V 10 - Death Tide

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

  All of the lights in the house had long been out when she finally got up and went into her bedroom. She undressed and got into bed, but sleep was slow in coming as she tossed and turned. Finally, she drifted downward. . . .

  . . . into a soft red mist. Elizabeth was groping through it, blinking in confusion. The featureless mist surrounded her, merging light and darkness into a uniform redness the color of dried human blood.

  Her hand was barely visible as she held it in front of her face, but against the whiteness of her flesh, she could see the mist was actually millions of tiny specks of dust, rising and swirling around her.

  "Mother?” she tried to call out, but no sound rose from her throat to mar the silence of the dust.

  Fighting down panic, she stretched her arms in front of her and groped forward, walking at first, then running. Even the ground beneath her seemed soft and insubstantial, and she was alone, so very alone.

  Then her hands slammed up against a smooth surface, cold and hard. Jerking back her stinging fingers, she reached forward more cautiously, recognizing the feel and curve of glass. She was standing in front of a large translucent cylinder.

  As she circled around it, the dust within the cylinder began to clear away, and she could make out the form of a young man in Visitor’s uniform. Pressing her face to the glass, she could see that his handsome features were contorted in agony, and he was yelling and pounding on the glass, pleading with someone she couldn’t see.

  She groped around the circumference, frantically seeking some opening or entrance. The young man began to scream— she could hear the sound as a muffled groan and feel its awful vibrations through the glass under her fingertips. Then he fell writhing to the floor, clutching his throat, tearing at his face. Terrible gashes tore his cheeks and forehead, exposing the glistening reptilian hide beneath, and he turned glazed, dying eyes to her, one still blue and human, the other orange, with an alien, slitted pupil, both full of pain and reproach as he died—

  “—NO!” Elizabeth screamed, and jerked upright, her eyes huge and rolling, her hands wildly trying to push away the awful red death-dust.

  “Elizabeth, honey, what is it?” Still blinking sleep from her eyes and wearing only a shortie nightgown, Robin turned on the light and rushed in to hold her daughter.

  Elizabeth sat stiffly, staring at nothing, neither pushing away from nor responding to her mother’s embrace. Human caresses were something she had difficulty comprehending. Finally,

  Robin, sensing her discomfort, drew back. “What happened, Elizabeth?”

  “A nightmare,” she explained haltingly. “It was awful . . . and it seemed so real.”

  “Tell me about it,” Robin said.

  Elizabeth shook her head as Kyle Bates came in, pulling an old bathrobe around himself. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Elizabeth was having a bad dream,” Robin said, looking up at him.

  “Oh, Kyle.” Elizabeth let her head drop onto the young man’s shoulder as he sat down on the edge of the bed and put his arms around her. She stayed that way for a long time, her eyes wide and staring.

  Willie stared at the blender for several moments, considering. Then he reached over for the vodka on the shelf behind it, poured a couple of shots in, and pushed the start button.

  It was two-fifteen in the morning, and the Club Creole’s last customers had left half an hour ago. While he tackled the nightly cleanup operations, he continued his search for the perfect mixed drink—Visitor style.

  It was also something to do to delay going back to his empty room a little longer. Willie had watched his people as they talked together this evening, had seen their sidelong glances at him, and felt he needed something to help drive back the loneliness. He liked the humans, and believed in their cause, but nothing could change the fact that he wasn’t one of them and never would be. Sometimes he wondered if he’d made the right decision when he’d elected to cut himself off from his own people.

  “Willie, my man.” Elias Taylor waved as he came in the front door carrying a large bundle. “What are you making?”

  “I am creating a new commotion, Elias,” the Visitor announced proudly, taking three glasses down from the shelf.

  “You mean ‘concoction,’ Willie.” Miranda Juarez paused over her broom to grin at Elias. “Although from here, it certainly has been sounding like a commotion.”

  “I would be honored if you would be the first to share this with me.” Willie poured the blender’s contents into the glasses and pushed them across the bar toward Elias and Miranda.

  The Hispanic woman sniffed cautiously at the thick, grayish liquid and frowned. “What’s in this, Willie? Eye of newt and hair of toad?”

  “I don’t believe we stock those ingredients. This is made with several kinds of liquor, combined with milk, mustard, peanut butter, mayonnaise, and—”

  “Say no more!” Miranda pushed the glass aside and looked a little queasy.

  “Uh, I think I’ll pass too,” Elias said.

  Willie shrugged philosophically and gulped his down in several jerky motions, his throat rippling as he swallowed, then smiled triumphantly. “This is most fine! We have been getting more Visitors as customers lately, and they will like this much better than the sweet drinks.”

  “Better them than me,” Miranda muttered, going back toward the tables.

  “Wait a minute. I want to show you the latest.” Elias unwrapped his bundle and spread out several polo-style shirts in various pastel shades. Stitched in green over the left pocket of each was the tiny lizard logo with a monogrammed “CC.” “These look great, Elias!” Miranda held up a yellow one. “Can I have one?”

  “Yes, great.” Willie nodded.

  “You can both have a couple,” Elias said expansively. “Wear ’em on duty so the customers can see ’em. I’ll be getting more. These are just samples from somebody I’m negotiating with downtown. I think I can get them faster and cheaper, though, if I can sneak a call to a friend of mine in—” “What, did I take a wrong turn and wind up in the garment district?” Ham Tyler’s flat voice was suddenly loud behind them. “Or are you collecting rags for Goodwill?”

  “These are the shirts that Elias is going to sell to our customers,” said Willie, his expression reproving.

  “Hello, Ham,” Miranda said. “How was Chris today?” “Better. He can make out shapes, but they’re still fuzzy. Doctor said he’s apparently real sensitive to the venom.” Ham looked at Willie with a grudging expression. “He also said if you hadn’t provided him with that venom, he couldn’t have made an antidote, so I guess we owe you one.”

  Willie shook his head. “I wanted to help—you know that.” “But he can see a little?” Miranda asked anxiously. “Yeah, and Doc thinks it’ll get better. It’s just going to take a little time. He’s still gotta keep the bandages on.” The hardfaced man jerked a thumb at the entrance behind him. “And I thought I told you people to keep all three locks on when you close for the night. One good kick, and you coulda wound up as some lizard’s late night snack. What is this?” He leaned on the bar, staring down at the remaining glass.

  “A new drink I am making,” Willie told him.

  Ham sniffed it, shrugged, and chugged the contents before the amazed stares of Elias and Miranda. He stared thoughtfully at the empty glass, then shrugged. “I’ve had worse, in Saigon,” he commented. “But not everybody’s gonna go for this. You oughta save it for the lizards, Willie.”

  “I think that was the idea,” Miranda said dryly.

  “As I was saying, I think we could make these the latest status item in Visitor leisure wear.” Elias collected the shirts and began folding them up. “I was showing a few around today, and a lot of our regular customers were really interested, humans as well as Visitors. I got about thirty-five orders just today. Now, I figure if we mount a full-scale advertising campaign, using the shirts—”

  “Too many of the damn scalies around here as it is, and now you want to make T-shirts f
or them!” Ham’s habitual expression of disgust turned even more pronounced. “You know, it’s getting to be really dangerous around here, with them crawling in and out all the time. I think you should make the club off limits, cover or no cover.”

  Elias ignored him. “I’m thinking about a line of tennis shorts to match. Pretty soon it won’t be Adidas you hear about anymore, but Ee-li-as! Maybe later on, we could even—” “Hey, Taylor, I ain’t talking to the goddamn wall!” Ham whirled suddenly, and Elias backed away instinctively as the ex-CIA man grabbed the shirt out of his hands and tossed it on the bar, where it landed in a little blue heap against the whiskey bottles. “Starting today, declare this place off limits to lizards.”

  “No way, man.” Glaring at him, Elias went behind the bar to retrieve the shirt. “You don’t give the orders around here.” “Your little hidey-hole downstairs is resistance headquarters for all of L.A., and it isn’t safe. With our power packs almost zip, we’re practically standing around here with our pants down, inviting trouble as long as they’re sliming around.” “Their money’s just as green as their blood,” Miranda said.

  “Besides, who’s going to suspect this place when we invite them in freely?”

  Elias nodded. “That’s right. And now that I’m a businessman, my bottom line has got to be where the buck stops. In this case, it’s that cash register over there.”

  “Is that where you keep your loyalties, too?”

  “The Visitors are our best strippers, Ham,” said Willie.

  “Tippers, Willie, tippers,” Elias corrected mechanically, still staring stonily at Tyler. “You know, maybe I’m not involved so much in the tough-guy big-shot fighting anymore, but I’m doing more of the funding than anyone else. If it hadn’t been for the Club Creole, the underground would have gone under long ago. War is hell, right, but it’s also damn expensive. The Visitors pay well, and I say they’re staying.” “Taylor, you disgust me,” Ham said, but before he could say more, the front door rattled open, and Juliet Parrish stepped inside.

  “Hello, Julie!” Willie called, glad to see her and even more relieved that the tension had now been diverted, at least for the moment. “You are quite later this evening.”

  “The helicopter pilot was delayed with some mechanical troubles before he could pick me up from Catalina,” she said. Dark smudges were prominent under her eyes, and the pink tinge of sunburn on her nose and cheeks couldn’t hide the lines of fatigue. “I just stopped by for a Coke and to drop off some data disks. What’s new?”

  In terse sentences, Ham told her about the abortive attempt to obtain more power packs and described Chris’s eye injuries.

  “I’m glad you got Dr. Akers at the clinic,” she said. “There’s no one better. I’ll stop by Chris’s house tomorrow myself and take a look at him.”

  “So how is the great seaweed sweepstakes going?” Elias asked, pouring a Coke into a glass and handing it to her.

  “We’re making progress on red dust number two,” she said, swallowing gratefully. “It looked good in the lab, and so far it seems to be successfully assimilating itself into the life chain of the sea. Our present tests indicate that it will only reproduce in the ocean. Even so, that’s three-quarters of our planet, if it will adapt to colder waters. We’re also trying to coax it into mutating into a form that will adapt to land-based flora of subtropical and warmer climates.”

  Miranda blinked. “Wow. You sound like some of my biology profs.”

  “Sorry.” Julie ran a hand through her tangled blond hair. “That’s what comes of hanging around marine specialists for a couple of days.”

  “How long is this latest and greatest red dust going to take before we can hit the lizards with it?” Ham asked.

  “I don’t know. It’ll be at least another three weeks before we can be reasonably sure this strain is safe for widespread manufacture and distribution in the world’s oceans. As for another variant, well, we start the process all over again in the lab, and—”

  “ ‘All over again’? This isn’t some high school science-fair project we’re talking about here, Doc. Can’t you hurry it up a little?”

  “We have to be careful about the delicate balance of the ocean’s ecology.”

  “For some lousy seaweed?”

  Julie set the glass of Coke down with exaggerated care. “That ‘lousy seaweed’ you’re complaining about, Ham, happens to be a vital link in the food chain for the whole ocean. Break that link, and the results could be catastrophic in the sea and the land. I’m not interested in going down in the history books as the scientist who helped rid the world of the Visitors—only to destroy the world’s oceans in the process.” “You and Gooder make a real swell pair, you know that?” said Ham, heading toward the door. “Well, kids, it’s been real, but I gotta go. I got a sick friend to visit.”

  Julie took a sudden interest in the ice at the bottom of her glass. “Speaking of Mike, has anyone seen him today?” “No, I have not.” Willie was lining up more ingredients on the counter beside the blender. The others shook their heads no.

  Julie frowned as she watched the peanut butter go in, then her expression turned queasy when Willie reached for the mayonnaise. “Willie, do you have any Pepto-Bismol?” “Now, that is a fine idea, Julie!” Smiling, the Visitor began rummaging in some bottom cupboards, found a bottle, and began glopping the thick pink liquid into his “commotion.”

  “Oh, God. . . .” Julie had to turn away.

  “Are you all right?” Elias asked, concern obvious in his

  dark, handsome features.

  “Yeah, I . . . must have picked up some low-level flu bug or something.” She slid off the barstool and placed a large manila envelope on the bar. “I think I’ll just go home, get a long shower and some sleep. Can you lock these downstairs for me before you leave?”

  “Sure thing,” Elias said. “Can I get you anything? A glass of milk or more Coke, maybe?”

  “No, I’ll be fine.” She didn’t look too convinced as she headed for the door. “G’night, everybody.”

  Maggie Blodgett worried about Chris as she parked her old station wagon next to the curb in front of his house.

  Three days after the abortive raid for the power packs, L. A. was resigning itself to another scorcher of a day. It was still midmoming, but the air was hot and windless, making the distant hills appear shimmery and insubstantial, as though they would fade into another dimension at any moment.

  Hauling out the grocery bag from the back seat with one hand, she shaded her eyes with the other to peer over at the number on the house in front of her. She was surprised that he lived in such a residential area, where individualistic bungalows presided over well-tended yards in front and swimming pools in back. She had always figured him to be the apartment type, where home was wherever you slung your hat and your M-16.

  She rang the doorbell and listened, hearing something bang to the floor, a muttered curse, then the gruff shout: “Who is it?”

  “It’s Maggie.”

  After a while hesitant footsteps approached the door, and she saw that his eyes were still bandaged. “C’mon in.”

  Inside, the house was cool and dark and smelled of freshly brewed coffee. A small, frenetic dog with masses of hair and a face like a chrysanthemum came barreling out from the kitchen, barking loudly as it danced around her legs.

  “What the heck is this?” She laughed as she stooped to scratch the dog’s head, and the pom-pom tail swished happily.

  “That’s Druid. He’s a Shih Tzu.”

  "Druid?”

  “Yeah,” Chris said, deadpan. “He worships trees. Want some coffee?”

  “Sure. I can get it.”

  “No, sit down.” Determined, he groped his way back to the kitchen, fumbled out cups and spoons, and managed to pour the coffee without spilling much.

  “How do you feel?” she asked, watching him from the kitchen table.

  “All right. The burning feeling’s mostly gone. Doc Akers said I took a
pretty good hit, and I’m allergic to the venom. If it hadn’t been for that antivenom he managed to conjure up, I might’ve died. That’s why it’s taking me so long to get over this.”

  “You’ll be all right,” she said, hoping it was true. He looked very vulnerable and not nearly so large, as though the bandages had somehow shrunken him. What both of them knew but neither mentioned was the doctor’s concerns that recovery might not be complete.

  “I’ve got another lizard joke,” she said. “Your dog reminded me of it. What do you call the Visitor who owns a pet shop?”

  “Well fed.” Chris snorted. “Hon, that’s older’n God.”

  “Oh, well. I brought the newspaper.” She put it on the table. “I’ll be happy to read it to you. And here are the groceries. I even managed some Wrigley’s Spearmint.”

  “Thanks.”

  She looked around as she put the groceries away. There was a cheerful neglect in the way things were stacked or placed in apparently random locations, but counters and dishes were reasonably clean.

  “Let’s go in the living room,” he said.

  That was a real surprise. The paneled walls on two sides were floor-to-ceiling shelves full of books. She quickly scanned the titles. There were history books—three whole shelves were devoted to the Civil War and another two to England—biographies, and copies of National Geographic for the past eight years. Physics and chemistry books jammed up against science fiction and mystery paperbacks and Carpentry for Fun and Profit.

  “You’ve got a real collection here,” she said, taking the couch as he settled into the easy chair across the room. “I didn’t know you were such an avid reader.”

  He shrugged, a great rolling movement of one shoulder. “I can’t go around blowing up trucks and shooting at lizards all the time. Want to put on a record?”

  Maggie grimaced. If Chris’s tastes in reading were eclectic, his record collection consisted almost entirely of country-western music, which she hated. “Why don’t I read to you instead?” she suggested, getting up again. “I could get the newspaper.”