled to see her, and she was growing very tired of the taste of rodents.

  “Good evening, Diana.” Lydia’s cool, clipped voice sounded suddenly beside her.

  “Good evening, Lydia.” She nodded at the blond, elegant security officer.

  “I see that you have received your highest-priority message.”

  “Yes.” Diana’s smile wanned. “It was a message from our Great Leader himself, addressed to me personally. He wanted to inform me that the water shortages have turned critical, and'—”

  “Yes, I know.” Lydia’s own smile turned rueful. “You must be pleased to know the Leader continues to have so much confidence in you. He expresses such warm sentiments, even if they are rather misplaced.”

  Diana’s crest flared with outrage beneath her wig, and she barely restrained herself from spraying venom as she whirled to face the other. “How dare you read my personal communiques? I’ll have you—”

  “Control yourself, Diana, dear. It is my duty, as head of security for the fleet, to screen all incoming priority communiques. As you are well aware.”

  “You should have informed me immediately,” she said, but in a lower tone. Lydia was right—damn her.

  “May I remind you that at the time of its arrival, you yourself were in communication with Nathan Bates. I was merely following standard procedures.” Lydia smiled reassuringly. “That way, I could be certain you wouldn’t—accidentally, of course—overlook something vital like this.”

  Diana glared at her but decided to let the matter drop. Lydia’s ambitions, though not nearly so nobly motivated as her own, nonetheless ran deep. Sooner or later, she would run afoul of standard procedures and could be eliminated at that time. For now, Lydia would bear close watching.

  “I will continue to do my utmost to fulfill the Leader’s faith in me,” Diana said, straightening her shoulders. “I trust that you will do the same.”

  “Of course, Diana.”

  “Make arrangements so that I may brief the officers and other senior personnel on our new mission as soon as possible. Also, prepare a transmission for my voice-over to the commanders of the other Mother Ships, informing them of these latest developments. Keep me informed of your progress. You’re dismissed, Lydia.”

  “There are so many things that I don’t understand,” said Elizabeth Maxwell, scuffing the toe of her sneaker in the dirt.

  “I wish I understood more about how this carburetor is supposed to fit together.” Wiping his forehead on his sleeve, Kyle Bates frowned down at the metal pieces spread out on the blanket in front of him.

  The air was hot and still this afternoon, perfect for racing his motorcycle up and down the hard-packed trails near his home on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The Yamaha waited patiently nearby—more patient than Kyle was at the moment. The engine had been idling a little roughly, indicating a dirty carburetor. Taking it apart and cleaning each1 piece was proving a lot simpler than getting it all back together again.

  “Try this one,” Elizabeth said, pointing to a small washer that had slipped off the blanket onto the lawn.

  “Thanks.” Kyle’s hands moved expertly again for a few moments, then he glanced up at the young woman and smiled a little sheepishly. “I’m sorry—you said something, and I wasn’t paying much attention.”

  “I have so much to learn about myself and the world.” Her lovely eyes were preoccupied as she stared toward the distant mountains, shimmery in the heat. “About—being human.” “That’s a very human thing to be. confused about,” Kyle said, smiling gently at her. He always felt that he had to be gentle with Elizabeth, as though she might shatter if you touched her too hard. With her pale hair and blue eyes, she looked like a Dresden figurine. “Believe me, everyone has problems being human.”

  Wiping his hands on a rag, he took her hand and squeezed it gently. “The thing is, Elizabeth, you’re one up on a lot of people, ’cause at least you realize there’s stuff you don’t know.

  Some folks can’t admit it when they don’t know or understand something. ”

  “One only learns by asking questions,” Elizabeth said, speaking as if the phrase were a catechism she’d learned by rote.

  “Who taught you that?” Kyle asked, watching her intently. Elizabeth turned away, and Bates had to strain to hear her reply. “Diana.”

  “Well, she may be a bit
ch, but nobody’s ever said she was dumb,” Kyle said, tightening the last bolt. “She’s right—for both Visitors and humans.”

  “But there is that other part of me. ...”

  Kyle reached over awkwardly to pat her calf. “I know it’s gotta be hard for you.”

  And I thought I had it rough, he mused, watching her averted face. His father, the rich and legendary Nathan Bates, had always been away at a lab somewhere, while his mother, a gentle, introspective woman, had been distant in another way. She had coped with her husband’s long absences, which alternated with his rigid, domineering ways when he was home, by retreating into herself. When Kyle had been eight years old, she suffered a full-fledged nervous breakdown and had been hospitalized. She had remained there, alone with her thoughts where no one could reach her, ever since.

  Kyle, angry and bitter, had turned to gangs and motorcycle racing as ways of getting acceptance and approval. He had been drifting around at the fringes of the law when the Visitors arrived, and he had found a new purpose in joining the resistance efforts against their common enemy.

  “What was it like before the Visitors came?” Elizabeth asked.

  Kyle thought back. “We never appreciated what we had,” he said slowly. “You could go almost anywhere in the world with no trouble. You could buy anything so long as you had the money. No rationing. No shortages—at least not in this country. We were rich, really wealthy here.”

  “You mean you were.”

  “Well, yeah, my dad was always rolling in it, but even the average guy had two cars and a house. You could eat steak a coupla times a week without hocking your stereo. Everyone went on a vacation each year. There were no travel permits, no curfews. It was great.”

  He remembered living in this house back when he’d had nothing more on his mind than riding his bike and picking up chicks. Then the Visitors had come. He’d met Robin Maxwell on a desert road in Visitor territory and after a daring escape, the two of them had made a perilous journey to reach Los Angeles again. There, they’d settled into a platonic (although Kyle knew Robin had hopes for more) relationship while sharing his house, and he wound up joining the resistance. Kyle had learned that Robin Maxwell had a daughter—and that her daughter was the being they called the Starchild. Elizabeth had come to live with them, and Kyle’s already muddled feelings had become even more mixed after he’d met her.

  Elizabeth was a lovely young woman who looked about eighteen years old (her mother’s age), but in reality was only about eighteen months old. She was the result of a cruel experiment in hybrid genetic engineering that the Visitors had performed upon the unwilling Robin. Although she looked completely human, Bates could never forget that she wasn’t— nor could Elizabeth herself. Their relationship was a strange mixture of affection and awkwardness, complicated by Robin’s obvious attraction to Kyle.

  Some had hailed Elizabeth’s birth as a possible bridge of peace to link the humans and Visitors together. Others saw her as a new and dangerous threat to humanity. Kyle just wanted to make sure nobody hurt her; she was so vulnerable in spite of some strange, inexplicable talents she’d evidenced from time to time. He’d seen her stop engines and break windows just by thinking about it—not that she could do it all the time, but even sometimes was unsettling.

  It wasn’t hard to believe that Elizabeth felt confused about life.

  “It’s lemonade time.” Robin’s voice came cheerfully out of the window. A moment later, the screen door banged open, and she appeared carrying a tray loaded with glasses and a pitcher.

  “Thanks,” Kyle said, hastily moving away from Elizabeth and trying not to notice the hurt look that flashed across Robin’s face as she set the tray down.

  Twelve cans of lemonade concentrate, Mike Donovan thought, peering irritably through his sunglasses at the shopping list again. Fumbling through his wallet, he looked to see if there were any discount coupons for lemonade.

  Save twelve cents on Campbell’s Tomato with Rice soup, twenty-five cents off on family-size Cheer, Aquafresh toothpaste— He replaced the coupons in disgust.

  Back when he’d still been married to Marjorie, he’d discovered that near one a.m. was a good time to go grocery shopping. Few people frequented the twenty-four-hour Safeway this time of night.

  Black olives for Maggie, artichoke hearts for Ham, five packs of Bazooka Joe bubble gum for Chris . . . Mike grimaced. The members of the resistance had strange and expensive eating habits. He remembered Elias’s expression when he had doled out today’s grocery money, and his admonition to Mike to spend it carefully.

  That was a real challenge these days, with all the weird and sporadic shortages. At the moment, there were plenty of canned tomatoes, but com was going for six dollars a can. Booze and candy were really hard to come by—the Visitors had acquired these favorite human vices for themselves. Going past the nuts-and-candy section, he searched the long and nearly empty shelves for any possibilities.

  Miracle of miracles! Two Hershey’s chocolate-with-almonds bars, not too badly mashed looking, still sat next to a bold-lettered sign proclaiming the special price of $5.69 each.

  Donovan looked into his wallet again. Julie was a self-confessed chocaholic, and Hershey bars had been her special favorite. Mike thought about how long it had been since they’d seen each other and how her eyes would light up at the sight of the candy. She would never spend the money on herself, but if it was a gift ... He could take it by her place tomorrow evening, and they could—

  Smiling at the thought, he took out his calculator, punching in numbers with quick, eager jabs. The smile faded as he made the calculation again before slamming the calculator angrily shut. With the kind of taxes Nathan Bates and the Visitors were imposing on things nowadays, he would be $1.48 short. A quick check of his jeans revealed twenty-three cents in change. Banging the cart around, he pushed it away from the candy counter, swinging it viciously into the check-out line.

  Before the Visitors arrived, Mike Donovan had been a top-notch news cameraman, highly respected in his field. He had been more daring and reckless then. If he’d put his life on the line a dozen times or more in pursuit of the best, most complete story, then he had also been very well paid for it.

  He was in El Salvador with his best friend and soundman, Tony Leonetti, literally dodging bullets, when the silver spaceships floated into view overhead. Mike had scooped some exclusive footage of the Visitors’ arrival, and later he’d been the one to film the aliens’ true faces and discover their actual reasons for coming to Earth.

  Mike liked to think he might have gotten an Emmy for that filmed discovery if the broadcasting industry had remained under human control. As it was, he’d become a wanted man, a fugitive living in the shadows while he searched for his son, Sean, who had been captured by the Visitors along with his mother, Mike’s ex-wife, Marjorie. Donovan had lived for weeks on the edge, only a misstep away from capture, torture, and death at the hands of the enemy.

  The only worthwhile part in that whole black period of his life had been meeting Juliet Parrish. At first he’d had trouble believing this diminutive woman in her mid-twenties was leading the whole L.A. resistance effort. Later he had come to respect how much good leadership meant, when he was put in charge for a couple of weeks and discovered how cranky people could become when you forgot to requisition toilet paper.

  Still later, a deep and special caring for Julie Parrish had developed, and—

  Toilet paper! The one thing on the list he couldn’t do without, and he’d forgotten to pick it up. Muttering apologies to the elderly woman behind him, he backed his cart around and rolled down the aisle toward the paper products.

  Checking his money once more, he saw that he had just enough for four rolls—two less than requested.

  Damn, but it was demeaning, having to count pennies this way! He took a comer too sharply and had to pick up several scattered boxes of saltines. They were on sale, he noted automatically.

  Things had gotten better again
for a while following V-Day, when the red dust bacteria had driven the Visitors back into space. He had accepted a job as anchorman for the nightly news with L.A.’s NBC affiliate—as national heroes, they’d all had their pick of offers. If he’d been happier behind a camera than in front of it, Mike had nonetheless drawn a six-figure salary that eased the discomfort considerably. But the failure of the red bacteria in L.A. and the Visitors’ return had relegated him to nonperson status again; his features were now always concealed by caps and sunglasses, and he was always having to badger Elias for the money to buy the stuff they needed.

  “Don’t I know you from someplace?” The tall, gray-haired woman behind him was tugging at his sleeve, her expression curious.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Donovan said, hastily piling his purchases onto the conveyor.

  “You been in the movies? Or on TV?”

  “Oh, no.” He grinned feebly as he counted out his money. “I just look like the guy, that’s all.”

  The woman shook her head. “If you take off your sunglasses a minute—”

  “I can’t. I have an eye infection, makes them sensitive to light.” He began bagging his supplies, pocketing his change without counting it.

  Then he spotted them—two Visitor guards strolling past the produce toward the meat counter.

  Grabbing his bags, Donovan bolted for the exit, crossing his fingers that he hadn’t been recognized.

  He took a more circuitous route than usual back to the Club Creole. It was only when he got there that he discovered that he’d left the toilet paper sitting on the counter. And he’d paid for it, too.

  Chapter 2

  Class Act

  At precisely 0900 hours in the morning, Diana entered the crowded auditorium of her Mother Ship. Murmurs of conversation instantly ceased, and the heels of her boots made a satisfying click on the floor as she strode to the platform at the front of the room.